You Decide

The partners we’re looking for

We want to work with a mix of up to 5 partner organisations with experience of engaging communities in decisions over grants. Most partners will give out funding for us. And all partners will work with us to learn from different approaches to involving communities. We’ll work with them as a group to learn about what works. And what the barriers and opportunities are for engaging communities more in decision making.

Find out more about what we expect partners to do in what we plan to achieve.

Requirements for partners

To be a partner organisation you must:

• show that involving communities is one of your main purposes or activities
  • For example, if community participation is a large part of your daily work, or your strategy. Or is something your organisation invests in.
  • You should be able to show how involving communities increases community empowerment.
• have experience of involving communities in making decisions about grants or what to support in their communities
  • For example if you’ve run a grant fund where the community made the decisions. Or if you’ve helped design one for someone else.
  • Particularly involving people or communities experiencing poverty, disadvantage or discrimination.
• have experience of giving out grants to communities
  • You should tell us about this when you apply. For example, if you’ve done this before. Or have supported other organisations do it.
• be committed to equity.
  • And be able to show us. For example in how you’ve worked on other projects. And in your organisation’s policies and culture.

By ‘equity’ we mean recognising that not every community starts with the same resources. And that to make things fairer, we should support those that need it most.

We want a mix of partners with different experience

So we’ll welcome expressions of interest from different sizes of organisations. And organisations that have worked at different scales.

Including those who are used to working:

• locally, in-depth, with smaller numbers of people
• regionally or nationally, with large groups of people
• with communities based on people’s shared identity, interests or experience rather than where they live.

We hope this will support us to learn from a mix of approaches. We want to involve people in a way that works for them. And that allows people to take part regardless of how much time or effort they can spare.

What organisations can apply to be a partner

You can apply if your organisation is a:

• constituted voluntary or community organisation
• registered, exempt or excepted charity
• charitable incorporated organisation (CIO)
• not-for-profit company limited by guarantee - you must be a registered charity or have a not-for-profit 'asset lock' clause in your articles of association
• community interest company (CIC)
• community benefit society
• co-operative society - you must have a not-for-profit 'asset lock' clause in your society rules and also be registered with the Financial Conduct Authority.

You need at least 2 board or committee members who are not related

Related can mean:

• related by marriage
• in a civil partnership with each other
• in a long-term relationship with each other
• related through a long-term partner
• living together at the same address
• related by blood.

All companies who apply must have at least 2 directors who are not related in any of these ways. This also applies to companies that are also registered as charities.

Who cannot apply

Who we cannot accept applications from:

• individuals
• sole traders
• organisations based outside the UK
• companies that can pay profits to directors, shareholders or members (including Companies Limited by Shares).

Involving communities in our funding

We want to directly involve communities in how we work and give out funding. We’ll dedicate at least 5% of our £500 million funding for England each year to You Decide.

Before launching the broader programme we want to work with partners from spring 2025 to spring 2026 in a development stage.

This could lead to communities being involved in decisions about what and who we fund. But it could also lead to other great ways of involving communities that we’ve not considered yet. We want to find out what works best for people.

You Decide is one of 3 partnership approaches we opened in January 2025. The others are:

• Community Power
• Grant Holder Support.

Read about these in our vision for funding in England.

Development stage: what partners will do

We have £2 million of funding for this development stage of You Decide. As a partner you’ll distribute most of this funding to communities for us. You’ll test out ways to involve communities in decisions about who and what to fund.

We’ll work with you and the other partners as a group to share knowledge, enthusiasm and experience. And come up with something better than if any of us did this on our own.

Partners’ roles will include:

• collaborating with us and other partners
• bringing together a mix of people and community organisations. We’ll listen to how they want to get involved with our decision making. Particularly those from communities who experience poverty, disadvantage and discrimination
• building community empowerment through the process. And involving communities in a way that builds their skills, resources and ability to work together
• sharing your experience of community decision making. And using it to develop and test different processes to involve communities in our decision making
• testing ways to involve communities in decision making
• giving out funding to communities.

If we give you funding we expect you to follow our safeguarding expectations. And our approach to equity, diversity and inclusion.

Why we’re doing this

We want to do more than give out money

We want to support and involve the communities we fund in other ways too. We’ve committed to this in our new strategy, It Starts with Community.

We want to explore equity-based support for civil society organisations to achieve our missions.

We’ve set out to achieve 4 community-led missions. We’ll support communities to:

• come together
• be environmentally sustainable
• help children and young people thrive
• enable people to live healthier lives.

We know we’re not the experts

We think people know what’s best for them. So we want to give them a bigger say in how our funding is used in their communities.

It’s also why we need the experience and skills of a mix of partners to work with us in this development stage. We think this will create a bigger and longer-term impact from our funding.

How the funding works

We have a total of £2 million funding for this development stage. Partners will support communities to decide how to give out most of this funding to communities.

If we select you as a partner, you will start getting funding from spring 2025. Although it may take us longer to pay out some types of funding. Find out more in the ‘apply’ section.

What you can spend the money on

Partners will support communities to distribute most of this funding to communities for us.

Some of the funding will also cover your costs to work with us, and other partners, as we learn from these approaches.

We expect most partners to use a maximum of £80,000 to cover their costs.

For example, if we give you £400,000 to cover both your costs and onward granting, we’d expect:

• at least £320,000 to be used for onward granting to communities
• a maximum of £80,000 to be used to cover your costs.

We may pay out these different types of funding at different times. Because we may need a different kind of legal agreement with you for onward granting. And this can take longer than our normal funding.

We’ll talk to you about timings and reasonable costs for your involvement when you apply.

We can fund:

• onward granting to communities (where you use our funding to make grants to other organisations)
• salary costs
• transport costs and expenses
• materials or equipment (like IT equipment)
• other costs involved in working as our partner, and taking part in the development and testing work. Check with us if you are not sure.

We can also fund overheads

This could include things like part of your rent or insurance. Or part of a salary for someone not directly involved in the development phase. Like a senior manager or an office admin worker.

For example, being our partner could end up being a quarter of the work your organisation does. In that case, we might fund a quarter of your overheads for that time.

This is sometimes known as full cost recovery. Find out how to work out overheads in our guide to full cost recovery.

We cannot fund:

• things you’ve spent money on in the past and are looking to claim for now (retrospective costs)
• activities that make profits for private gain
• any other costs not related to working with us to test and develop new approaches to involving communities in decision making about funding.

UK’s subsidy control commitments

Our grants come from public funds and successful applicants will be asked to comply with the UK's International Subsidy Control Commitments listed on the GOV.UK website. You should seek independent legal advice if you need more guidance.

If you need funding for a community project

You Decide will not offer this kind of funding immediately. But you can look at our other funding opportunities in England.

We’ll also be opening new funding in 2025 to help us achieve our new strategy.