The Paul Hamlyn Foundation (PHF) has said it aims to reduce the burden of its application processes following comprehensive feedback from both grantees and declined applicants.
PHF today published findings from its latest feedback survey, in which its more than 700 respondents praised the funder’s switch to providing more multi-year unrestricted grants in recent years.
In 2025, 38% of PHF’s grants were both multi-year and unrestricted, double the proportion of those made in 2022.
PHF’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion and anti-racist practice in its work was also more highly rated than three years prior.
However, grantees and declined applicants both gave mixed feedback on the funder’s application processes.
On average grantees estimated that they had spent 30 hours applying for funding from PHF, longer than for most other grantmakers according to the report.
Declined applicants reported spending 24 hours on average and gave lower ratings about how fairly they felt they had been treated by PHF than other grantmakers had received.
The funder saw demand for its resources “increase significantly” in the year to March 2025, according to its latest accounts, with its acceptance rate decreasing from 22% to 20%.
Overall, it awarded more than £56m in grants during 2024-25 and ended the year with £880m in total charity funds.
Particular focus on first-stage applications
In a blog post reflecting on the feedback also published today, PHF’s head of evidence and learning Kirsty Gillan-Thomas said “the clearest opportunity for improvement is through reducing the burden of our application processes”.
“These were felt to be too time-consuming and weren’t as accessible as they could be,” she said.
“There were requests for more opportunities to speak to foundation staff in advance of an application, and for the foundation to be more responsive to queries.
“We use different application processes across our funds, so there is no single solution.
“Our next steps will be to identify key opportunities for improvement within those processes, drawing on the detailed survey results.
“We want to improve our processes wherever we can, while taking a step back to consider both what works best for applicants and what we can deliver consistently.
“We will particularly focus on reducing the burden of our first-stage applications in our higher-volume funds.”
