Our approach to grant-making and our decision-making process reflect our values.

Just as other grant-makers are increasingly doing, we want to adopt a relationship-based approach to our grant-making. This helps us to demonstrate our organisational values and priorities – and our funding decisions – through our work. We recognise the good grant-making principles set out by the IVAR and work to implement them in our own approach. 

In practice, this means we will:

• consider the not-for-profit organisations we fund as partners, working with them to achieve common aims
• be open to providing either core or project funding, depending on the sort of work to be supported
• listen carefully to our partners, recognising their expertise and their context – and remembering that we don’t have all the answers ourselves
• trust our partners to spend funds wisely and work with them to collect relevant and appropriate data, case studies and insight from the funded work – making sure that we’re proportionate in everything we do
• work to maximise opportunities for mutual learning, capacity building and ongoing partnership working by offering in-kind support alongside our funding and by championing ‘test and learn’ approaches
• recognise the value of collaboration and aim to support partnerships or consortia, where possible
• acknowledge the power we have as a funder and use it to promote our collective aims, including sharing insight and practice, and convening and brokering new partnerships and opportunities for the future
• recognise historical power dynamics and use our funding to actively promote equity
• value and expect older people to be actively involved in the work and priorities of the organisations we support and in shaping our priorities and decision-making
• keep working to improve our procedures, decision-making and transparency.

Promoting equity through our grant-making 

Our grant-making aims to help alleviate and address the impact of poverty and inequalities on individuals in later life.