Distributing Differently: beyond traditional grantmaking

Distributing Differently is Foundation Scotland's term for the range of funding approaches that sit alongside, or move beyond, the traditional reactive open grant approach that is the more common way to distribute funding.

It has emerged from Foundation Scotland’s work with communities involved with community benefit funds when reactive applications alone aren't meeting identified community needs or ambitions.

Distributing Differently can help ensure that allocation of funding is not just left to chance and supports decision makers to take a more proactive approach. The purpose of the session was to provide the Panel, who make decisions on funding applications, with space to learn about and discuss four particular approaches including commissioning, strategic awards, participatory grant making and thematic funds.

East Lammermuir has been administering other strands of community benefit money for many years and has generally used the traditional open grant making approach. With a range of community priorities, a new funding stream now live, and a pipeline of further funding on the horizon, it was an appropriate moment to take stock of some other ways funding could be made available in the future.

Chris Bruce, East Lammermuir Community Council Chair said:

"The Foundation Scotland workshop got panel members thinking beyond our usual comfort zone. That's always a good thing - and we have come away excited to develop a new funding strategy, to ensure we are meeting local people's asks as best we possibly can with the significant funds available to us over the coming years."

Learning from the session will help inform a fund strategy that the Panel will develop later in the year.

Read more about the fund here