The story so far

Back in January 2021, The Ideas Fund set out to test a new way of supporting communities to work with researchers on ideas related to mental wellbeing. We were aware that for many reasons, including how grants are awarded, community-researcher partnerships can often be led by the research or researcher agenda.

We wanted to test out a different approach to applying for the funds, with individuals, community groups and charities being supported to lead the applications, develop their ideas and focus on what matters most to them and their community.

We were keen to fund in a way that supported genuine partnerships to develop, so that both the community and the researcher could benefit from each other’s expertise.

The Fund was designed to reach individuals and communities who are often overlooked, such as people in rural communities, young people, or people from minoritised ethnic groups.

Working in four specific areas of the UK allowed us to put in place more local support for applicants who may be new to this, specifically in the form of our Development Coordinators who were on hand throughout the application process and helped to match many applicants with researchers for the very first time.

How did it go?

In Round One our funding panel awarded our first 42 grants, totalling £1.6m, in July 2021 and those projects have been doing amazing things. We explored people’s experiences of this first round, and you can read more about what we learned here.

The community-researcher partnerships suggested to us that they would have benefited from more time to build their relationship, understand each other’s work, and clarify their roles before starting the project.

Noting that the Round One process didn’t allow for this as well as it could have, we decided to use a different approach for Round Two, with a shorter expression of interest form followed by a small grant to allow time for groups to be matched with researchers and explore the potential partnership opportunities.

We trialled this new approach towards the end of 2022 which resulted in further projects being supported.

You can read more about the process we used in the different rounds and the changes we made in response to feedback and learning in our Insights Report – best viewed on laptop/desktop screen.

Researchers have played a variety of roles in these projects, including sharing technical or creative skills, supporting data collection or critical reflection, training peer researchers and acting as mentors and facilitators as well as directly undertaking research.

What have we learned?

We’ve learned a lot about the kinds of flexible funding practices that help community-researcher partnerships grow and strengthen. We’ve also learned a lot about the barriers to equitable collaboration, and importantly the kinds of incredible impacts that can emerge from projects.

We’re committed to sharing what we learn along the way – and our Insights Report captures some reflections from us and those involved in projects we have funded.

You can read our insights report here.

How do we sustain what we’ve started?

Since we awarded these community grants our local Development Coordinators in each area have been running communities of practice, bringing projects together to problem solve, share learning and celebrate successes. Projects have continued to evolve and grow, and we have awarded almost £1.8m in extension funding to help some projects continue to build on their partnerships.

We also learned a lot about the various challenges faced by the partnerships in the wider systems and structures around them. With Collaborate CIC, we developed a framework of Indicators of a Healthy Public Engagement system, which makes some suggestions about the kind of external context that helps projects like these to flourish. Using this framework as a starting point, we have now funded Regional Partnerships in each area to help embed the approach we have been trying out in each place.

Read more about our Regional Partnerships funding.

What's next?

We’ve been working on ways to describe the kinds of impact we have seen and might expect from the community-researcher partnerships we’ve been funding. Working with our learning partner, Collaborate CIC, we’ve developed an Impact Framework which tries to make sense of the possibilities. Rather than a tool for measurement, we will be using this as a way of exploring and describing the journeys our different projects are going on.

We’ll now be working closely with a small group of projects who have been awarded three-year Evidence Building Grants to create the biggest possible impact and understand what has made this possible within their partnership or through our approach as a funder.

We’ll be running a series of Learning Cycles to explore different themes, and will be sharing our reflections regularly over this next phase of the Fund.