Co-Designing a Small Grants Scheme

The Client: Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity

The Challenge: Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity wanted to improve its reach and engagement with lower-band members of NHS Community Services staff, who traditionally do not apply for funding. The goal was to make the small grants scheme more accessible, inclusive, and tailored to the needs of this group, ensuring it enabled meaningful improvements in non-clinical patient care.

Our Approach: To meet this challenge, a collaborative co-design process involving a series of engagement activities including on-site workshops, shadowing district nurses and administrative staff, group interviews, and asynchronous feedback through WhatsApp. This rich, user-centered research approach helped uncover the frustrations, barriers and unmet needs of lower-band staff, guiding the creation of a grant scheme that would reduce barriers and build trust.

Design sprints and prototypes were created based on real-life feedback, and a service blueprint was mapped out. The team also conducted horizon scanning to understand best practices in funding from across the charity and healthcare sectors.

The Outcome: The outcome of this process was a co-designed small grants scheme playbook focused on simplicity, trust, and inclusivity. The design focused on key touchpoints to enable lower-band staff to easily apply for and access funds, with support provided at every stage—from a frictionless application process to tailored support. The small grants scheme is currently in a pilot phase, and the wider insights and ideas are also being embedded across the wider charity's funding programmes. This approach not only widens participation but also aims to remove traditional barriers by putting trust at the heart of its grant-making process.

"It’s been brilliant working with thinkpublic on this project. It's a fantastic piece of work which has massive potential for us."

Ruth Taylor, Head of Funding Delivery - Guy's & St Thomas' Charities · Guy's & St Thomas'​ Foundation