Collaborating for new charitable giving opportunities

The Cabinet Office's Open Innovation Programme will enable charities to take innovative approaches to giving to a larger scale.

The programme, which is managed by Nesta, responds to the feedback from established charities including Catch22, about the need for practical and financial support to help develop new partnerships around innovations in giving. It will use the successful approaches to open innovation that are increasingly common in commercial organisations to accelerate the pace and scale of impact of innovation in giving.

The ambition for the programme over the next year is to support a group of charities with national reach and who want to use their expertise, networks, assets and capabilities to find new ways to engage more people in giving that supports their mission. This could include finding new and more powerful ways of maximising donations, getting more people involved in giving their time or unlocking idle and under-used resources and assets for social goals.

Helen Goulden, Director of Public Services Laboratory, Nesta said,

'The Open Innovation programme sets its sights firmly on working with charities who have identified big challenges they want to work on to increase giving. The charities that have been selected into the programme have demonstrated a real appetite and ambition to work with people and ideas from outside the sector to develop high-impact solutions and take great innovations in giving to scale.'

Over the next three months, the charities will receive coaching and peer support to develop their innovative concepts before being invited to submit proposals to take the ideas to scale and receive funding support. Successful applicants will then be selected later this year to receive a share of £1.5m funding from the Innovation in Giving Fund, as well as non-financial support, to implement their ideas.

Catch22 is interested in developing new partnerships to support its aim of transforming lives and communities in England and Wales. If you like to find out more about current partnership opportunities, please contact fundraisingteam@catch-22.org.uk