The Clothworkers’ Foundation is planning changes to its application process in a bid to tackle “unpredictable” demand.

The foundation, which funds projects supporting disadvantaged people and communities, has announced upcoming changes to its application process and a new Impact Framework for its Open Grants Programme.

The grantmaker, which distributed a total of £8.5m through its open grants last year, has published a series of LinkedIn posts about its plans to update its processes to better deal with increased demand.

In one post, the grantmaker said: “Organisational strategies are at the mercy of events. The Covid-19 pandemic blasted a hole through many five-year plans. 

“Since we launched our strategy in 2023 we’ve not had to deal with anything so dramatic – but we have seen demand for our open grants steadily rise beyond our expectations.

“Applications more than doubled between the beginning of 2023 and the end of 2024. This increase affected our budget, our turnaround times and our success rates – and we know these all negatively affect applicants to the programme.”

Jenny North, the foundation’s director, told Third Sector that the grantmaker distributed more than 400 grants in 2024, up from 332 in the previous year. 

She said its success rate had fallen to 47 per cent, adding this was “not a steep fall but we could see that the long-term trend was downwards”.

North said the grantmaker was reviewing its programmes to make sure it remained fit for purpose when demand was high, but would stay open while it worked on these developments.

On LinkedIn, the grantmaker said: “We know demand is unpredictable and when it outstrips supply we want to be as transparent as possible about how we make decisions. 

“We also need to be able to keep making decisions in a timely way when demand is very high.”

The grantmaker’s plans include the publication of a new impact framework, which it said would set out the projects and organisations it would prioritise for funding when it was unable to meet all demand. 

It will also launch a new two-stage application process, which will only ask for detailed information “once applicants have a higher chance of success”, the grantmaker said.

The foundation said it was working on these developments, alongside a new website, and aimed to launch these before the second half of the year.

North said: “While it is a new challenge for us to redesign the programme without closing to new applications, our team and trustees have committed to delivering an application process that will ultimately work well for applicants and grantees, and a new impact framework that can help us achieve our own mission and strategy and provide clarity to potential applicants about our priorities.

“We are seeking to be transparent about the work that we are doing and how we are doing it, but for now there isn’t that much more to say than what we’ve articulated on our LinkedIn post. 

“At this time, we are very much still doing the work of redesigning our processes and planning for the implementation and communication of our new approach.”