The Philanthropy Lab has been set up as a space facilitated by Andres Roberts and Hannah Temple from the Bio Leadership Project. In September 2022, John Ellerman Foundation awarded £18,200 over 12 months for core costs to Environmental Funders Network
The Lab sets out a 12-month journey for funders, split into five stages: Research; Development; Strategy; Investment; and Evaluation. We committed to this grant because we believe that the Lab is an exciting and ambitious piece of work that is setting out to support funders to collaborate and work together in new, more dynamic ways. The Lab represents a learning opportunity for us all and will support us to think about how to address root causes of systemic challenges as funders and challenge our own thinking on the art of the possible in supporting environmental systems change, and in challenging economic norms. The Lab is not something that would fit with our Environment funding guidelines, but the ideas that are designed through the Lab may well do so in the future and may also support the work we fund under Social Action – hence, in part, it being supported through our ‘Other’ category.
On their experience of applying to us, Florence Miller, Director of EFN said: “Applying to John Ellerman Foundation for support for the Lab was a pleasure, partly because of their typical lack of bureaucracy but also because they understood what we were trying to do. The Lab is by nature an experiment, with uncertain outcomes. John Ellerman Foundation understood the premise: that the seriousness of the crises we face require us to break the mould of business as usual, in
philanthropy as in all other sectors, and that how we go about our work might be as important as
what we do.”