Doing & Learning Update - January & February 2025
April 2025
The PDF version of Doing & Learning in January & February 2025 can also be downloaded 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 #1 – Covering January & February 2025
What is the purpose of this update?
We aim to ‘work in the open’ as we develop Regenerative Futures Fund. This is our first team update talking about both what we are doing and what we are learning in January & February 2025. This update will be shared with our Oversight & Enabling Board for the second meeting in March 2025 and also shared on the Regenerative Futures Fund website.
These updates are written collaboratively by the team – Aala Ross, Andy Hyde and Leah Black - with future versions contributed to by the wider eco-system.
This update is structured around our six project plans areas:
1. Fund Design — Process, Participation & Programme
We have been:
Drafting, honing and publishing the ‘Guidelines & Timelines’ for community organisations which were written, checked by others, and published – this means we now have a process live for community organisations to be able read the guidelines and check eligibility. The next stage in April and May will be an invited ‘expressions of interest’ (this may have a different name) before the capacity building phase for approx. 25 community organisations begins around May. We will be delivering an information session for community organisations and adding to the FAQ’s during March and April.
Working with our Early Decision Group to develop the call and framework for Residents with lived experience to apply to join our Decision Making Panel – this whole process has been carefully designed to be inclusive with guidance from our Early Decision Group and this has resulted in a real breadth and depth of applications. We decided on three questions that we wanted people to respond to and created a simple form. Our communications and outreach plan has involved digital comms and reaching out to people in our network and also attending community groups, phone calls, WhatsApp messaging, meeting people to talk the opportunity through, supporting people to answer the questions, translating the information into other languages and much more. We plan to write more about the process and our reflections on this.
Commissioning Gabi Froden to create a beautiful illustration for our residents call – we asked for something that would convey communities coming together in Edinburgh – here is the final illustration which we used in our local communications to reach residents.
Working with our Early Decision Group to select a wider pool of residents to join the Residents Lived Experience / Decision Making Panel – we have been very impressed with the quality, passion, number and range of applications from local residents – we will share more about this in the next update.
Creating with wider Foundation Scotland colleagues a policy for payment for co-production which was drafted, edited and approved by our Early Decision Group and the Foundation Scotland Board. Here is a simplified version of the policy.
Beginning to design the ‘onboarding’ for the Residents Decision Making (Lived Experience) Panel which will take place in April and May.
Designing the next stage of the process for community organisations and decision making points – expressions of interest and capacity building.
Considering which ‘technical experts’ we will bring into the decision making stages to support the Decision Making Panel.
Through this we have been learning:
That the design of the outreach and communications for reaching residents from diverse backgrounds in order to recruit the Residents Decision Making Panel needs to be flexible, adaptable and utilises what might be deemed as ‘non-professional’ forms of communication such as WhatsApp – we (Andy and Aala) will share more about this in the next update.
That there is a huge interest from residents to join the panel and that people are passionate, experienced and ready for change! We (Andy and Aala) will share more about this in the next update.
That the new Foundation Scotland policy for payment for co-production which allows us to pay individual people in flexible ways for their time spent on the project is of interest to other organisations who would like to pay people with lived experience at fair rates.
About finding a balance between new language to describe new ways of working and making sure that information is written in plain language.
2. Recruitment and Team Development
We have been:
Making our project team complete. We now have Leah & Aala in place as Co-Heads and Andy as Participation Lead who started in February 2025. More about the team here
Considering how we build up the team shorter and medium term with freelancers and contractors – we are looking at building freelance capacity to help with comms, and specific areas of fundraising.
Enjoying working as a small team and also benefitting from being a small part of a much bigger team across the organisation within Foundation Scotland.
Spending time as a team in person and trying to go for walking meetings together when we can.
Getting to know new colleagues and getting involved in other initiatives at Edinburgh Futures Institute which is where we are based.
Through this we have been learning:
How brilliant it is being hosted by Foundation Scotland and being able to access support from across the organisation from our colleagues in finance, philanthropy, communities, comms and learning.
About many new things within Edinburgh Futures Institute such as the Prevention Hub, Compassion in Financial Services, and just generally enjoying having lots of interesting and passionate people to talk to in our ‘ward’ and beyond.
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
Improving and refining our website
Working with Claire Montgomery (freelance PR) and Deborah in our comms team and all our first stage funders on a Press Release and Media Release
Working with Jim Cooke to create a blog for Funders Collaborative Hub
Interviewed by David Forsyth from The Edinburgh Inquirer – thanks to Jim McCormick for talking to David as well – the piece which we are happy with is here
Working with Third Force News on a piece about all the strands of the programme – three pages in the March Third Force News – read here
Through this we have been learning:
That there is a huge amount of interest in the model and learning from Regenerative Futures Fund in Scotland and across the UK, we have yet to collate all the press coverage (we will do this soon) but there has been a great interest in the press and media release – including this blog on Third Sector saying that Regenerative Futures Fund could be a model for the rest of the country
4. Governance Ecosystem (and Hosting)
We have been:
Sharing and refining our Governance Eco-System – refined version is here
Developing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for the Oversight & Enabling Board and considering developing a ‘Many-To-Many Agreement’ that can be signed by all who join the governance eco-system considering how we contract for collaboration and hoping to pick up some of the threads of the Many to Many Governance work we started with Dark Matter Labs - have a read here
Meeting with our Oversight & Enabling Board – Meeting #1 happened in December 2024 and Meeting #2 is in March 2025.
Meeting with our Early Decision Group – this is the short life group who are in place primarily to help with making decisions about who will become part of our (residents lived experience) Decision Making Panel. The group have met in December 2024, Feb 2025 and once the group meet to make decisions in March and then have one further meeting in April the group will come to an end.
Through this we have been learning:
How to facilitate a meeting which creates space for conversations about both ‘oversight’ of the programme and progress as well as ‘enabling’ change.
That a traditional agreement for our Oversight & Enabling Board might create barriers to wider connection across the eco-system and that a ‘many-to-many agreement’ model might foster more connection and collaboration.
5. Fundraising and Contracting
We have been:
Working to finalise contracts with our first stage funders. Our target is to create a £15 million pooled fund and we have £5.75 million committed to the collaborative pooled fund between a group of funders plus the local authority.
Working on a communications plan working with our first stage funders and the local authority with a focus on why funders have joined.
Working with colleagues in Foundation Scotland and across out networks in the funding, philanthropy eco-system to work towards reaching the overall target of £15million which will allow us to start funding the 10-year cohort from late 2025/early 2026. We will be working on partnerships in progress and actively seeking to develop more partnerships with funders, individual philanthropists, donors, and corporate partners interested in joining the funder collaboration to get us to the £15 million overall target.
Talking to, meeting with and sharing information with funders and partners to encourage others to consider joining the collaborative, making the case for this type of collaboration, asking for introductions to partners with aligned values.
Through this we have been learning:
That there is a huge interest in this model but that we need to keep working together to articulate the reasons for funders and philanthropists to work together and move resources together in this way.
6. Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL)
We have been:
Drafting a call to work with a Learning Partner in 2025 with a focus on – this will be ready to be shared in the next couple of weeks through a piece of work on developing our Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) framework.
Designing the Learning Space and the Monitoring and Evaluation Spaces
Through this we have been learning:
To follow
7. Field Building & Systems – Learning With Others, Learning Partnerships, Sharing the Model
We have been:
Learning from colleagues developing a new approach to funding transformation and systems change in Clackmannanshire
Learning with Tobias Jung and others at The Library of Mistakes at a workshop called Together for Good: Crafting Scotland's philanthropic journey and conversations about a national conversation on philanthropy in Scotland – the workshop was fascinating with insights from Eilis Murray from Philanthropy Ireland about their national policy
Talking on a panel at the brilliant Springboard: Climate Assembly by Culture for Climate Scotland with Creative Scotland, Creative Ireland talking and how they can fund and support transformation over the longer term.
Joining the launch of the Compassion in Financial Service Hub – led by Tobi Schneider, Katherine Trebeck and Liz Grant.
With Lynn Hendry from The Hunter Foundation, exploring who might be interested in learning together about ‘pooled funds’ inspired by this research commissioned by Joseph Rowntree Foundation– it turns out there is a huge amount of interest in this! We will set up a conversation soon.
Through this we have been learning:
There is a huge interest in creating funding programmes that are longer term but also that pool funding from across sectors to encourage collaboration and recognising that funders can’t fund and solve issues alone.
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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