Rethinking grantmaking for the AI age: introducing the Digital Accelerator

The Accelerator team at our Onboarding Day in Birmingham — Lisa is shown second-left

Earlier this year, The National Lottery Community Fund and CAST embarked on the Digital Accelerator, an ambitious project designed to scope out a new, digitally-enabled approach to grantmaking, built around real user needs.

The Digital Accelerator brings together a cross-functional team from The National Lottery Community Fund, including service designers, grant-makers, technologists — and comms, data and policy specialists. The team is working with users throughout the process, identifying real problems, prototyping real solutions, and testing in realistic conditions.

As the project moves from a series of discovery and definition sprints into its development phase, we caught up with Lisa Horton, Product Owner at The National Lottery Community Fund, to find out all about the background to the work, what’s been achieved so far — and what’s next.

Lisa, thank you so much for taking the time to share insights into the Digital Accelerator! Firstly, please could you give us some background into why you decided to embark on this project?

The Fund’s senior leadership team have prioritised moving our grant making into a digital, automated space aligned to the wider AI sector and growth in this area. We wanted to push/pull the fund into this space quickly through an accelerator project that moves with pace and purpose, experimenting on what our grant making might look like for the digital age. But it’s important to understand the impact on our customers too and make sure we are still being as fair and equitable as we can be. We are already seeing applicants use AI in their application forms and we are all experiencing digital services in the bank and retail sector. The fund wants to adapt our services, but we also want to be thoughtful in how we do this and the implications for our customers. We contracted colleagues from CAST to help us on this journey given their experience in digital acceleration and the wider AI grant making community.

Why have you become involved?

Well, I want to be creative and make things easier and better for our customers and our funding staff too. I want to feel the fear and do it anyway, so test myself and I am not frightened of getting something wrong, there is always learning and ways to make things better.

How did the team come together: how did you decide which roles / specialisms were needed in order to create a successful cross-functional team to tackle this challenge?

It was a fuse of people’s strengths and experience: ensuring funding colleagues were involved at the heart of this project was important as they know our grant making and understand what our customers need. The fund has a digital team too with lots of experience in user led design and user research so they are an important part of the team.

And of course CAST, bringing their accelerator experience and leadership. We’re also partnering with the Institute for Voluntary Action Research (IVAR), who bring deep insight from their Open and Trusting project into best practices in grantmaking to deliver better outcomes for communities. On the technical side, we’re collaborating with The Developer Society, a not-for-profit co-op who’ll be bringing technical expertise to build advanced prototypes and to create the technical roadmap to fit with Fund’s digital estate.

How are you managing this way of working between multiple organisations and team members?

We follow typical agile ceremonies including sprints and retros, and the typical design phases of discovery, define and develop. We spent a lot of time onboarding everyone and taking time to know each other and understanding roles and strengths. Naturally, there have been some challenges along the way and the typical forming storming stages of team development was part of the process too. CAST spent time understanding the Fund, and vice versa.

What is the overall process that CAST is following when it comes to addressing this challenge?

We’re following the ‘Discover / Define / Develop’ method used by CAST, as they have a proven track record in digital accelerators and they aligned with our Fund standards to form a ‘fused’ team ultimately led by our passion for user led design and iterative development.

Which stage are you currently at: what has been done so far?

We are just finishing the ‘Define’ stage — which is a great phase of the projects; we have involved internal colleagues and our customers as well as listened to other organisations grappling with the same issues. You can be very creative and rewrite the rule book which the disrupter in me quite likes. I am always amazed and inspired about how creative people are and what great ideas they have, and grateful for their time in helping us.

Why did you decide to focus on grassroots organisations?

We decided to focus on grassroots organisations as they are the group of applicants we most want to fund across all our funding, but they are least likely to apply, they are most likely to give up on their application and if they do apply they are most likely to be unsuccessful. Through talking to lots of grassroots organisations in February and March of this year we know they want more support and help to access us. They find the Fund confusing to understand and decipher - and if they are unsuccessful, they are hurt by the process and unlikely to try again.

Did anything surprise you about the results of the research?

I was surprised about several things that came out throughout the research, such as more people than I thought were open to a digital service and the use of AI. I had assumed that would have been a flat no. I was surprised by the impact an unsuccessful application had on the groups. Of course, I knew it was disappointing, but I heard how hurtful it was, which was sad to hear. I was surprised that a lot of groups didn’t really research our funding and read our website before they applied. This didn’t work for them, and they needed different and more accessible support to understand us.

How did you come together to synthesise the research and shape it into focus areas?

We had lots of feedback; it’s quite overwhelming at first, but we grouped themes together, tested understanding with each other, talked to stakeholders about whether we have covered everything and decided as a team on our priorities, which we anchored with senior leads.

Have there been any moments where members of the team felt differently about research approaches / observations, or ways to take the work forward? If so, how did you work through those discussions?

Yes I think when you say ‘research’ to people, they imagine thousands of people involved, surveys and randomised trials, but of course user led design is about finding the most important things quickly. I know the funding colleagues were very sceptical when they heard that design research is talking to a handful of people, understanding the top common priorities, and moving quickly on to prototyping — so the pace is quicker, and getting to a solution to test further is important. We trusted the process and allowed people to see the research in action, taking part in workshops and one to one interviews. There comes a point when you are hearing the same feedback and that’s when you know you have what you need.

How are you moving those focus areas forwards in terms of prototyping viable solutions?

We have concentrated on four principal areas or stages of grantmaking: plan and apply, eligibility, assessment, and grant management. The main way we move things forward is through showing them to customers and funding staff, getting feedback and understanding which has the highest impact. In July we will have a clearer view of what the Accelerator will concentrate on, and we can say more then.

Throughout the project, how are you balancing the use of AI with the importance of maintaining the human connection between charities and funders across the grant making ecosystem?

So it’s always about user led design, what’s the most important thing to customers, what are their needs, and balancing that with what can be a digital answer or alternative options. We are all experiencing digital services in banking and retail. These can make things quicker and simpler. Digital can ensure more options to access services and open access to people. But as a funder we also know people want to talk to us for help and support too. We constantly test ideas with customers to see what the impact is on them and whether it helps.

What is the overall ambition for the project: what do you hope to have in place by the completion date at the end of the year? What would success look like?

Success is trialling and experimenting with a new end to end digital grant making service which we will pilot with some customers by December. It will evidence what works, what customers like, and what could be scaled within the Fund. It will show how the Fund needs to change too, including the service we want to offer for the future and ways of working in a digital age.

Will any outputs be shareable with / by other funders?

Yes, we will look to share the learnings from our project, warts and all, mistakes, and successes. We are already learning from other funders, and it is important to share. It is such an emerging sector, we need to help each other, particularly through CAST’s AI for Grantmakers Peer Group.

Thank you, Lisa!

We hope this has been a useful overview of the process so far — we’ll share more progress updates as the project progresses, but if you have any questions or comments in the meantime, please do get in touch via hello@wearecast.org.uk or directly with lisa.horton@tnlcommunityfund.org.uk.