Invitation to Tender: Devolved decision-making and funding learning partner

Summary

We’re looking for a learning partner to support a 12-month project focused on learning about the devolution of funding decisions to communities. This project will bring together knowledge and data that we have generated from over ten projects, with the aim of enhancing the understanding and practices of key audiences regarding how to engage and enable communities to drive funding decisions that affect them.  

We would love to hear from you if you share our interest in shifting more decision-making power to communities, and if you are an expert in facilitating learning in ways that bring diverse stakeholder groups together to build their knowledge and motivate them to think and act differently.  

Please apply by submitting a short application of eight pages maximum (including CVs and budget) to Gabrielle Allen at by Friday 1 March 2024 at 5pm.  

About the learning partnership

Why we want to learn

We believe that giving more decision-making power to communities experiencing health inequities leads to more equitable, trusted, and responsive prioritisation and solutions. Since 2020, we have been investing in projects that explore how communities can be involved in and take more control over decision-making in funding. Our projects vary in their design and immediate objectives, but their main goal is similar: to devolve more power to residents and organisations from Lambeth and Southwark, enabling them to engage in and drive funding decisions.  

So far, we have undertaken more than ten projects focused on the devolution of funding and decision-making, with some lasting up to three years. This creates a timely opportunity for us to engage in ‘cross-project’ learning about whether and how well these projects are working and how we can refine our thinking and actions as a funder 

Ultimately, we want the results of this learning partnership to drive internal practice improvements immediately, and equip us with the shared language, insights, and assets to influence external partners, peers and stakeholders in our ecosystem who are involved in or affected by funding decisions. 

What we want to learn about

The kind of cross-project learning we seek requires a clear, shared, overarching theory about why we undertake such projects, how we think the change we desire will happen, and what actions may be most decisive in enabling change. Having such a theory of change will enable us to create a strategic approach to learning across our projects. This strategic approach will support us to better understand how to approach and invest in devolved funding and decision making in the future.  

That’s why we are seeking to partner with an individual or team to help us develop this overarching theory of change and create a strategic approach. 

When done well, a strategic approach gives us a common language and terms to use internally and externally to communicate and create understanding about devolved funding and decision-making practices.  

Because of this, we are also expecting to develop a glossary during this learning partnership, that is a list of terms and meanings arising from our learning about our existing practices. 

Finally, we believe a good strategic approach is one that facilitates the timely generation and use of new evidence to inform real-time improvement in practices and responses to challenges. 

Therefore, we are also expecting the learning partnership to include at least one rapid round of testing on a small scale how the new theory of change and strategic approach may inform improvement work happening now in Impact on Urban Health. Feedback from this testing will inform refinements to the theory and approach, ahead of general dissemination and ongoing use in our practice. 

Expected tasks and deliverables from the learning partnership

We will take a collaborative approach to this learning partnership. At the outset, we will work with the learning partner to co-design the final partnership proposal and implementation plan, including specific approaches, activities, and outputs. At a minimum, we anticipate the following tasks and deliverables in order to achieve the three learning expectations mentioned above under the What we want to learn about section. 

Tasks

1. Collate and report on existing quantitative and qualitative data from across our ten-plus projects. The learning partner is not required to collect new or additional data about these projects. 
2. Facilitate reflection and sense-making workshops with Impact on Urban portfolio managers and directors who are leading devolved funding and decision-making projects. We expect these workshops to use insights emerging from Task 1 to enable collaborative learning about the common and unique motivations, intentions, key mechanisms, end goals, and assumptions underlying our projects. We anticipate having four workshops that will include between 10 and 15 people. 
3. Translate the learning emerging from Tasks 1 and 2 to create an initial theory of change that highlights the different potential pathways through which our projects may be seeking to facilitate greater devolution of funding and decision making to communities.  
4. Use the initial theory of change to inform the development of an initial learning framework to serve as the basis for our strategic approach. 
5. Use a rapid testing approach to begin socialising and collecting feedback on the initial theory of change and learning framework among Impact on Urban Health portfolio managers and directors, who are leading relevant projects and driving work to improve our funding practices right now. We anticipate an iterative approach to this testing, where socialising and feedback may be done with specific groups and in stages as tasks are being completed and learning and outputs emerge and become relevant to groups. This task is also included in the anticipated 4 workshops with 10-15 people.  
6. Draft a glossary that includes a list of terms and meanings that arise during this learning partnership.  

Deliverables

1. Concise insights report of the existing quantitative and qualitative data from across all our projects.  
2. Facilitation of 4 reflection and sense-making workshops. 
3. Facilitation of a rapid round of small-scale testing and feedback using the workshops above and one live improvement work in Impact on Urban Health.  
4. Written Theory of Change and Learning Framework to provide an overall strategic approach to continuously learning about and improving our devolved funding and decision-making practices.  
5. Glossary. 

Expected participants and audiences for our learning 

We are eager to engage and share learning from this partnership with key internal and external groups. 

Engaging with internal groups to enhance internal understanding and practices related to devolved funding and decision-making at Impact on Urban Health and Guy’s & St Thomas’ Foundation 

• Internal participants: These include 10 to 15 portfolio managers and programme directors. The aim is to support this group to directly be involved in and contribute to the learning partnership activities, including all workshops and the rapid testing. 
• Internal audiences: These include all other staff across Impact on Urban Health and Guy’s & St Thomas Foundation, including staff at leadership, management, and implementation levels. The aim for the learning partnership is to create opportunities to gain early feedback and clarifying questions from the leadership level, and to consider the wider audiences to develop the most suitable ways and outputs to disseminate learning. 

Engaging with external groups to provide thought leadership to others on why and how they can change their funding and decision-making practices. 

• External Audiences: These include our partners and other foundations and peers in the wider philanthropic and social purpose-led ecosystem, who share our interest in and commitment to rebalancing funding and decision-making powers in favour of communities. The aim for the learning partnership is to consider these external audiences to develop the most suitable ways and outputs to disseminate our learning for influencing them.