Between 2015 and 2018 we had a programme of work focused on social innovation.  

We supported a number of innovators with lived and learned experience of marginalisation and disadvantage to develop and grow their ideas. 

We flexed our grantmaking practice to offer different kinds of support to them. This included very early stage seed funding, core funding by default, personalised learning journeys and tailored ‘funder +’ support to develop their business, impact and practice models.

In the early stage of the foundation’s work on severe and multiple disadvantage, we did not see many “radical, daring socially innovative ideas developing, nor [were] they emerging into innovative practices that can inform, influence and alter systems.”

Where we did see new ideas coming through, too many were operating within narrow siloes, supporting rather than disrupting and reimagining dysfunctional systems.

Even fewer were developed by or, in partnership with, people who had been subject to severe and multiple disadvantage.

Indeed, where we did see individuals with agency to tackle social problems, and who had the financial and social capital to get ideas off the ground, very few had any (lived or learned) experience of, or even interest in, severe and multiple disadvantage at all. 

In addition, our analysis was that few independent grant making foundations in the UK were explicitly focusing on social innovation, preferring to fund more developed organisations with a greater ‘evidence base’ behind them. There was a focus on achievable, often short-term outcomes, which presented the lowest level of risk.

We saw that the cycle of risk-aversion was perpetuating itself, as funding in this way was breeding practices and cultures inside organisations that were outcome-determined, risk-averse and siloed. This meant that focus was on raising and earning money to get by and deliver, rather than investing and innovating.

Space was created for amazing people to develop their ideas.

These included very early stage ideas from non-traditional innovators such as frontline workers (e.g. social workers and school nurses at the Birmingham Pathfinder and support workers within large organisations like Local Solutions) and people with direct experience of marginalisation (e.g. working class people marginalised within higher education systems at Open Book). 

Many were clustered around highly relational, flexible and person-centred practice and became significant and influential interventions in that developing field. 

Some developed their own analysis of the need for systems to change to enable the spread of their work. Mayday Trust, for example, worked with others to develop the New System Alliance. 

The progressive funding practices that were developed through the social innovation work were carried over into the rest of Lankelly’s work – they became just what we did.

The necessity of learning and adaptation in work where the variables are continually changing also became embedded in the organisation as we moved explicitly to an action inquiry approach to our work.

The innovations we supported often remained ‘bubbles that burst on contact with the reality of systems as they are’ and could not be sustained beyond Lankelly’s support. 

Even where some innovations were commissioned, the rigidity of statutory systems demanded significant compromise and the thing that was special was sometimes distorted. (We supported other work like Human Learning Systems, which drew attention to and challenged this dynamic). 

At the time of this programme, we were framing all our work using the concept of ’severe and multiple disadvantage’. This limited our engagement with people and organisations outside a fairly narrow field (homelessness/criminal justice/substance misuse/experiences of violence and abuse and the intersections between these).

“Good relational practice depends on there being good relational commissioning and policy…the issue for the Foundation was that if we became relational funders, are we creating bubbles of relational funds that won’t survive in a more transactional world?” (Board meeting, February 2015)

This concern was borne out to a large extent. Our question became ‘what are the system conditions that enable social innovations to flourish’?  This was a deeper level of inquiry, mirrored by other parts of Lankelly’s work at the time.  

The social innovation work led directly to our Power Action Inquiry, as this was identified as the system condition that needed to change to enable the innovations we had been supporting to flourish.