27 November - 1 December 2023
As a reminder, we are a team from Sport England and FF Studio working together on the Open Funding Pilot.
It will help Sport England try new ways of working and new funding models to enable them to get more people in underserved communities active. It will also show the wider Sport England organisation what delivery looks like if we shorten feedback cycles.
Weeknotes are a quick recap of the important things a team has done each week, what we’ve learned, and what’s the plan for next week. They also help us work in the open.
This is the end of week 9.
1. Finding and filling the gaps
We’ve been at about 50% capacity this week, affected by illness and family emergencies. Sorry to those who were hoping to come to our show and tell - we decided to reschedule it in light of team capacity! We’ll be back to full strength next week, we hope - get well soon Sonia.
Those of us left have been getting ready for opening the fund. That has meant reviewing where we are, and looking for gaps where we need to make a decision, or resolve an uncertainty, or to make something.
- We agreed that IMT would perform the funding application assessments. This reduces the risk of bias, which has added importance now that we’ll be assessing applications as they come in rather than against each other. Cassie will still be involved as the chair of the peer review team.
- We’re also reviewing our assessment criteria and plan with IMT. Our criteria are broadly aligned with work Sport England has done before in Small Grants and other funds. We are also keen to learn from recent updates that the National Lottery Community Fund have made to their funding criteria, too. James and Claire are looking for any last missing bits and checking out the lottery cans and can’ts. Thanks, James and Claire!
- We have been writing the content for many different emails. Some are one liners, like the one that reminds potential grantseekers that the fund will close for applications in 7 days. Others are much larger: the invitation to apply covers timescales, eligibility criteria, application questions and guidance, assessment criteria, what we can and can’t fund, and how to get support (an email address).
- We have been testing large audio/video files to ensure our guidance in the form can be accurate and helpful.
All of this work helps us get ready to launch.
2. Getting ready to launch
Next week, we’ll be making sure we’re ready to launch.
- We’ll do “pre-flight tests” which make sure that everything works end-to-end.
- We’re documenting some scenarios in which we might need to make changes to the application form once it’s gone live. This is part of testing and learning as we go, but we know that the idea of changing something once it’s live brings up a few questions (primarily: is that fair?). So we want to make sure everyone is comfortable with the idea before we press on with actually doing it.
3. Getting everyone on board and on the same page
Eliot and Cassie went to Canary Wharf on Tuesday to present our work to the Investment Committee. They were supportive of the work that we have been doing. We talked about how a pilot without delivery was no pilot at all, and how commitment to that delivery was a core precursor to succeeding. So onwards with commitment. Thanks to Nick for the invitation.
4. Key dates coming up
- Preflight tests: 5 Dec 2023
- Go/No go decision: 6 Dec 2023
- Fund opens: 12 Dec 2023
- FF Studio team hand over to Sport England: 18 Dec 2023
- Fund closes for applications: 23 Jan 2024