William Grant Foundation

 📢 Tender opportunity - Independent Human Rights Fund for Scotland. The Independent Human Rights Fund for Scotland (hosted by Corra Foundation) is focused on supporting people whose rights are most at risk. Corra is looking for a learning partner to work alongside the people and organisations involved in the fund to help understand its collective impact. We are pleased to be part of the collaborative contributing to the fund. We look forward to continuing to learn how rights-based approaches can advance our vision of a Scotland where everyone has the opportunity to thrive. 🔽 Details of the learning partner brief and how to apply in Corra's post below. 📅 Proposals to be sent by Friday 20 December.

💡 Reinvigorating shared ownership for a fast and fair energy transition. The UK aims to achieve clean power by 2030, with local and community-owned energy projects central to the vision of a sustainable energy future. This paper from Regen sets out their thoughts on how to unlock new tools for the delivery of just transition energy outcomes. It makes the case for ‘shared ownership’ models, where clean power projects are jointly owned by developers and local community organisations. We are pleased to fund work that is contributing to a more inclusive discussion about how to make the most of clean energy opportunities. Under our Natural and Built Environment theme, we are interested in the community ownership of assets that meaningfully engage with people and enhance lives and places. We are also supporting work that enables everyone to live in good quality, affordable warm homes.   📝 Fraser Stewart from Regen provides a concise summary of the paper's key messages below. 🖥 Regen are also hosting a webinar on the paper on Tuesday 3 December: https://lnkd.in/d8mQ7Uad

🦈 Sea-Changers Innovation Fund 2024/25 is open! Great to see that the Sea-Changers Innovation Fund is open for 2024/25. Encouraging new and untested solutions to the UK's marine conservation challenges is central to safeguarding and improving the health of Scotland’s marine environments. We're pleased to be supporting this Fund for organisations working on ideas that are new and/or experimental solutions in the field of marine conservation. 📅 Closing date for applications is 28 February 2025. ⬇ More details about the Fund how to apply in the post below. 

🗣Top tips for advocacy and influencing Once a quarter we invite funded partners to an online networking and peer learning event called the 'Foundation Forum'. It's an opportunity for a range of people to come together to share lessons and experience around topics that matter to them. People often tell us they enjoy and value these opportunities to connect with and learn from organisations they don't otherwise meet in their day-to-day work. In the last Forum, our funded partners explored the theme of 'advocacy and influencing'. We were lucky to have Sea the Change and Children First with us to share lessons and practical advice. Their reflections stimulated a lively discussion! Here are some of the insights and top tips shared during the Forum, covering everything from the importance of storytelling to top tips for engaging with politicians.

📢 Opportunity for a Scottish textile designer/textile artist: Bernat Klein Fellowships 2025 Bernat Klein (1922-2014) was a Serbian-born textile designer, artist, and writer who emigrated to Scotland and established a successful textile design and manufacturing business in the Scottish Borders. His 1960s couture fabrics were bought by the leading London and Paris fashion houses such as Chanel and Dior. Klein’s work also gained significant recognition in Scandinavia and this new initiative will see two Fellowships awarded to established textile designers / textile artists based in Scotland and in Sweden. The Fellowships are fully-funded and include residencies, the opportunity for supported research including access to the national Bernat Klein archive collections in Scotland, and the support required for the development of new work. We're pleased to be supporting this exchange, along with the Swedish Embassy, building on our established interest in Klein's legacy as a source of inspiration for today's artists, designers and manufacturers. Details and guidance on applying are on the Cove Park website. https://lnkd.in/e8NY_DPj

🥃 Did you know that Scotland's newest operational distillery is community-owned? Huge congratulations on reaching this milestone to everyone at The Cabrach Trust, for whom The Cabrach Distillery is the keystone social enterprise in their wider plans for regenerating their rural community on the Aberdeenshire/Moray border. The distillery will create employment, a visitor attraction, a brand and - once the whisky that started flowing from the beautiful copper stills last week has had a chance to mature - profits for reinvestment in the community. Having been an early supporter of the masterplan for the site, which is transforming an historic farm steading, our latest grant - approved just last month - is helping with the development work on the adjacent heritage centre and visitor facilities. #WhiskyWithPurpose

'Preserving, researching and showcasing aspects of Scotland's heritage, especially those most at risk of being lost or overlooked' - one of our aims under our Scottish Culture and Heritage strand. And there are few more overlooked in Scotland's history than the thousands of poor Glaswegians buried in unmarked common graves in the Necropolis, the city's famous 'city of the dead', whose resting place is overshadowed by the grand monuments of the wealthy. We're supporting arts charity Aproxima, whose Glasgow Requiem project, is creating a living wildflower memorial for these forgotten folk whilst celebrating the diversity of today's Glasgow residents, including those newly arrived in search of safety and a new beginning. "We just wanted to celebrate people's right to be visible." This short film documents this creative commemoration/celebration.

📢 Invitation to tender: Year ten review   Did you know that the William Grant Foundation is in its tenth year of grant-making?   Since 2015, we’ve awarded over £30 million to a range of good causes in Scotland and also globally through the employee-led giving schemes at William Grant & Sons.   We’re now looking for a consultant to support us in a review looking back on our first decade and ahead to the next one.   This isn’t a review of our programme areas – we’ll continue supporting a wide range of work that helps people, places and communities to thrive, building on our current areas of focus. Instead, we want to reflect on our overall approach and ways of working to ensure the Foundation is fulfilling the purposes for which it was established and to ensure we are as effective as we can be.   Our usual grant-making activity will continue uninterrupted.   We’re looking for a consultant or consultancy organisation with knowledge of UK grant-making and civil society – ideally with insight into the third sector in Scotland – and experience of working with family trusts or foundations around strategy, governance and operational design.   ⬇ You can download the invitation to tender document from our website. https://lnkd.in/eEFFB7Du   📅 The deadline for proposals is Monday 11 November.   🗣 Please do share this with any relevant contacts in your networks.

🌍 How can funders use their influence to respond to a changing climate? We've been working with Creative Carbon Scotland as we try to apply a 'climate and nature lens' to all our work, not just our environmental grant-making. Starting with our Scottish Culture and Heritage strand, but moving on to consider all our themes, we're asking 'what should we be doing differently as a funder that reflects how the many causes we give to - and the organisations we fund and partner with - can respond to the changes we're experiencing in our climate and natural world?' In a blog on their website, Creative Carbon Scotland's Director, Ben Twist, and our CEO, Nick Addington, share some reflections from our work together. (This was one of a series of 'stories' published by Creative Carbon Scotland during Climate Week - read them all on their website: https://lnkd.in/eGd6dmV5) https://lnkd.in/eAB68VYU

🏛 Enabling community-led regeneration across Scotland. 🙌 Great to read this positive evaluation of The Architectural Heritage Fund (AHF)'s work in Scotland, which recognises its role as a catalyst for enabling community-led projects to develop their plans. Demand for support with community-led heritage regeneration here is high compared to other parts of the UK: Scotland, with just 8% of the UK population, was responsible for around 27% of all applications to the AHF in the last five years! We're pleased to help it meet some of that demand by providing funds it can award to projects that might otherwise not get supported - including for non-listed buildings that are nonetheless valued by their communities. A couple of stats that stood out for us in this report: Around one-third (35%) of projects are on the Buildings at Risk Register and just over two-thirds (68%) are in areas of deprivation (30% most deprived on Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation). Another thing that really comes through in the report is how approachable, supportive and expert are AHF's "small but mighty" team here in Scotland. That's certainly our impression and we're grateful to them for helping our funding get to where it can make the biggest difference.