The Pearce Foundation has signed up to be an open and trusting Funder

We are proud to announce that we have signed up to IVAR’s Open and Trusting Grant-making initiative. This commitment reflects our dedication to reducing barriers, simplifying processes, and fostering trust-based relationships with the charities we support. As part of this initiative, we have embraced eight key commitments, ensuring that our funding approach is transparent, flexible, and responsive to the needs of our partners.

How We’re Putting These Commitments into Action

Don’t waste time

We have a dedicated page on our website which clearly states the application process. We encourage all applicants to take our eligibility quiz first which takes 1 minute to complete. If successful, applicants are then invited to apply. If they aren’t sure at that stage, they can book a free 15 minute call with the Founder to discuss more.

Ask relevant questions

Our application form was designed and tested with charities who meet our minimum requirements. The trustees then updated the form based on feedback before piloting it with our first charity partner, who completed the full process. To make the form clear and user-friendly, we provide word count guidance and include tick boxes to keep it as engaging and as easy to complete as possible.

Accept risk

We support fledgling charitable organisations under the age of two years old when they first become our charity partners. We acknowledge the risks at their early stage development but our ‘more than money’ model goes beyond funding by providing 8 months of tailored wraparound support to help them build strong foundations for sustainable growth. Our grant-making model enables partners to reapply every other year, enabling us to grow alongside them — Year 1: Best Practice, Year 2: Scaling Up, and Year 3: Sustaining.

Act with urgency

We are a small charitable foundation, and have one funding round each year. We clearly promote the opportunity with signposting to our eligibility quiz and application page for more information. In response to previous charity partner feedback, we changed our opening and closing dates to avoid year-end application overload. This year, our funding round will run from mid-September to early November, providing charities a more manageable timeframe. Our new charity partners are onboarded in January and, again, we consulted with charities to ensure our timeline best supports their needs.

Be open

We have a clear two-stage selection process. Applicants who do not pass Stage 1 receive written feedback, typically because they do not meet our minimum criteria — despite the availability of our eligibility quiz, some applicants skip straight to the form. Charities that reach Stage 2 but are not selected as partners receive more detailed feedback, as the reasons tend to be more in-depth.

We also encourage open communication throughout the year by responding to enquiries, directing applicants to our eligibility quiz, and offering 15-minute informal chats with the founder. This helps ensure honest, factual feedback and allows us to guide charities on whether they should apply.

Enable flexibility

We partner with charities by providing both funding and wraparound support to build their capacity and make our help as meaningful as possible. We trust our partners to decide where funding is most needed, adopting a coaching approach to empower them as leaders. We take the time to understand their strengths, both as individuals and at an organisational level, using these insights to identify key areas for development.Through our network of Skill-Sharers, we offer learning opportunities and insights into where improvements could also make them more efficient and effective.

Our three-stage grant-making model encourages partners to reapply every other year, enabling us to support them as they grow.

Communicate with purpose

We establish clear expectations for our partnership from the outset, ensuring that time commitments are realistic and well understood. We schedule an onboarding session with each charity partner where we review our partnership agreement, and outline our mutual commitments, expectations, objectives, and timelines. The agreement is discussed and agreed upon, ensuring clarity around both the financial and tailored support we provide.

We also provide regular supportive check-ins with the founder throughout the year and our approach is described as refreshing, clear, and genuine.

Be proportionate

Due to our close working relationship with partners, we conduct evaluations both in writing and in person. We send a form that includes a mix of scaled questions (out of 10) to collect quantitative data and an invitation to write a case study, with prompts and word count guidelines to help us with qualitative data. The user-friendly form encourages reflection on achievements and helps us assess impact clearly. Partners tell us it takes 20-40 minutes to complete.

The in-person final review is more of an informal discussion, allowing us to gather insights on areas for improvement for the following year. It also provides them with a space to reflect on their achievements and discuss their next steps. Feedback suggests that this combination of written and in-person evaluations works well.

By embracing these eight commitments, we aim to make our grant-making process as supportive, transparent, and impactful as possible. We believe that funding should be more than just financial support—it should be a partnership that helps charities thrive.

Learn more about IVAR’s Open and Trusting Grant-making initiative here.