Who are the 29 grantholders the Digital Fund is funding?
This is a post to introduce you in more detail to our 29 grantholders — and begin to see some of the patterns and connections in the Digital Fund ecosystem. Spoiler alert: there’s a map!
To read an introduction to the Digital Fund, please the article Introducing the Digital Fund — and a different way of funding digital before you read this one, which will provide some useful context.
With 29 grantholders, it’s a lot to wrap your head around. I’ve created a map using the great mapping and sensemaking tool Kumu which I can really recommend to anyone taking a systemic approach to their work. You can access the map by clicking through the link below and signing up for a simple profile (you just need an email address and password) and you should be able to click through the different elements and filter using different types of information.
Over the next few months, I will be adding more information and filters to the map which will allow us to visualise things like the size of charities, the elements of their projects, and the nature of their collaborations with each other, and potentially other organisations too. I hope this can become a useful resource for other funders moving forward and perhaps further the field of ecosystemic funding which we are interested in testing out here.
Visualising strand one and strand two
Below is a screenshot of the map where you can see strand one organisations in yellow (looking at the borders of the map elements) and strand two organisations in blue. I have also begun to sort them depending on their area of focus: children, family, carers, older people, women, sexual health, health, refugees, food, addiction, law (legal support), sex workers and mental health. Then there’s also NCVO which is a large organisation that supports charities.
Visualising the grantholder and support partner ecosystem
Underneath this is another screenshot of a view showing the support partners (Shift, CAST and DotProject) who are supporting each grantholder for the first 12 months of their grant. You will notice that there are seven organisations that have not yet been allocated support partners — these are our most recent cohort who are still undergoing a matching process.
Location
The map can also show grantholders according to their location. The Digital Fund is located in the UK Portfolio of The National Lottery Community Fund which supports UK-wide ideas and projects.
We also included three England based charities (Lancashire Women’s Centre, Bath and Northeast Somerset Carers’ Centre and NCVO), Family Lives which also has offices in Wales, two Scottish charities (Aberlour and Children 1st), a Welsh charity (Cyfannol Women’s Aid), and one from Northern Ireland (Children’s Law Centre).
Strand one charities
Here you can read more details on all of the strand one grantholders. They are listed according to their focus area as shown on the map. It’s worth remembering that all of these organisations have been funded to begin the journey of redesigning their organisations so that they’re able to continually adapt to and stay relevant and resilient for the future.
Each of them are using different starting points for this journey, and the destination for many is unknown — this kind of change takes time, involves lots of stopping doing things, pivots, realignments etc, and is hard to predict. The summaries may list tangible things like new services or redesigning existing ones, but these are often the trojan horses for much more fundamental change — they are rehearsal spaces for new mindsets, behaviours and cultures to be normalised.
All strand one charities have committed to sharing their solutions and learning with the wider sector in an “open source” approach.
Focus: Children
Aberlour (Scotland)
Aberlour is Scotland’s largest children’s charity and supports 7,500 children, youth and families per year to overcome adversity, improve life chances and thrive through support services.
Aberlour recognises that to meet the new needs, expectations and behaviours of the people whose lives they are trying to improve means redesigning how they deliver their services, putting good user-centred design practice at the heart of what they do, making better use of data and evidence and fundamentally changing how they work.
Children’s Society (UK wide)
The Children’s Society (TCS) is an older UK charity which has been advocating for disadvantaged children and young people nationally for over 130 years, with a mission to fight for change and support children in having better lives.
TCS is being funded on its 2017–2020 digital strategy. There are two areas of focus:
Design and development: this will embed digital principles and participation across TCS to advance understanding of user need, service design, putting young people at the centre of user research, using iterative processes, co-design, and embedding digital standards, skills and capabilities into their work.
The second focus area is systemic collaboration and partnership. This work will involve a test-and-learn approach that seeks to surface and resolve the impediments to partnership working, e.g. barriers to data-sharing, digital working, and co-design across organisations, alongside sharing wider learning about workforce and systems change with the sector.
Children 1st (Scotland)
Children 1st is a big Scottish charity that aims to help households in Scotland with dependent children to overcome challenges they face in improving their lives. It offers support services in the form of a helpline called Parentline and trained advisors who can give information, advice and support to parents, carers and communities.
Children 1st recognises that to meet the new needs, expectations and behaviours of the people whose lives they are trying to improve means redesigning how they deliver their services, putting good user-centred design practice at the heart of what they do, making better use of data and evidence and fundamentally changing how they work. This is initially being done through their Parentline.
Children’s Law Centre (Northern Ireland)
Established in 1997, Children’s Law Centre (CLC) is a free legal information, advice and representation service for children and young people under 18 based in Northern Ireland . It also delivers training and policy work to ensure compliance and understanding of children’s rights.
CLC recognises that to meet the new needs, expectations and behaviours of the people whose lives they are trying to improve means redesigning how they deliver their services, putting good user-centred design practice at the heart of what they do, making better use of data and evidence and fundamentally changing how they work. The work will start through developing a free, easy-to-use digital information service that can be accessed 24/7, privately and anonymously to inform young people of their rights.
Make-a-Wish UK (UK wide)
Make-A-Wish UK grants the wishes of children living with critical illnesses throughout the UK. It has grown from granting four wishes in its first year in 1986 to granting 1,047 in 2018.
Make a Wish wants to completely transform the way in which they deliver their services, transferring power, decision making, and ownership of children’s wishes to the community of which they are part, and also scaling to be able to meet increasing demands of sick children’s wishes.
Notes on the children’s charities
Three children charities have been paired with the same support partner, Shift — which is working with Aberlour and Children 1st already as part of a ‘practice cluster’ in a related project called Catalyst, which aims to boost and improve the use of digital tools and techniques among charities. Both Aberlour and Children 1st are Scotland based children’s charities and so can work together in a context dependent way, sharing learnings and resources and feeding back into their local areas.
Family
Family Lives
Family Lives is a UK-wide charity that supports families before problems escalate to crisis. It was founded in 1999 as Parentline Plus and has since evolved to become Family Lives.
Project: Family Lives recognises that to meet the new needs, expectations and behaviours of the people whose lives they are trying to improve means redesigning how they deliver their services, putting good user-centred design practice at the heart of what they do, making better use of data and evidence and fundamentally changing how they work. This is initially being done through fundamentally rethinking the way that families search for and receive support.
Relate
Relate provides support, mainly via face to face services, to work through relationship problems of any sort before relationships reach crisis point.
Relate recognises that to meet the new needs, expectations and behaviours of the people whose lives they are trying to improve means redesigning how they deliver their services, putting good user-centred design practice at the heart of what they do, making better use of data and evidence and fundamentally changing how they work. Some of the questions Relate is asking are: How do you digitize a therapeutic workforce? How do you normalize some of the ways technology can be useful? Having previously been an organisation focusing solely on service delivery, Relate is expanding to see itself as an influencer and educator on relationships and therefore change the customer journey.
Cruse Bereavement Care
Cruse exists to support all those who are bereaved, and has existed for 60 years. It does this through 5,000 volunteers and 76 semi-autonomous local areas, each operating differently and offering a range of different services. The default service is face-to-face individual support from a local volunteer, however some branches offer other things like support groups or a helpline.
Cruse recognises that to meet the new needs, expectations and behaviours of the people whose lives they are trying to improve means redesigning how they deliver their services, putting good user-centred design practice at the heart of what they do, making better use of data and evidence and fundamentally changing how they work. Cruse is starting this by developing practical, digital self-help content to help people access support on demand, and save more expensive face-to-face support for those who need it most. Part of this will also be reducing variation between local centres and increasing their reach.
Carers
BANES Carers’ Centre
Bath and Northeast Somerset Carers’ Centre is an established charity that gives unpaid carers to get the support, recognition and connection they need to stay well and supported. They work with over 5,000 carers from the age of five and upwards to help them take control of their caring situation. Services are offered from two centres, other local drop in location, outreach in people’s homes and a telephone helpline.
BANES Carers’ Centre recognises that to meet the new needs, expectations and behaviours of the people whose lives they are trying to improve means redesigning how they deliver their services, putting good user-centred design practice at the heart of what they do, making better use of data and evidence and fundamentally changing how they work. They will start this work by developing a universal 24/7 support service.
BANES recognises care is a huge issue: there are not enough people to provide care for the people who need it. They are working to bring care and the community closer together and help communities take better care of each other.
Grandparents Plus
Grandparents Plus is a specialist kinship care advice service, providing specialist advice for around 2,000 families across England and Wales annually, with ambitions to dramatically increase this number.
Grandparents Plus recognises that to meet the new needs, expectations and behaviours of the people whose lives they are trying to improve means redesigning how they deliver their services, putting good user-centred design practice at the heart of what they do, making better use of data and evidence and fundamentally changing how they work. Like many of the other strand one organisations above, Grandparents Plus has in mind a digitally enabled platform which would be available to a range of stakeholders, including key referral groups such as Citizens Advice (another strand one grantholder).
Women
Lancashire Women’s Centre
Lancashire Women’s Centre supported over 5,500 women over five centres last year with a range of needs — from mental health support to domestic violence to debt advice.
After extensive user research, LWC has identified making better use of digital as a key way to meet its mission, and will be using funding to extend its services and approach to better support women. This includes in pre-crisis stage, through better navigation of their services, opportunities for self-help, ownership and ongoing support.
Cyfannol Women’s Aid
Cyfannol Women’s Aid is a violence against women, domestic abuse, and sexual violence charity delivering services in rural areas of Wales. The services provided by Cyfannol include refuges, crisis intervention, a move-on house, group support, children and young people’s services, and a sexual violence service.
Cyfannol Women’s Aid recognises that to meet the new needs, expectations and behaviours of the people whose lives they are trying to improve means redesigning how they deliver their services, putting good user-centred design practice at the heart of what they do, making better use of data and evidence and fundamentally changing how they work. Their aim is to remove barriers to women and children accessing their services, and due to their particular geographical context of being primarily rurally based, this presents specific challenges to work with.
Mental Health
Addaction
Addaction is a national public health charity tackling addiction and self-harm. It was founded 50 years ago and now employs 1,600 staff, 800 volunteers and provides services across England and Scotland, helping hundreds of thousands of people and families to overcome issues with alcohol, drugs, poor mental health, self-harm and other harmful behaviours.
Addaction recognises that to meet the new needs, expectations and behaviours of the people whose lives they are trying to improve means redesigning how they deliver their services, putting good user-centred design practice at the heart of what they do, making better use of data and evidence and fundamentally changing how they work.
Part of this is shifting the balance of power in services from staff and commissioners to local communities and individuals shaping their own experience, recovery and support. Addaction has already taken major steps along this journey — such as hiring a digital trustee, appointing new staff with experience in transitioning a large service delivery organisation to improve impact via digital transformation, and a year of formal and informal research with people using their services — and this funding allows them to continue moving forward.
Samaritans
Samaritans is a well known charity dedicated to reducing the feelings of isolation and disconnection that can lead to suicide. Across the UK, Samaritans answered around 3.85 million calls for help by phone, email, SMS, letter and face-to-face contact in 2018/19, rising to 4.7 million when including callers who disconnect quickly. The organisation has more than 18,000 volunteers working across 189 UK branches to support people in emotional distress.
They will use strand one funding to modernise and digitise their volunteer recruitment and training pipeline to ensure more capacity for training more volunteers, expanding services to offer an online self-help tool for those who may not be able to use the telephone, and supporting wider organisational change. This will include volunteer training and upskilling to support the organisation’s change.
Health
Parkinson’s UK
Parkinson’s UK offers support, advice and information for those who suffer from Parkinson’s disease and for those who support them. They have identified the desire to become an organisation fit for the digital age and a service transformation programme.
Parkinson’s UK recognises that to meet the new needs, expectations and behaviours of the people whose lives they are trying to improve means redesigning how they deliver their services, putting good user-centred design practice at the heart of what they do, making better use of data and evidence and fundamentally changing how they work. The work will start with the development of a new service model which reaches people at the point of diagnosis and supports them throughout their lives.
British Tinnitus Association
The British Tinnitus Association (BTA) is a Sheffield-based, UK-wide charity set up in 1979, offering dedicated support to the over 8.5 million people suffering from tinnitus, including research towards the cure.
The organisation recognises the need to completely redesign their offer, moving from information on a website to the delivery of responsive and personalised services. In doing this, the organisation will be able to reach more people who suffer from tinnitus and better serve their needs.
Support
National Council for Voluntary Organisations
The National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) is the national umbrella body for the civil society sector in England. The organisation supports charities, social enterprises and community groups with advice, representing them to decision makers and policy makers and connecting them to each other.
NCVO recognises that to meet the new needs, expectations and behaviours of the people whose lives they are trying to improve means redesigning how they deliver their services, putting good user-centred design practice at the heart of what they do, making better use of data and evidence and fundamentally changing how they work. NCVO’s goal is to scale its impact in a sustainable way by supporting more organisations to self-serv digital services that allow them to find and purchase useful resources in an almost friction-free digital process.
Law
Law Centres Network
Law Centres Network (LCN) was founded in the early 1970s and is now a network of 42 Law Centres across the UK. Each year, Law Centres engage with over 250,000 local people working within their communities to defend the legal rights of local people e.g. to help people save their homes, keep their jobs and protect their families.
Law Centres Network recognises that to meet the new needs, expectations and behaviours of the people whose lives they are trying to improve means redesigning how they deliver their services, putting good user-centred design practice at the heart of what they do, making better use of data and evidence and fundamentally changing how they work. At the heart of what they are doing is to use digital tools to respond to technology changing society and raising expectations, as well as changing the behaviour of the people using their services in how they interact with them.
Citizens Advice
Citizens Advice (CA) is a network of 280 independent charities that provide a comprehensive range of confidential, free advice and information to people across England and Wales. The service provides face-to-face advice from 26,000 venues, a national telephone advice line, and a very limited webchat service.
While CA has already invested a lot in digital in order to better meet user needs, this strand one funding is going towards the development of an incubator network to test, scale and embed new approaches and ways of working across CA. This will also help solve some of the challenges of being a federated network — e.g. how to make decisions and coordinate with a networked model where there is one central office, and many bureaus. Their challenge is to work out how to work well as a network and create a situation where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Strand two charities
Children
Best Beginnings
Best Beginnings creates resources to educate and empower parents and parents-to-be, increasing their confidence, knowledge and skills to give their children a good start in life.
The strand two funding is going towards redeveloping and updating the Baby Buddy app to match updated user expectations and needs and improve things like the data architecture and upgrading the platform. Since the launch of the app in 2014 there has been positive evidence showing the impact and wide use of the app.
Mental Health
Mental Health Innovations
Mental Health Innovations (MHI), is a relatively new charity (set up in 2017) able to design, develop and scale new technologies for the mental health sector.
They have applied to us for strand two funding to support the development and scaling of the Shout platform which is the UK’s first 24/7 text message based support platform for people in crisis. This will scale Shout to more people and to more charities who will be able to white label the platform to use themselves.
Older People
GoodGym
GoodGym is an already successful online platform and community that connects people who want to exercise with physical volunteering opportunities such as community improvement tasks while helping older people with one-off tasks and reducing loneliness.
The strand two grant will be used to expand its already growing community and scale up the platform. They will use a co-design approach to design and develop a platform that will scale exponentially and offer a world-class digital experience for its users without proportional staff and costs. The aim of this project is for GoodGym to move from 50,000 volunteer hours in 2019 to 250,000 in 2022, by way of working with runners, walkers and partner organisations to expand both the volunteer base and the range of opportunities.
Wag and Company
Wag and Company is a charity that enables trained volunteers and dogs to visit older people in care/medical establishments, reducing social isolation.
All aspects of the organisation’s service delivery are managed online and the service has expanded rapidly since its small pilot in 2016. Funding is being used to build upon and adapt the organisations digital infrastructure so that the digital service can be self-sustaining.
Carers
Carefree
Carefree is a digital charity using the sharing economy to leverage excess capacity from the hospitality industry to provide unpaid carers with free short breaks to support their wellbeing and build a more sustainable social care system.
This strand two funding will be used to scale up the current beta product to become a service that can grow exponentially over time — optimising the service in line with user testing and data-driven development.
Sex workers
National Ugly Mugs
National Ugly Mugs (NUM) was launched in 2012 to end violence against sex workers through a mix of collecting reports on violence and using this to form warnings for other sex workers, awareness-raising, research and knowlege exchange e.g. with the police, and systemic advocacy.
National Ugly Mugs was granted funding to scale up a care and safety platform for sex workers and extend digital services that enable sex workers to report violence as it happens, and to create new and enhanced features on the organisation’s platform. This includes an app used for dissemination of alerts that also provides a searchable database for geo-specific support and amenities.
Sexual Health
SH:24
SH:24 offer a clinically led digital sexual and reproductive health service, creating a personalised experience developed by users, clinicians and experts, enabling people to self-manage their sexual health, and complement and work with existing sexual health services.
This strand two funding is to further develop and scale the successful SH:24 Discuss forum which currently supports nearly 50,000 users to independently manage their sexual health.
Food
Open Food Network
The Open Food Network (OFN) provides a globally coordinated, open-source platform that aims to become an alternative platform for food retail in the UK. OFN believes that high-quality, ecologically sustainable food can be made viable and affordable by values-driven food enterprises using shared software infrastructure to make this food available to people.
Strand two funding is being used to scale the platform and do three things: develop OFN’s user base via community building and developing the platform to meet the needs of the community, develop onboarding experiences that allow faster and better supported onboarding, and remove barriers in the usability of OFN.
Mental Health
Grassroots Suicide Prevention
Grassroots Suicide Prevention (GSP) believes that suicide is preventable through open conversation, and that communities have a role to play in creating safe spaces for people to be supported in the face of suicidal thoughts.
In 2014, GSP created an app called Staying Alive which has now been downloaded over 100,000 times across the UK. The app provides a resource of suicide prevention resources — e.g. self-help methods, crisis phone numbers, etc. GSP is using the strand two funding to scale the app and target hard-to-reach groups, and bring external digital expertise inside the organisation.
Don’t forget, the exciting thing is to see this cohort as an ecosystem, and over the course of the next year, I will be adding to this map as connections grow, resources and solutions are shared, and projects develop. Over the course of next year, I will be hosting events and publishing more blogposts on what we are learning at the Digital Fund, alongside those of my brilliant colleagues, Melissa Ray, Beth Bell and Cassie Robinson.
If you are interested in what we are doing or finding out more about our approach and attending any of our events, please reach out at Phoebe.Tickell@TNLCommunityFund.org.uk.
