The Foundation Practice Rating – helping charitable foundations do better

As a funder working with London’s diverse communities, City Bridge Foundation needs to keep improving how it reaches and works with the organisations it supports. 

The Foundation Practice Rating (FPR), which rates UK charitable foundations in terms of diversity, accountability, and transparency, has proved to be an invaluable tool, helping us see both where we have made progress and where we still need to improve.

As an active supporter of the FPR since 2022, City Bridge Foundation is assessed each year. This year, for the first time, we have achieved an overall A grade. 

We are really pleased with this result but we see it as an important milestone rather than an endpoint. It reflects real progress, but we know there is still more to do to make our funding practice clearer, fairer and more accessible to all. 

As the FPR’s latest results are published, it’s an opportunity for us to talk about the changes we have been making, and what we are still learning. 

A big part of this work has been linked to the introduction of our new funding policy, Standing with Londoners, alongside wider work to improve how our funding processes operate in practice and to make them clearer, fairer and more accessible. 

An important part of the story is the transition itself, as we moved between the old and new funding policies. While developing our new policy, we paused to new applications but continued to assess applications from the large number received before the closure deadline, and we continued to award a significant number of grants. 

The pause gave us space to prepare for our first new funding round, Access to Justice, as we put the building blocks in place for our new funding approach. This included developing new processes, guidance, training, website content and substantial operational change across the team. This was not simply a policy rewrite. It involved significant practical change alongside continued delivery. 

We adapted our funding offer based on extensive outreach and research, engaging with the wider sector and looking closely at our previous five years of funding with an End-to-End Review. That work helped shape the practical changes we have introduced, and others we are still developing. FPR assessments provided a useful guide to where we still needed to do better. Some of the most important changes we have introduced, or started to embed, are set out below. 

We have introduced a two-stage application process, so organisations do not have to complete a long and detailed application unless they have a realistic chance of being funded. The first stage is shorter and simpler. The second stage is more detailed but relies more on conversations and assessment visits rather than long written forms. The aim is to reduce unnecessary work for applicants and make the process more relational. 

We have improved pre-application support. This includes webinars, pre-application calls and clearer guidance, to help organisations decide whether a programme is right for them before investing their time in a full application. 

We are deliberately moving towards providing more core, flexible and long-term funding where possible. This reflects a wider shift amid the funding community towards trusting funded organisations and giving them more room to respond to the realities they face.

We have also been improving how we assess applications so that the process is more proportionate and better matched to risk. That includes clearer assessment tools, better co-ordination across teams, and more consistent ways of recording and reviewing information. 

Alongside that, we are developing more proportionate approaches to monitoring after a grant is awarded. The aim is not to treat every funded organisation in exactly the same way, but to set expectations that are clear and fair and that reflect the size, purpose and risk of the grant.

We are also strengthening consistency through staff training, better guidance and improved use of data so that decisions are clearer, learning is stronger, and the experience for applicants and funded organisations is improved. 

Taken together, these changes reflect a wider shift towards a funding approach that is clearer, more proportionate and more rooted in listening, learning and trust.

Our first Access to Justice funding round has been an important way of testing some of these changes in practice and learning from them, allowing us to refine our offer as we prepare to roll out new rounds and new programmes. 

Receiving an A grade from the FPR matters because it recognises real progress, but we know that good funding practice is never finished. Some changes are now in place and others are still being tested or developed further. Our aim is for continual improvement. 

We’re proud of this years rating, but we know it is not the end of the journey. We want to keep building an approach that works better for the communities and organisations we exist to support, and to keep improving through listening, learning and adapting our practice over time.