Innovation in Giving Fund

Our Work

Image of Circle of multicoloured hand prints

Innovation in Giving Fund

The first 15 organisations to receive funding have been announced!

We received well over 400 applications, which were carefully reviewed to create a shortlist of 62 candidates which can be viewed below. We have now announced which of these 62 candidates are the first to receive funding.

Read the list of the first 15 organisations to be funded

The 62 pitches from the shortlisted organisations are all available to watch on Vimeo, or you can browse them here:

View the Innovation in Giving shortlist Vimeo channel

The full list of video pitches for everyone that applied to the fund can be viewed here or you can view them on the dedicated Innovation in Giving Vimeo channel.

We expect to open a second round of applications in Spring 2012. To be informed about the next call for proposals you can subscribe to NESTA's newsletter or follow us on Twitter @nesta_uk

We are also pleased to launch More than Money, a new report which reflects on different typologies of platforms for reciprocal exchange and their potential to harness idling capacity, reduce waste, build social capital and transform the relationship we all have with public services. The report is accompanied by an in depth analysis of the existing evidence of impact around reciprocal exchange systems.

NESTA is pleased to announce with the Office of Civil Society an open call for ideas to the £10m Innovation in Giving Fund. We invited proposals with the potential to deliver a significant increase in the giving and exchange of time, assets, skills, resources and money.

Purpose of the Fund

While all evidence points to the UK as being a generous society, levels of donations and volunteering have reached a plateau and there are a number of persistent barriers to engaging more people in the voluntary sector and civil society. These include a lack of spare time or money, bureaucratic obstacles and, critically, a lack of access to opportunities which allow people to give and exchange in a way which chimes with their values, interest, expertise, assets and availability.

In May 2011, the Government's Giving White Paper announced a range of measures to support new and better ways to enable the giving and exchange of time, assets, skills, resources and money, including the Innovation in Giving Fund. The Innovation in Giving Fund aims to invest in, support and grow innovative ideas that bring about a step-change in levels of giving and exchange and which have a credible route to being self-sustaining in the longer term.

"This country has remarkable traditions of innovation in giving, volunteering and sharing, but now new technologies and techniques are opening up possibilities that would have been unimagineable even a decade ago. We want to get the money to people doing the most imaginative work on the ground - but we also want to help them to be more ambitious about just how much impact their ideas can achieve." - Geoff Mulgan, CEO, NESTA