Doing & Learning Update #4 - September & October 2025
Download the PDF of the Doing & Learning Report (September & October 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 #4 – Covering September & October 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 September and October:
September:
Five one-hour virtual sessions held on: guidelines and timelines for the funding process; capacity-building calendar; Regenerative Futures Fund theory of change; thematic clusters; fundraising updates.
On three Fridays in September, 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.
Some asks were made of the cohort: 1) to choose a tagline for their project, which could be used to support fundraising efforts; 2) to identify a thematic cluster of their work from Just Futures, Community Voice, Environment, which would factor into the residents’ decision-making process in the New Year; 3) to sign Principles of Working Together on the website.
October:
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.
Three calls were held, one two-hour call to discuss the proposal submission and assessment process, the guidelines and support structures, as well as two proposal-related calls to discuss language and length of the proposal, as well as an FAQ session.
Regenerative Futures Fund believes in supporting a cohort of projects (in the 10-15 final selected projects) and is seeking to start developing a shared sense of community amongst those in the cohort. To support this collective-building, we held three convenings in October: an intro session where projects could connect and discuss their ideas; a Three Horizons mapping session (more below); a wider network session, where projects who had not been selected but opted to remain in a systems change network were invited to connect with projects in the cohort.
The Three Horizons mapping day was an afternoon session for the cohort to connect in and across thematic clusters. The same training that was delivered to the resident’s panel was delivered to the cohort, in hopes of aligning the idea of what is and is not systems change work. The entire calendar of events was optional, but this day was the most strongly encouraged, as each project will be asked to share a Three Horizons map of their proposed project along with the proposal.
One additional optional session was held by freelancer Sophie Ogilvy, helping organisations in the cohort to reflect on the ethics and parameters of corporate fundraising, and also how they might approach developing their own corporate fundraising strategies.
November is planned as a period of supported reflection; only one call is scheduled (two-hour call for discussing terms in proposal) and there are four drop-in days to support proposal-specific questions. Our Doing & Learning report for November and December 2025 will cover this period.
Through this we have been learning:
When steps are added into a process, even an open and clearly iterative process which values and considers input from involved parties, criticisms are made. Organisations in the charity sector are not just cash-strapped, but also short on staff time, which means they value a system that is unchanged.
It’s difficult to create a process that responds to the needs of all 34 projects (59 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.
It’s been challenging to develop a sense of broader collaboration and community in the face of intense competition.
We have not dedicated enough of the capacity-building phase to collecting learnings directly and feed into the process; that said, when we have made adjustments and changes to adapt to the needs of organisations in the cohort, although welcomed by some, there are have been others who have voiced their frustration that changes have been made.
We are introducing 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. As well as giving us live data to act on, or share now, 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:
Inviting the residents to reflect on the experience of working together so far with online writing workshops. They wrote responses to each other’s questions and these were used to create a collective poem.
Working with residents to design the final application process. Based on their experience of assessing many proposals during the summer, they have helped to design the final application questions and accompanying guidance. In November, we will be inviting some of them to test and refine a proposal assessment tool, ensuring that the process is rigorous, effective and fair.
In preparation for the final funding decision process in early 2026, each resident has chosen a smaller sub-group, focusing on one of three themes - Just Futures, Community Voice and Environment, while continuing to meet and work together as a larger group to develop skills and further build relationships. Their chosen theme reflects their interests and knowledge where possible.
The three themes were created in response to the lengthy process of choosing the Capacity Building organisations. Organisations have assigned themselves to a theme so that each resident will only have to consider one third of the proposals. This will mean a more manageable workload for residents and, in turn, reduce the overall cost.
Residents chose the theme names based on the broad themes represented by the proposals, rejecting some of our initial proposals and choosing names more meaningful to them.
We have started to ask smaller groups of residents to help with specific tasks such as testing particular processes or tools and taking part in focussed discussions.
Developing a dedicated capacity building phase for the residents group featuring a range of activities:
o A series of short online Learning Sessions with external Edinburgh-based practitioners to build their knowledge in areas such as housing, disability justice, the criminal justice system, local food systems, community wealth building and the impacts of climate change on the city. We hosted three in October and are planning nine in November. Each session is aimed at a particular theme and residents working in that theme are paid to attend. Others have been keen to join as interested observers.
o From this we are creating a growing online resource with session recordings and further reading, building a library for the residents. Our aim is to provide local context and examples of what can make a meaningful impact at a community level. This, we hope, will support residents to more confidently recognise proposals that show promise for system change.
In response to a suggestion from a colleague, Ems Harrington at Turn2us Edinburgh Trust, we have begun exploring the practice of Radical Candour (we’re calling it Radical Honesty) to encourage authentic discussion feedback and learning. The framework encourages "praise that is specific and sincere and criticism that is kind and clear". Our initial session helped us to ask different questions such as ‘what opportunities are we missing?’ which enabled clear and actionable criticism. Residents have responded well to this, feeling able to ask for more support such as clearer, more timely information.
Through the Radical Honesty sessions, residents have felt able (or prompted) to make suggestions for a more accessible and manageable proposal assessment process. For example, we have found hybrid meetings difficult to manage – could we practice hybrid working from specific venues beforehand so that it’s not an issue on the day? Can we borrow some better technology to ensure that residents aren’t working from their phones for long periods of time?
Exploring the contributions that individual group members have made so far, what they can bring in the future and how the Regenerative Futures Fund can support them. Residents have worked with Edinburgh Futures Institute Maker Space staff to consider future possibilities using design thinking.
Nurturing our collective imagination skills, not only to keep our vision of a future Edinburgh alive but also to explore individual residents’ hopes and dreams. Shasta Ali, who has been involved in the development of the Regenerative Futures Fund from the early stages, brought her creative skills to the group to help them imagine and consider strengths they would like to develop.
Making contact with people and organisations who can help us to build future opportunities for the residents. For example, we would like to develop a more formal structure and accreditation for our Learning sessions which one resident recently described as their ‘curriculum’.
Searching for new members of the group to replace three residents who have left for a variety of reasons. Our focus was attracting younger people, particularly men from Edinburgh’s South and East Asian and Latino communities. Despite contacting organisations and existing contacts and speaking directly to six potential candidates, only four attended a lunchtime information session and only one remained in touch and joined the group. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to attract any young men from these communities, and it remains a gap in the group’s representation. Fortunately, we now have a young woman from Edinburgh’s South Asian community, bringing a much-needed perspective.
Through this we have been learning:
Immediate reflection is a useful tool to gather experiences and also to encourage creative expression. This is a different way to give and receive feedback and help residents to realise the power of their contribution.
Although choosing the Capacity Building organisations was a difficult and lengthy process, it has helped to shape a different approach for the funding decisions. Residents have been able to reflect on which aspects worked for them and those that didn’t. This will help us to develop a more accessible process for early 2026 and we will focus on the detail of this in November and December.
While residents are happy to move into smaller themed groups, they are concerned that they might lose the strength and support of being in a larger group. We are therefore building in group-wide aspects of the process to check-in with each other. The final decisions will be taken as a complete group.
Smaller groups of residents taking on specific tasks brings new insights into our work and suggests new and different ways in which the residents group can support the Regenerative Futures Fund.
We originally called our series of short online sessions ‘Expert sessions’ but the residents didn’t like this. They felt that they all brought expertise to the discussions and so we renamed them ‘Learning sessions’ at their request. We also heard that they wanted discussions more rooted in community work rather than focussed on strategy. We have updated our brief to our invited speakers.
Our Radical Honesty sessions have prompted the Regenerative Futures Fund team to consider asking different questions such as ‘What could we do, or stop doing, that would make it easier to work with us?’ to gain feedback that feels more actionable. Andy has already been able to make changes to sharing information which the residents notice and appreciate.
The importance of an interactive approach! Our Maker Space session helped us to realise that, in order to discover how we can support residents’ individual development, they first need to clearly define what they bring and what they do as a group right now. This started in the maker space and was further developed in our collective imagination session.
The Edinburgh Futures Institute and the University of Edinburgh (where the Regenerative Futures Fund team are based) and the wider city has many assets yet to be discovered that we can approach to help build significant learning and development opportunities for the residents in the future.
Keeping the group at a reasonable size through further recruitment has been an ongoing challenge. Life events mean that not everyone can remain involved in the long term which can be difficult and disappointing. Finding new people takes time - inviting, contacting, meeting and welcoming new people during an already busy schedule, maintaining the activities for the existing group.
We continue to feel lucky to have the residents at the heart of our work, reminding us of the importance of community, friendship and mutual aid – we recently had a reminder of that kindness and friendship when the group took time time and care to gift us (Andy, Aala and Leah) a thank you in the form of beautiful plants and handwritten cards – read a reflection on this here
2. Recruitment and Team Development
We have been:
Benefitting from the expertise, networks and support of Margaret Morton who started working with us one day a week in July 2025. Margaret is a freelance fundraising consultant and lawyer who is helping with fundraising, funder and donor development.
Mairi Lowe joined as a freelancer in September, supporting the cohort of community organisations 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.
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 hoping to expand the staff capacity of our team in 2026.
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.
Working with Deborah Cowan and Claire Montgomery we created a press release announcing the capacity building phase and cohort
Following this we had some welcome coverage from Third Force News, North Edinburgh News, Edinburgh Evening News, and Edinburgh Reporter
Talking to our Residents Panel about getting their ideas, reflections, creativity and voices flowing through into our communications – their first reflection is a collective poem called A Found Poem - this is a result of reflective writing based on experiences of working together as a group.
Writing our first Annual Report, which we will be publishing in December 2025. The report will share 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. Our Foundation Scotland Communications colleagues, Deborah Cowan and Kelly Bruce, are 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 will be 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.
4. Governance Ecosystem
We have been:
Sharing our Governance Ecosystem – current version is here.
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. We are hoping to work with EFI to develop a live visualisation of this living, changing ecosystem.
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 will be in December 2025.
Being interviewed by colleagues at Dark Matter Labs about our approach to ‘many-to-many' governance – here is our case study on the recently published Many to Many system website.
Developing a ‘principles of working together’ for all parties in the governance ecosystem to sign onto; residents and community organisations in our cohort have signed onto these principles (as well as Regenerative Futures Fund staff) and we are asking our Board to do so as well.
Planning (with residents and our Learning Partner IVAR) on how to include and engage residents from the resident’s panel on the Board, which we plan to start doing at the December 2025 meeting.
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.
Who and when might we bring others into the governance eco-system.
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 (Nov 2025 version) - on the website here and PDF version here
Celebrating the huge news that we have now reached £8.5 million committed to the £15.8 million pooled fund! Thanks to the funders and donors who have been open to coffees, conversations, introductions, online meetings and who have really challenged us on many aspects of the Regenerative Futures Fund. There are a handful of ‘asks’ that are live at the moment so hopefully we will have more good news to share in early 2026. We have more public news on which funders have joined the pooled fund in early 2026.
Working with and learning from Margaret Morton.
Asking ‘connectors’ in our network to make introductions to donors and funders.
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.
Benefitting from colleagues Salesforce expertise and continuing to embrace salesforce.
Attending and talking at events such as the Scottish Grantmakers Conference, London Funders Conference and AGM.
Planning ahead for a 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.
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:
With the Learning Partner, we will be designing and hosting the first trial Learning Space at our December Oversight and Enabling Board meeting, which we will learn from and help the Learning Partner and RFF refine the Learning Space for a launch in April once the final selected cohort is in place.
Developing a temperature check regular form for community organisations in the cohort to share live feedback with two aims:
o Share actionable, constructive criticism in feedback that can improve their engagement with RFF through the remainder of the capacity-building phase and through the proposal submission and review window
o Share broader feedback that we can share with the Learning Partner, with a future end-to-end process evaluator, our networks and Board, other interested funders, and inform their funding processes. Although the RFF is only doing this process once, there are others who will be looking to do something similar, and we hope they can learn from our missteps and successes and deliver something better.
7. Field Building & Systems – Learning With Others, Learning Partnerships, Sharing the Model
We have been:
Attending and learning from our colleagues at End Poverty Edinburgh at two events: End Poverty Edinburgh conference in October and the launch of 2025 Actions to End Poverty in Edinburgh Report (with a mention of Regenerative Futures Fund on p.18)
Attending the Binks Hub celebration event - Poverty, Precarity and Community Empowerment, Who Decides?
Delivering a workshop at the First Minister’s Event on Whole Family Support session on innovative funding models with Clackmannanshire Transformation Space Whole Family Support 24 Sept
Library of Mistakes – Mistakes in Philanthropy
Foundation Scotland Annual Gathering Foundation Scotland Annual Gathering Tickets, Wed, Oct 29, 2025 at 3:00 PM | Eventbrite
Sharing learning (Aala and Leah) at London Funders Conference: Exploring Possibilities Together on 4 November 2025.
Hosting and learning from Tudor Trust colleagues in Edinburgh.
Sharing learning in Glasgow with Community Foundation Ireland 26 Sept
Sharing learning with The National Lottery Community Fund, UK Chair along with other funders in Scotland.
Sharing learning with funders from Scotland and Northern Ireland about doing better through collaboration with Community Foundation Northern Ireland, presenting alongside Biddy Kelly from Fresh Start and NEssie in Edinburgh – thanks to Lynn Hendry from Hunter Foundation and Jim McCormick from The Robertson Trust for organising this fascinating session,
Briefing the Elected Members of City of Edinburgh Council followed by a Q&A session, sharing a progress update prior to our Annual Report in December 2025.
Although we were signed up to attend we couldn’t make it to the University of Edinburgh Community Plan Launch - this is such an exciting development and we look forward to working alongside Gemma Gourlay and team on our shared goals for the city – read more here
Attending Science Ceilidh in Inverness – more learning to share from this
Sharing learning and receiving feedback from the Glasgow Funders Forum – thanks to The National Lottery Community Fund and The Robertson Trust for asking us along. We have plans to follow up with a further session in 2026 after we publish our annual report.
Learning from our Edinburgh Futures Institute ‘ward’ colleague Catherine-Rose Stocks-Rankin from SPRE about community research, and the impact on individuals of engaging and being part of communities of practice, long beyond the end of research and grants.
Continuing to work alongside Dark Matter Labs on the Many-To-Many Systems project – the website launched in November and can be accessed here. There is a case study about Regenerative Futures Fund and our governance ecosystem here and wider Learnings from the field here which includes learning from Local Motion, Opus and Plymouth Octopus
Speaking on a panel at PREVENT 25, the Prevention Hub Conference on 18 Sept. This is part of the work being co-led by our EFI colleagues - Kristy Docherty (Edinburgh Futures Institute), Clair Thompson (Police Scotland) and Diane Stockton (Public Health Scotland)
Attending Scottish Grantmakers Conference in Stirling on 25 Sept and making lots of brilliant new connections and seeing familiar friends and colleagues.
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 early 2026.
Meeting with Bruce Crawford, CEO of EVOC and starting to talk about connecting our networks and possibilities around a system change focused network – more to explore in 2026.
Through this we have been learning:
We are keen to convene funders with programmes dedicated to or working through a lens of racial equity, including Corra Foundation, Robertson Trust, The National Lottery Fund and will look to do so in the next couple of months.
That we are incredibly lucky to have the collective leadership of our End Poverty Edinburgh Members in the city challenging, pushing and advocating for change, with support from Poverty Alliance.
That there continues to be an interest in the work we are doing across philanthropy, participation, systems change, collaboration, racial equity and intersectionality. We have a huge appetite for sharing learning but also to learn from others and we will continue to do as much as we can. The exciting opportunity comes next when we can start to bring our residents and community organisations into these learning and sharing opportunities.
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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