Fundraising
Meeting date: Tuesday 30th September 2025
Meeting focus: RFF Fundraising
📝 Notes:
Leah shared details about building the RFF pooled fund in parallel with the launch of the ten-year programme.
Regenerative Futures Fund is a £15.8 million pooled fund.
A pooled fund is a collaborative fund that different funders contribute to
We are trying to bring funders into the pooled fund that can commit for the long-term (five-to-ten-year commitments).
Funders who contribute their funds join our Oversight & Enabling Board – so they have a role in overseeing the progress and activity but also have a role in enabling progress and change.
To date (Sept 2025) we have £6.25 million committed to the pooled fund.
These are long-term commitments from a range of funders: £2m from The National Lottery Community Fund; £1m from The Robertson Trust; £1m from Turn2us Edinburgh Trust; £500k Esmee Fairbairn Foundation; £750k Foundation Scotland; £1m from City of Edinburgh Council.
This is all new money into the system – i.e. none if this funding comes from funds that are open to applications – they are strategic funds.
Reaching between £5 - £6 million was the point that we launched ‘Year 0’in 2025 – activities in Year 0 have been to recruit a team, recruit and onboard residents panel, launch guidelines and take expressions of interest from community organisations and support them to move through capacity building.
We initially thought we’d reach the £15 million target and then launch the ten-year programme but through conversations with our funders there both is a desire to not lose momentum with residents and community organisations progress and an acknowledgement that bringing this level of funding into the pooled fund is possible, but takes time.
For context, funders decisions to date have taken on average approx. 18 months from conversation to decision and contracting.
In September 2025 Foundation Scotland approved a £1.65 million as a ‘fund guarantor’ – this means that we will have reached 50% target (£7.9 million) of the overall fund of £15.8 million.
Our Oversight and Enabling Board will meet in December 2025 to agree a way forward for how we progress with the 10-year programme at 50% funded. The recommended option is that once we have reached 50% of the pooled fund target, we can proceed with the 10-year programme from spring 2026.
This option means that the team would continue developing the pooled fund (fundraising) while the programme is live from 2026 onwards.
At this stage – this is to be discussed and agreed - we think that this will mean that we will be able to offer 10-years in principle, from Spring 2026, but within this we will offer 5-year agreements with community organisations in the cohort from 2026.
As funds are secured and we get closer to the target we will extend this agreement to 10-years.