Read more about our current processes as a funder, including average time-frames and how we make funding decisions.
View our process maps
We aim for our processes to be fair, transparent, and timely.
For more detail on process and expectations around timings for proposals below £150,000, please refer to this process map.
For more detail on process and expectations around timings for proposals of £150,000 and above, please refer to this process map.
Before proposal development
We have a selective approach to partnerships and these often come through local and thematic networks in line with our strategy. We do not work to open funding rounds or use application forms, but in some cases we invite partners to tender.
We focus on a few complex health issues, which we refer to in our Programmes and within our, Innovation, Participation & Place and Policy, Influencing & Change cross cutting projects. For each of our Programmes, we have an impact goal which provides clarity on what we’re trying to achieve, galvanises action and guides how we measure and learn.
Over time, we typically narrow our focus towards specific topic strands within our Programmes. Although we do not have calls for funding with specific deadlines, we are always interested in hearing from organisations who have ideas specific to these strands of work. We are currently focusing on fewer, larger projects and encourage collaboration between partners. Find out more about our approach, strands and how to start a conversation with us: Becoming a Partner.
We aim to give a timely, clear answer as soon as it becomes apparent that we will not be able to proceed with developing a proposal. Anything we take forward must fit with our strategic approach – both for the organisation as a whole and for the specific programme of work. We aim to only ask for information which is relevant to making that assessment.
The processes we have for making decisions
Impact on Urban Health has several layers of funding processes, and proposals move into different processes based on the amount proposed. The amount is determined in proposal development and is dependent on scope, impact and budget. All proposals are taken forward by Partnerships Leads, who will lead the partnership and the writing of investment papers.
For funding up to and including £30,000, a proposal requires approval from either Head of Programme; Innovation; Policy, Influencing & Change, Data, Evaluation & Learning or Director of Communication
For funding of £30,001 up to and including £60,000, a proposal requires approval from a Director
For funding of £60,001 up to and including £100,000, a proposal requires approval from the Executive Director
For funding of 100,001 up to and including £149,999, a proposal requires cumulative approval from Heads, Executive Director and Foundation CEO
For funding of £150,000 up to and including £2m, a proposal requires approval from the Executive Investment Committee (EIC), which currently consists of the Foundation’s Chief Executive Officer and Legal Director and Impact on Urban Health’s Executive Director, Director of Communications, Director or Data, Evaluation & Learning, Director of Policy, Influencing & Change and Director of Participation & Place
For funding above £2m, a proposal requires approval from the Executive Investment Committee (EIC) and our Board of Trustees
Proposals of £2m and above are rare, and we do not anticipate them in the normal course of our work.
In general, the higher the value of the proposal the more time will be spent analysing and discussing it.
Our awards for proposals of £150,000 and above are currently made by our Executive Investment Committee who meet quarterly.
Our awards for proposals under £150,000 are made ad hoc and outside of our quarterly investment meetings.
All proposals will be assessed by impact, risk, due diligence, which is covered more in the Development section.
Development phase
We take a relational approach which means we aim to build individual, trusting relationships over time. Our process is collaborative and involves partners and Impact on Urban Health combining expertise where possible – therefore the experience of working with us will be unique for every partner. We invite partners to bring their own experiences and knowledge and the partnership lead will bring their own specialism, whether that be issue-based (children’s mental health, environmental justice, etc), output based (policy change, financial diversification, etc) or process based (participatory approaches, community research, inclusive design). Anything we take forward must fit with our strategic approach – both for the organisation as a whole and for the specific programme or area of work.
If we do proceed with the intent of establishing a partnership or new proposal, the Impact on Urban Health partnership lead will collaborate with the partner to develop the proposal and complete an investment paper for decision. Our team, rather than the partner, takes the lead on writing the investment paper.
We take this approach to reduce the burden on our partners and to ensure better fit with our own strategic goals. The level of collaboration can be variable depending on: partnership lead approach and capacity, partner capacity, the nature of the relationship and the complexity of the project.
During the development phase the steps taken internally include:
determining expected impact of the proposal: including changes, outputs and outcomes
ensuring that the proposal lines up with our core principles, our charitable objects¹, is for the public benefit² and aligns with other strategic elements (see Principles section)
sharing the proposal across our team, ideally in its early stages, for cross team collaboration, input and feedback. We aim to do this earlier in the process rather than later
Consulting with our Data, Evaluation and Learning; Communications; Policy, Influencing & Change and Legal and Funding Operations teams
Deciding the form of investment e.g. grant (unrestricted, restricted core³, restricted purpose4, restricted project5) contract, social investment⁶. See more on form of investment in the Footnotes of this webpage.
Deciding the appropriate length and value of the investment in line with budget restraints that every team operates within
discussing and recommending the learning questions and, where necessary, any other conditions or outputs
the partners involved are decided (except for in cases where a tender will be created post-approval, e.g. for a learning partner)
assessing risks of the proposal
depending on the type of proposal, collecting views from outside the organisation e.g. other funders, other organisations working in the sector, policy makers at national and local levels
writing the proposal up into the investment paper template
We have a standard due diligence process, led by our Funding Operations team, which includes questions to understand legal structure, finances and governance (such as understanding your policies (including mandatory insurance) and safeguarding procedures, if applicable). We are embedding a new lighter touch due diligence process for opportunities up to and including £30,000 which are low or medium risk and we aim to roll this out in October 2025. If the opportunity is below £30,000 and higher risk, taking account of financial, legal and impact risk, we would go through our standard due diligence process. We are updating our guidance around our approach to risk as part of this lighter touch process.
In addition to our standard due diligence, there are a set of questions that partnership leads will discuss with partners to make a suitable risk assessment for any partnership and investment. This set of questions look more closely at financial stability and planning, and governance, which will inform the investment paper. We aim to start these conversations as early as possible in proposal development. For more information find our documentation here: Partnership Lead Due Diligence (pdf).
Whenever possible, we aim to provide multi-year, unrestricted funding when:
We expect to work together over several years
You are a smaller, community-led, minority-led or working-class-led charitable organisation
Our budgets can support it
Your objects either fully align with, or are within the scope of, our charitable objects (see charitable objects in footnote 1)
Where we can’t offer this, typically because of our aims don’t fully align, we’re still open to discussing other forms of flexible support, including core funding.
We work with many different organisations, and no two partnerships are the same. That’s why we adapt our approach based on your needs and what we’re trying to achieve together.
Our resources are limited, so sometimes we have to make trade-offs.
Decision points
We are unable to give precise figures for how long it takes us to make funding decisions in particular cases. Although we have shared some approximate timespans in our process maps, there is a high degree of variability between proposals.
Proposals of £150,000 up to £2m go to the Executive Investment Committee (EIC) for presentation and review. Currently the EIC meetings happen quarterly and tend to fall in July, September, December, March. Please refer to our process map for more detail on timings.
EIC is made up of the Foundation’s CEO, and Legal Director & Company Secretary and Impact on Urban Health’s Executive Director, Director of Communications, Director of Data, Evaluation & Learning, Director of Policy, Influence & Change, Director of Participation & Place.
The purpose of EIC is to review Impact on Urban Health spending proposals to ensure:
they are in line with Impact on Urban Health and programme strategies
they are well-designed, a thoughtful use of charitable resources, and are as set up for success as possible
they meet all regulatory requirements
The role of EIC voting members is to:
understand our strategies and core principles and review proposals’ fit within them
advise on the structure, governance, financials, and evaluative aims of the proposal, to help maximise the project’s likelihood of success
advise on any matters of risk (partner, project, regulatory, reputational, financial) and ensure they are comfortable that these have been appropriately mitigated, and are commensurate to the project benefit
considering all of the above, vote on whether the project should be funded, and if approved, with any changes or adjustments
the decision is determined by a simple majority of votes when taken in a meeting, and a 75% majority when taken in writing. The Chair has a casting vote on an equality of votes
the Chair reserves the right to refer any decision considered by the Committee to the Board for determination
We recognise that our current EIC decision making members are not necessarily experts with lived experience of the issues being addressed by proposals, which is why insights shared by partners are considered so carefully earlier in the proposal development. Over this year we are making plans to bring community members into our large award decision making committee.
Proposals are presented by partnership leads at meetings split across two weeks. Following the meetings, decisions and any conditions for all proposals are finalised. You should expect an update on the decision within two weeks of it being made and this will be confirmed by your partnership lead by email. The email will confirm the amount of funding, any conditions and next steps.
Decisions points for proposals below £150,000 are made ad hoc and aren’t typically presented at committee meetings. Please refer to our process map for more detail around timings.
For our funding decision making, our focus this year is on identifying and implementing the changes we need to make internally before bringing in external participants into to our funding decision making panel, as well as further exploring how we embed participation and community voice earlier in the pipeline of our proposal development.
Post-award processes
No awards are guaranteed until we have signed documentation; all decisions are contingent on Impact on Urban Health and the partner agreeing on the formal arrangement of the grant or contract. As such, no work should be started until formal documentation is signed by both parties – the partner(s) and Impact on Urban Health.
Following decision confirmation we will agree a start date with partners, before which we cannot issue funds. We expect that that will be approximately one month after the communication of decision, to allow the time to prepare and agree the paperwork. For grants this is formalised through a starting certificate, which will be sent to partners directly from our operational team.
For both grants and contracts, our payment terms are currently 30 days. This 30-day payment term is considered from the payment being payable, i.e. of conditions or milestones being met; not 30 days of invoice date or received date.
Once a proposal is funded there are a set of questions we discuss with all partners on a regular basis to monitor the partnership. This takes place through check in conversations between partnership lead and partner. For more information, check out the Monitoring Checklist (pdf).
request financial reporting annually, which is done by a standardised online form
ask for regular check-ins with your partnership lead. The mandatory frequency for check ins is every 6 months at a minimum
prioritise what we are learning over milestone-based check-ins
collect data about who we are funding
ask for annual accounts as a standard final requirement for all grants
for every grant, we are open to negotiation, and many projects require the addition of extra clauses – we discuss this with all partners post reward.
We use these when we have a specific fixed output we are looking for – in many situations for consultants, researchers, evaluators, learning partners, and designers. The contract will state whether the amount set out of the awarded funding in inclusive or exclusive of VAT.
Where we use a contract, VAT will be liable on the funding amount if our partner is VAT registered. We’ll work this out with you as part of our discussions around budget.
We use standard forms of contract agreement which can be found here:
We have tried to make our contracts easy to understand and balanced, and we welcome feedback on how we could improve it further.
For every contract, we are open to negotiation. Unfortunately, our legal team can’t advise our partners, however, they are available to explain what clauses mean and what the impact might be for you.
We will make the first payment to you within 30 days of the receipt of your payment request and in line with the payment schedule.
Insights and improvements
Here are some insights from our partner research conducted in 2024 and metrics we monitor through a range of approaches. They reflect areas we want to improve on this year and beyond.
Our focus this year is on identifying and implementing the changes we need to make internally before bringing external participants into our funding decision making panel. We are exploring how we embed participation and community voice earlier in the pipeline of our proposal development.
We are currently on a journey to embed community voice and participation into our internal processes and decision-making. This work spans our governance, strategy development, approach to advisory groups and funding decision making and aims to ensure we have a clear approach to integrating community insight, expertise and lived experience at different levels throughout our funding lifecycle.
Tamsyn RobertsDirector of Participation & Place
Share your feedback
We welcome any feedback on our partner handbook. Complete this short survey to share your thoughts.
As a charitable funder, everything we fund must align with our charitable objects, which are available here. We typically take a broad interpretation of our charitable objects.
Everything we fund must meet provide “public benefit”. This is part of our legal requirements as a charity. The public benefit requirement means that when we consider new projects, we need to think about (i) if it benefits the public in general or a large section of the public – this means we need to be able to understand how an idea could be adopted more widely to create system change and (ii) the benefits (e.g. financial, benefits in kind, reputational) to individuals or organisations that arise from the project.
Core funding is a type of restricted funding. It provides financial support that covers the essential running costs of an organisation, rather than being restricted to specific projects or activities.
Restricted purpose funding is a type of restricted funding. It is for a specific purpose, rather than being limited to a project.
Restricted project funding is a type of restricted funding. It is for a specific project or initiative.
Social investments are a type of funding where our funding is motivated by both the social impact and potential financial return. These are sometimes called impact investments.
