Doing & Learning Update #5 - November & December 2025
Download the PDF of the Doing & Learning Report (November & December 2025) - here
What is Regenerative Futures Fund?
The Regenerative Futures Fund is a new ten-year £15m pooled fund for communities in Edinburgh that puts decision-making power into the hands of those who are most often excluded. This fund is designed by and for people in their own communities.
The funding will give grassroots organisations, collectives and movements the opportunity to think and plan for the long-term, tackling the root causes of poverty, racism and the environmental crisis. It supports approaches to improve the lives of people living in poverty and experiencing racism, and contribute towards a just green transition, by enabling equity, power-sharing and long-term change.
Doing & Learning Report #5 – Covering November & December 2025
What is the purpose of this update? We are committed to ‘working in the open’ as we develop the Regenerative Futures Fund. This is our second team update, sharing what we have been up to the past few months, what we've been learning, and a bit about how we move forward. These updates are shared with our Oversight & Enabling Board and on the Regenerative Futures Fund website. We – Aala Ross, Andy Hyde and Leah Black – have written this collaboratively, with future versions to be contributed to by the wider ecosystem.
This update is structured around our seven project plans areas:
1. Fund Design — Process, Programme & Participation
Fund Design — Process, Programme
We have been:
Running a capacity-building phase with projects (59 organisations spread across 34 projects). The first sessions with the cohort began in late August (with an introduction section for the capacity building phase) and sessions were held regularly throughout:
November:
One two-hour online session was held, to support a shared understanding of some of the terms within the proposal and to talk through top-level budgeting.
On 5 days in November, 11am-4pm drop-in sessions were held at Edinburgh Futures Institute, with the goal of supporting questions on systems change, racial equity, as well as themes of the Regenerative Futures Fund, and encouraging connections amongst projects in the cohort. Time was reserved for those who wanted virtual calls (especially as weather got colder!), and Aala had 12 virtual calls with organisations in November to field questions, which were then updated on our live FAQs for the cohort (on the cohort webpage)
Developed an assessment process and worked with residents’ panel members to test the form, make sure the language was clear, and to change to make more accessible.
December:
In early October, the proposal document was shared as well as the guidance and the thinking behind the support timing. Regenerative Futures Fund staff are committed to supporting the cohort to connect with others where they see fit, enhance their understanding of the guidelines of the Fund, and to develop a long-term plan to align with their project priorities. We are also dedicated to ensuring that the residents’ panel has every support possible to successfully assess proposals, and have made efforts to ensure that proposal submitted are written clearly, succinctly, and address systems change in a language familiar to the residents and cohort of organisation – unified language on racial equity, systems change. Organisations, therefore, have had one required call with Aala, to check for language and brevity, as well as clarity of the project, before submitting. In December, Aala had 11 planned calls and will have the remainder of call with organisations in early January, before proposals are submitted (deadline January 18th).
Following on from earlier conversations with our Oversight and Enabling Board, and support from Esmée Fairbairn Foundation to ensure that our racial equity programming is successful, we introduced the twin-track process (funded through an Esmée Fairbairn Foundation grant) for five organisations. We worked to bring the organisations up to speed with the capacity-building phase and held a series of meetings to review the proposal documents, the assessment process, the Three Horizons Approach and mapping exercise, as well as introducing the organisations to our community via Slack.
Through this we have been learning:
It’s difficult to create a process that responds to the needs of all 39 projects (64 organisations). Some organisations requested a more light-touch capacity-building phase, so we re-developed this window to be a more “take what you need from it” approach, combined with an open door for cohort connections. This period was planned to allow organisations to take the space away from the cohort and develop their proposals directly with input from their communities.
Even though we moved to this light-touch phase, the organisations/projects in the cohort continued to connect and ask for connections to be made, which shows that bridges have been built and strengthened.
We introduced a ‘live feedback’ form for organisations in the cohort from November to create a route for people to tell us what they are enjoying, how they are benefiting, but also to tell us what they are finding challenging – to be submitted anonymously or with their names. We’re collecting responses and we hope this will feed into a larger process evaluation which we hope to undertake in 2026 with the purpose of sharing with other funders looking to run a collaborative and relational funding process.
Fund Design — Participation
We have been:
Hosting a series of Learning Sessions with invited speakers to explore areas of interest identified by residents. These have covered housing, disability justice, the criminal justice system, local food systems, community wealth building, the impacts of climate change on the city and citizen participation in research.
Creating a web resource for the group to access recordings and resources from these sessions during their decision-making process and beyond.
Supporting three residents to prepare for, and attend, the Oversight and Enabling Board meeting. This was a significant milestone to bring the residents’ voices directly into the Fund’s governance ecosystem for the first time. They generously shared experiences of becoming part of the group and working together, in response to previously-agreed prompts.
Welcomed three residents to a workshop run by IVAR to consider the design of future Learning Spaces. Other participants included the RFF team and guests from the Oversight and Enabling Board. The residents also took part in a pre-workshop planning session and post-event reflection discussion to ensure that opportunities for everyone to contribute were designed into the work.
Designing the decision-making process (January – March 2026) with the residents. This has included:
Referring to the first decision round and revising to avoid pitfalls encountered before.
Residents testing out the Assessment tool to ensure it will work for everyone.
Ensuring that we have understood what the group requires to carry out their decision-making role – what will make it manageable and accessible.
Creating a calendar of events and deadlines to be clear about the process and what is expected at each stage.
Borrowing laptops to ensure that those residents who don’t usually have access to suitable technology have a device that enables them to carry out assessment and decision tasks.
Spending a day together in-person, rehearsing the proposed process and taking on group suggestions to improve it further.
Organising and rehearsing logistics at the Edinburgh Futures Institute where the decision-making meetings will take place.
Finding time to spend some social time together, celebrating the holiday season with some food and games!
Through this we have been learning:
The format of learning sessions can work in different ways. A conversational approach was more welcome than a ‘lecture’ approach. We also discovered that building in more time at the end for group reflection (not just Q and A) was important. This has helped the residents to immediately process some of the material and make it more relatable – less academic - through conversation with each other.
Creating useful web resources takes more time than expected but it feels like a valuable investment for the future.
Involving Residents in the Oversight and Enabling Board meeting and Learning Space workshop was a valuable step to take and everyone benefitted from preparing for this and reflecting on it with care.
Designing the final decision-making process with the residents has ensured a human-centred approach, building in the time and space people will need to complete the work carefully and rigorously.
Preparing for an 8-week assessment/decision process requiring 10 meetings of 12 decision makers to consider ca 40 proposals across 3 themes requires a plan with time to spare built in for the unexpected. Don’t underestimate how early planning has to start!
Collaboration and relationship-building have meant that, even with limited capacity, we can flex to take on an extensive process with support from collaborators and supporters – help with technology, logistics, planning and admin. Central to this has been the expertise that our residents bring!
2. Recruitment and Team Development
We have been:
Continuing to benefit from the expertise, networks and support of Margaret Morton our fundraising consultant and lawyer who is helping with fundraising, funder and donor development. We are pleased that we will continue working with Margaret into 2026.
Enjoying learning from and working with Mairi Lowe who joined as a freelancer in September 2025, Mairi supported the cohort of community organisations in November and December with communications, event planning for collective-building sessions, and developing a dedicated micro-site for the cohort with compiled minutes from calls and meetings, as well as connecting community organisations to direct support.
Supported by our Foundation Scotland colleagues who have agreed to bridge a critical human resource gap we have identified for the assessment window, with our colleague Livi Seligmann from the Philanthropy team, who will be supporting proposal assessment, in addition to her support of other key project areas at the start of 2026.
Through this we have been learning:
From Margaret and her many years of experience as a fundraiser and benefitting greatly from her generosity, kindness, clarity and connections.
That Mairi is a tech wizard and beyond that, really supportive with communications and updates to the cohort of community organisations. We’re tremendously grateful, and it’s made us aware that we need to consider expanding the support to be able to deliver better to everyone invested in the governance ecosystem. We are taking this learning forward and planning to expand the staff capacity of our team in 2026, which we will share widely in January.
3. Communications and Open Working
We have been:
Continuing to ‘Work in the Open’ as much as possible and looking forward to making sure we make time as a team for reflective practice and sharing what we are learning, and in time encouraging others to share learning through a range of different channels and methods.
Regularly updating our News & Notes page with press, updates, blogs and events.
Writing our first Annual Report, which we published in December 2025. The report shares extended learnings and challenges from the year of pooled fund development and operationalizing the fund, as well as additional learnings and lessons from the entire process of engaging the residents panel and wider third sector. We are tremendously grateful to our Foundation Scotland Communications colleagues, Deborah Cowan and Kelly Bruce, for supporting the design of the report. We have also worked again with Gabi Froden, the illustrator we previously commissioned, to work with the residents on illustrations for us to incorporate into the report.
In line with our commitment to work in a common language, we are developing a shorter version of the Annual Report, with a focus on easy-to-understand graphs and charts that demonstrate our work over this period.
Through this we have been learning:
That there continues to be a huge amount of interest in the model and learning from Regenerative Futures Fund in Scotland and across the UK – and that we need to start thinking about how we can resource sharing of learning while progressing the development of the fund, programme and fundraising at pace.
That we make sure to document and consider how we share the experience of our Residents Panel as a key part of our governance eco-system.
Being hosted by Foundation Scotland allows us to be agile and work independently, but also to be held and supported by an organisation with tremendous systems and structures. We’re thankful for FS for hosting us and always there to support.
4. Governance Ecosystem
We have been:
Embarking on the process of Board power-sharing is a delicate one, and we are lucky to have a Residents Panel and Oversight & Enabling Board (OEB) that are supportive of shared principles of empathy, kindness and respect.
Special shout out to Livi from Foundation Scotland for joining this special meeting and capturing it so thoughtfully through notes and actions.
Sharing our Governance Ecosystem – current version is here. We are hoping to work with EFI to develop a live visualisation of this living, changing ecosystem.
Considering the peripheral groups of people who will feed into direction of the programme and who we’d like to weave into our governance eco-system – such as young people and asylum seekers and considering how and when we begin outreach.
Meeting with our Oversight & Enabling Board – Meeting #1 happened in December 2024, Meeting #2 in March 2025, Meeting #3 in June 2025, Meeting #4 in September 2025, and Meeting #5 was in December 2025. We are looking forward to welcoming our Oversight & Enabling Board to Edinburgh Futures Institute in-person in February 2026 for Meeting #6
Continuing to think about how to include and engage residents into the Oversight & Enabling Board after the December meeting, this will continue beyond the decision making from the May 2026 meeting and beyond.
Through this we have been learning:
Continued reflection on how we plan an agenda and facilitate a meeting to encourage space for both oversight and enabling.
The importance of carefully considering and planning how we invite others into the room, and who might benefit from having a seat within our governance eco-system (and always, who is not in the room?).
There is wider interest in the idea and practice of working in a governance eco-system – more to share on this over time.
5. Fundraising and Contracting
We have been:
Sharing our newly updated our 2-page case for support (December 2025 version) - on the website here and PDF version here
Celebrating the huge news that we have now reached £8.9 million committed to the £15.8 million pooled fund 🎉 Our continued thanks to the funders and donors who have been open to coffees, conversations, introductions, online meetings and who continue to challenge us on many aspects of the Regenerative Futures Fund. We have a handful of decisions that will be made in the coming months and we are working on a few proposals with funders.
Really appreciative of each and every introduction or new connection between our existing network and new funders and donors.
Continuing our internal work with our colleagues within Foundation Scotland – philanthropy and development team. Thanks to everyone who is helping us in so many ways, this really is a huge collective effort.
Attending events and networking with other funders at events such as the ACF Conference and Good Ancestor Movement Conference in London.
Reflecting on a successful breakout session on pooled funds we have been invited to join at the ACF conference in November 2025. Thanks to Erika Loggin from Welcome Trust and Philippa Knott Kos from Devon Community Foundation, as well as Jim Cooke from Funders Collaborative Hub, for inviting us to join this session. Leah enjoyed being part of this and we hope to stay connected with Erika and Philippa to continue to share learning.
Continuing conversations with public sector partners and ongoing conversations with aligned foundations in Scotland and across the UK.
Through this we have been learning:
This type of fundraising – long-term, collaborative, bold, strategic – must be rooted in relationship building, trust and therefore takes time.
There has been national and international interest in the model from funders, local authorities and community organisations.
There is particular interest in the collaboration with the local authority, and what is seen as a bold move by a local authority to collaborate with funders and charities in this way
6. Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL)
We have been:
Feeling very proud that we published our first ever Annual Report – this report details is a power of work by the employed and freelance team, community organisations, residents, funders, Foundation Scotland colleagues and many others. We hope you enjoy reading this at your leisure and please do get in touch if anything chimes with you in particular.
Facilitated a meeting with IVAR, our Learning Partner for Year Zero, and our Residents Panel to inform IVAR’s planning ahead of our trial Learning Space. More to follow.
Planning ahead in January and February to review the archiving/ record-keeping structures of RFF.
Planning ahead to create a process for presenting the RFF MEAL toolkit, refining it, and sharing it with the final selected cohort of organisations.
Thinking through how we will design our planned evaluation of the grantmaking process, and thinking about the audience for this, and who we might work with to support this.
Beginning to plan, with our Residents Panel, for a resident-led reflection on their involvement in decision-making, we are planning to create a resident-led toolkit on participation. Much more to consider on this but we are excited to work with our residents to share their rich learning and experience.
Continuing to encourage the community organisations in the cohort to share live feedback, things that are going well, as well as actionable and constructive criticism. This will feed into the wider evaluation as well as allowing us to make small live adjustments in the capacity building, where possible.
Through this we have been learning:
Building Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning and holding the role of record-keeper and reporter to the funders and Council is really critical for the success of the Fund, and we’re recognising through our engagement with IVAR, with the cohort of community organisations, and through our own work, how important it is to give the co-design of MEAL process as much space, time, and thought as possible.
7. Field Building & Systems – Learning With Others, Learning Partnerships, Sharing the Model
We have been:
Trying to get all our field learning and field building into one place here (thanks to Mairi) - this is a work in progress that we will continue to populate as an alternative to listing these here. However, due to the work in progress nature of the above, here are a few highlights:
Leah attended the ACF Conference in November 2025, this was the first time that Foundation Scotland have attended the ACF conference having only recently joined as members in 2025. Leah was invited to join a breakout session at the ACF Conference called The Power of Pooling designed by Philippa Knott Kos from Devon Community Foundation and Erika Loggin from The Wellcome Trust.
Leah attended the Good Ancestors Movement Conference in November 2025 – Radical Imaginings: Moving Towards a Regenerative Future.
Aala was invited to attend the Community Knowledge Matters Conference in Inverness, in November 2025, invited by Lewis Hou, Director of the Science Ceilidh.
Aala and Leah were invited by Michael Smart at The Robertson Trust and Stewart Sanderson at The National Lottery Community Fund Scotland, to meet with the Glasgow Funders Forum in November to talk to them about our learnings to date around developing a collaborative pooled fund with a focus on systemic change.
Continuing work on the research project looking into pooled funds for systemic change which is being generously led by Ben Cairns and Chris Mills from IVAR – the research project includes three Scotland-based pooled funds: Clackmannanshire Transformation Space, the Scottish Human Rights Fund (led by Corra Foundation) and Regenerative Futures Fund in Edinburgh. The report and findings will be shared in 2026.
Through this we have been learning:
About philanthropy advising and working with advisors and wealth holders to move more philanthropic funds into programmes that set out to change systems and shift power.
About different types of pooled funds but synergies between some of the practicalities and power dynamics in-built into designing and developing these types of funds, at the session Leah joined at the ACF Conference. Enjoyed learning between Regenerative Futures Fund as a local / city-wide example, to a region-wide approach at Devon Community Foundation and at a global scale at The Welcome Trust. It was also fascinating joining the session and learning from others who attended and their experiences with pooled funds.
About the role of power, trust and relationship-building in all community-facing work, in this case community research as discussed at Community Knowledge Matters / Science Ceilidh in Inverness.
If anything chimes with you and you’d like to know more, please do get in touch:
Aala Ross (Co-Head) – aala@foundationscotland.org.uk
Leah Black (Co-Head) – leah@foundationscotland.org.uk
Andy Hyde (Participation Lead) – andy@foundationscotland.org.uk
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