In May, we announced a temporary pause to our Large Grants to all applicants who were not already in receipt of our funding and eligible to reapply.
Our decision to pause came in the context of a significant and sustained increase in demand for Large Grants, which put pressure on our available budget and our team’s capacity.
Alongside rising demand, we saw an increase in applications generated by AI, a decrease in the quality of applications we received, and a resulting drop in our success rate.
In line with our commitment to learning and continuous improvement, we paused Large Grants to enable us to identify ways to streamline our processes, and to work through a backlog of applications.
We shared more detail about why we took this approach in our blog.
What’s next?
Our Large Grants will reopen to all applicants on Monday, 14th September.
We have developed a new, two-stage application process, which involves a light-touch first stage, requiring less investment of time from potential applicants and from our team upfront.
The new process will enable us to give a clearer steer to applicants early on and to better manage demand.
Thank you for your patience. We look forward to sharing our updated applicant guidance and initial enquiry form in the coming weeks.
To be kept informed, please check back on our website our sign up to our mailing list.