I don’t start with the funding
I help organisations build the capacity and capability to innovate. This is how I work.
A funding opportunity is only useful if you already understand what you are trying to achieve, why it matters, what needs to change and whether funding is actually part of the answer.
My approach is therefore deliberately upstream of bid writing.
1. Start with the problem or opportunity, not the funding.
Understand what you are trying to change before looking for money to change it.
I don’t make your problem fit what I offer.
What I do depends on the problem. Sometimes I’m the right person to help. Sometimes I’m not, but I may know someone who is.
The starting point is always the same: understand what you are actually trying to change.
2. Don’t assume the identified problem is the actual problem.
The first description of a problem is a starting point for investigation, not necessarily the basis for an intervention.
3. Understand causation before designing an intervention.
Ask why something is happening, what is already working and what is preventing change.
4. Test, learn and grow.
Treat every intervention as something to learn from, not something to defend.
Be clear about the assumptions it depends on, test them as early as possible, and use what happens to change, stop or develop the approach.
The purpose is not to prove an idea works. It is to learn what works, for whom, under what conditions and what is worth growing. And “grow” does not necessarily mean scale. A test might tell you to grow the evidence, change the intervention, strengthen the partnership, test somewhere else, or kill the idea.
5. Develop the intervention and business case before looking for funding.
A good proposition should exist independently of a funding application. Funding opportunities should finance good ideas, not create them.
6. Look for all the legitimate outcomes an intervention could create.
One intervention may contribute to outcomes across different services, organisations and sectors. Understanding those connections can reveal partners, resources and funding that would otherwise remain invisible.
7. Treat funding as a resource mechanism, not the objective.
Grant funding may be appropriate. So might commissioning, social investment, existing budgets, partner contributions or other resources. Sometimes no additional funding is required.
8. Work on real problems.
I prefer workshops and support built around organisations’ actual priorities rather than abstract exercises. People learn by applying the thinking to something that matters to them.
9. Transfer the reasoning, not just the answer.
The purpose of external expertise should be to leave expertise behind. I work with people so they understand how a proposition was developed, not simply what the finished proposition looks like.
10. Build institutional capability, not individual dependency.
Knowledge should spread across an organisation. If one person moves on, the capability should remain.
11. Become progressively less necessary.
My role should move from developer, to critical friend, to unnecessary. If an organisation continually needs me to do the same thing for it, I haven’t built its capability.
That last point is important.
I don’t measure success by whether an organisation needs to employ me again.
I measure it by what the organisation can do without me.