Esmée's insights and learning
Black2Nature
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Racial justice: A review of Esmée's approach
Following a listening exercise with organisations we fund who are led by communities experiencing racial inequity, we’re pleased to share a new report by Chrisann Jarrett reviewing our approach to racial justice. We’ve also shared our initial reflections and actions we plan to take in 2025.
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Sustainable food and agriculture: Investment deep dive
We're excited to share our first deep dive into thematic impact investing, which focuses on sustainable food and agriculture.
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Making partnerships work
Read our new Insights report, which shares learning and advice from organisations we fund on what makes good partnerships, and how to make them work.
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Nature Friendly Farming: Mid-strategy review
Read the findings from a mid-strategy review of Esmée's Nature Friendly Farming work, which explores the changing context for Nature Friendly Farming in the UK, the drivers and blockers of progress, and shares insights and recommendations for Esmée's work.
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Using social investment to improve our natural world
Sarah Hedley, Esmée’s Social Investment Portfolio Manager, writes about our social investment plans to improve our natural world. This is part of a series of blogs on how our social investment strategy will contribute to Esmée’s mission.
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Our response to the draft Children’s Social Care National Framework
Janet Grauberg, Esmée’s learning partner for our Leaving Care Learning Programme, shares her reflections on the Government’s draft Children’s Social Care Framework and Dashboard, and how we and organisations we work with, have responded.
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Funding Plus 2023 survey findings
We asked people to share their experiences of capacity building support to help us understand what organisations most need right now.
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Impact of the rising cost of living on organisations we fund
At the beginning of 2023, we offered most organisations we fund a 10% uplift on their grant to support them with the rising cost of living. We asked those with higher incomes how rising costs are impacting their work. Esmée's Learning Officer, Philippa Wilkinson, shares a snapshot of what people told us.
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Our roadmap for improving our natural world – what more can we do?
To improve Our Natural World, we have developed a roadmap we have been working to. In a series of blogs, we share how we are getting on as well as our plans for the coming year.
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Using Most Significant Change to understand outcomes for young people leaving care
We asked the Centre for Youth Impact to run a series of workshops on ‘Most Significant Change’ for organisations on Esmée’s Young People Leaving Care Learning Programme. Learn more about the approach and read the stories of change from participants.
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Values for co-production between Young People + Organisations
Esmée's Involving Young People Collective share 10 values for co-production between young people and organisations. In this blog, Thalia and Betty, from the Collective, share how the work developed as well as their hopes that it will help to start conversations on best practice.
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Funding Youth Activism: learning from the Act for Change Fund
A new report and resources share learning and insights on funding youth activism from over three years of the Act for Change Fund, a £3.6m partnership fund to support youth-led organisations to create and lead social change.
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Understanding impact in social investments
Understanding the impact of our social investments is critical for our learning and ensuring that we are an effective investor. In a new report, we outline how we assess the difference each social investment is intended to make, how we track its progress over time, and how that shapes our learning as an investor.
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Young People Leaving Care funding: Insights from our Learning Programme
As part of our support for organisations we fund through our Young People Leaving Care funding, we commissioned a Learning Programme to facilitate learning, collaboration and alliances between the funded organisations, and with Esmée ourselves. This Insights report outlines our approach and what we've learned so far.
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Insights from place-led funding
Read our Insights report where we share learning from the place-led funding we’ve done over the past five years, which has informed and shaped our strategy in Creative, Confident Communities.
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Building an impact-first social investment strategy
We share what being impact-first means in practice and what we've learned.
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Addressing the lack of diversity in the environment sector
We're pleased to share a new report from our Involving Young People Collective summarising the discussions at a hackathon on addressing the lack of diversity in the environment sector. We also share our reflections on what we learned and our next steps for making progress on this.
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A fast response to COVID: challenging how we fund
In a new Insights report, we share feedback on our emergency response to the COVID pandemic, one year on. We also reflect on how it's challenging how we fund and lessons for the future.
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Insights in Brief: Social Investment and COVID-19
A new report sharing what we've learned from our social investments in light of Coronavirus, and how we could use this to inform the stages of rescue, recovery and revival.
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Lessons from supporting young people with care experience during COVID-19
Read a report sharing insights on supporting young people with care experience through COVID-19.
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How our impact-first approach led us to our first Perpetual Bond
We share our learning from our social investment into Fair for You and our first Perpetual Bond along with how it could open up finance options for social purpose organisations looking for equity-like investment.
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Insights from our response to COVID-19
In this Insights report, we summarise how we responded to COVID-19 and what we learned about ourselves as a funder as well as what organisations we support have told us about how they've managed and some of the risks they now face.
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Esmée's insights on core funding
Despite rising need and falling incomes in the charity sector, the overall amount of core funding has “remained reasonably consistent” over the past five years. We've published our insights on core funding with recommendations for funders (including us) to help change that.
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Evolution not revolution, 10 years of social investment
To mark the 10th anniversary of our Social Investment Fund, we’ve written a report reflecting on the achievements, insights and lessons learned to date.
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Insights: Learning from our funding
Read our first Insights report, which shares learning from our funding.
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Insights from our Environment and Food funding
Our latest Insights report shares specific learning from our funding from our Environment and Food sectors. It's written for funders, charities, and anyone else in the UK who is working to bring about a more sustainable world.
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Research and evaluation reports
Find research and evaluation reports we've commissioned, and key publications from work we support.
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Our funding data
We publish all our grants and social investments on 360Giving, an initiative that aims to help UK funders share their data in an open and standard format online.
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