Cairngorms 2030 Com­munit­ies Fund Panel

Ses­sion 4 – Sur­vey Responses

The pur­pose of this sur­vey was to cap­ture your think­ing on the best approach for the fund. This will inform the next ses­sion. There are sev­er­al options on the table, so you were encour­aged to con­sider the options and share your view.

We also asked you to reflect on the struc­ture and provided an open text space for feed­back or ques­tions about the Pan­el process.

The sur­vey was open from Thursday 7 May to Monday 11 May.

16 out of 18 mem­bers of the pan­el responded.

Uned­ited and anonymised sur­vey responses are [avail­able to view](link to view — not provided in OCR). Where per­cent­ages are reflec­ted we have roun­ded to the nearest whole number.

Sum­mary of your responses

Struc­ture 2 Small grants 3 Medi­um grants 4 Large grants 5

Struc­ture

Do you want the Pan­el to con­sider any changes to the struc­ture agreed in week­end 3?

16 responses

(Pie chart data: Yes 43.8%, No 56.3%) 9 people respon­ded ​‘no’ and 7 people respon­ded ​‘yes’.

Pro­pos­als for changes (sum­mar­ised)

a. Two grant sizes instead of three. Two respond­ents ques­tioned wheth­er we need small, medi­um and large. One pro­posed remov­ing large grants entirely, arguing that large awards by defin­i­tion pre­vent mul­tiple smal­ler ones and that lar­ger pro­jects are already covered else­where in the park’s fund­ing land­scape. Anoth­er pro­posed col­lapsing to just two tiers — small and large — to sim­pli­fy the pro­cess and allow more suc­cess­ful applic­a­tions with­in the £1 mil­lion limit.

b. Add a new pot for indi­vidu­al and leg­acy fund­ing. One respond­ent pro­posed a ded­ic­ated pot for per­son­al skills and edu­ca­tion — fund­ing for indi­vidu­als seek­ing to gain new skills for the long-term bene­fit of the com­munity. The argu­ment was that per­son­al devel­op­ment will be over­looked when people see com­munity-facing lan­guage, and that indi­vidu­als would not self-select into the exist­ing pots.

c. Sep­ar­ate the EDI alloc­a­tion. One respond­ent argued strongly that the 10% EDI alloc­a­tion should be a sep­ar­ate fund entirely, on the grounds that embed­ded EDI fund­ing tends to flow toward the major­ity demo­graph­ic. They argued that true inclu­sion requires tar­geted, spe­cif­ic inter­ven­tions rather than a gen­er­al­ised allocation.

d. Revis­it grant size ranges and applic­a­tion win­dows. One respond­ent pro­posed cap­ping large grants at £100,000 to ensure pro­por­tion­al weight­ing across the tiers. Anoth­er wanted the medi­um pot to have fixed applic­a­tion dates rather than TBC, so that only the small pot runs on a rolling basis. One pro­posed all pots should have fixed dates.

e. Pro­cess over struc­ture. One respond­ent said they were not pro­pos­ing a spe­cif­ic struc­tur­al change, but felt the struc­ture mattered less than get­ting the pro­cesses right. They wanted the Pan­el to define fair, rep­res­ent­at­ive pro­cesses first, then con­sider wheth­er cer­tain pro­cesses suit cer­tain pots better.

We can make a decision on struc­tur­al changes in Ses­sion 5. These include:

• Decision 1: Two grant sizes
• Decision 2: EDI as a sep­ar­ate pot
• Decision 3: Leg­acy / per­son­al devel­op­ment pot
• Decision 4: More spe­cif­ic pro­ject cat­egor­ies — not­ing this might be an eli­gib­il­ity and com­mu­nic­a­tions ques­tion for Ses­sion 6 rather than a struc­tur­al change.

The fol­low­ing pro­pos­als can be explored in Ses­sion 6

• Cap large grants and con­firm size ranges
• Applic­a­tion windows

Prac­tic­al con­sid­er­a­tions: PARK AUTHOR­ITY TO ADD IF ANY

Small grants

Which approach or com­bin­a­tion feels right for small grants?

15 responses

• Col­lect­ive mod­els — 2 (13.3%)
• Cri­ter­ia-based assess­ment — 8 (53.3%)
• Delib­er­a­tion — 2 (13.3%)
• Dis­trib­uted dia­logue — 5 (33.3%)
• Ideas chal­lenge — 4 (26.7%)
• Loc­al pan­el — 4 (26.7%)
• Peer review — 0 (0%)
• Pub­lic vote — 0 (0%)
• Mixed approach — please explai… — 6 (40%)

Cri­ter­ia-based assess­ment is the most selec­ted approach at 53%, but the free text con­sist­ently softens this — people want it to be simple, quick and not oner­ous. Nobody is ask­ing for a rig­or­ous writ­ten form. The recur­ring phrase is some ver­sion of ​“light touch cri­ter­ia to inform a com­munity decision.” That dis­tinc­tion mat­ters because it sug­gests cri­ter­ia as a fil­ter, not as the decision-mak­ing mech­an­ism itself.

Mixed approach is the second strongest sig­nal at 40%, and when people explain what they mean, most are describ­ing a hybrid of simple cri­ter­ia plus com­munity involve­ment: not cri­ter­ia alone.

Dis­trib­uted dia­logue is third at 33%, appear­ing most often as a way of reach­ing people before applic­a­tions open — gen­er­at­ing ideas and spark­ing con­ver­sa­tions across the park, rather than as the decision-mak­ing pro­cess itself.

Loc­al pan­el and ideas chal­lenge both sit at 27%. The ideas chal­lenge is favoured by those who want to lower the bar­ri­er for people who wouldn’t recog­nise them­selves as fund­ing applic­ants — using a ques­tion or theme to invite people in. The loc­al pan­el is favoured by those who want com­munity know­ledge in the room when decisions are made.

Delib­er­a­tion and col­lect­ive mod­els are low at 13% each which is not sur­pris­ing giv­en the expect­a­tion that small grants should be quick and simple. Delib­er­a­tion in par­tic­u­lar feels like the wrong register for this pot.

Peer review and pub­lic vote received no votes. We sug­gest remov­ing them.

Prac­tic­al con­sid­er­a­tions: remind­er that the Park Author­ity fin­ance team nor­mally have to cap the num­ber of small grants at circa £50k total when based on £500 for a grant award for oper­a­tion­al reas­ons, a cal­cu­la­tion which is based on a stand­ard grant process.

Medi­um grants

Which approach or com­bin­a­tion feels right for medi­um grants?

15 responses

• Col­lect­ive mod­els — 4 (26.7%)
• Cri­ter­ia-based assess­ment — 8 (53.3%)
• Delib­er­a­tion — 7 (46.7%)
• Dis­trib­uted dia­logue — 4 (26.7%)
• Ideas chal­lenge — 5 (33.3%)
• Loc­al pan­el — 7 (46.7%)
• Peer review — 0 (0%)
• Pub­lic vote — 2 (13.3%)
• Mixed approach — please explai… — 6 (40%)

The pic­ture is not­ably dif­fer­ent from small grants. Cri­ter­ia-based assess­ment remains the most selec­ted at 53%, but delib­er­a­tion and loc­al pan­el are close behind at 47% each. A much stronger par­ti­cip­at­ory sig­nal than for small grants. The group’s instinct seems to be that medi­um grants war­rant more rigour and more com­munity involve­ment in the decision, not just in the pro­cess lead­ing up to it.

Mixed approach is again strong at 40%, and the free text here is more developed than for small grants. People are describ­ing multi-stage pro­cesses where cri­ter­ia fil­ter applic­a­tions before a com­munity body decides. The ideas chal­lenge also rises to 33%, with sev­er­al people see­ing it as a way of gen­er­at­ing qual­ity applic­a­tions before a pan­el or delib­er­at­ive pro­cess takes over.

Col­lect­ive mod­els appear at 27% — high­er than for small grants — with one respond­ent describ­ing mul­tiple open col­lect­ives based on dif­fer­ent chal­lenge ques­tions, all delib­er­at­ing togeth­er. Dis­trib­uted dia­logue sits at 27%, mostly as a pre­curs­or to the decision pro­cess rather than the mech­an­ism itself.

Pub­lic vote is low at 13% and the two respond­ents who selec­ted it both qual­i­fy it. One says only after short­l­ist­ing, the oth­er as part of a broad­er mixed approach. It does not have mean­ing­ful inde­pend­ent sup­port. Peer review received no votes. We sug­gest remov­ing them.

Prac­tic­al con­sid­er­a­tions: we will need to put in a clear timeline as bring­ing a rep­res­ent­at­ive pan­el takes time and resources. Trade-off will be that the grants launch more slowly as it takes time to recruit and onboard a pan­el. Cairngorms Trust and Wind Farm fund already do this approach.

Large grants

Which approach or com­bin­a­tion feels right for large grants?

15 responses

• Col­lect­ive mod­els — 2 (13.3%)
• Cri­ter­ia-based assess­ment — 10 (66.7%)
• Delib­er­a­tion — 7 (46.7%)
• Dis­trib­uted dia­logue — 4 (26.7%)
• Ideas chal­lenge — 5 (33.3%)
• Loc­al pan­el — 6 (40%)
• Peer review — 0 (0%)
• Pub­lic vote — 5 (33.3%)
• Mixed approach — please explai… — 6 (40%)

The large grants pic­ture is the most decis­ive of the three. Cri­ter­ia-based assess­ment jumps to 67% — the highest of any approach across any grant size — reflect­ing a clear instinct that the biggest decisions require the most rigour.

But the par­ti­cip­at­ory sig­nal is also strong: delib­er­a­tion at 47%, loc­al pan­el at 40%, and pub­lic vote rising not­ably to 33%. The group is not say­ing cri­ter­ia instead of com­munity, they are say­ing both, and more of each than for the oth­er pots.

Mixed approach is at 40%, and the free text descrip­tions here are the most ambi­tious of the three grant sizes. A tour­ing open col­lect­ive, a show­case event with pub­lic vot­ing, a multi-stage pro­cess com­bin­ing cri­ter­ia, short­l­ist­ing and com­munity decision. Sev­er­al respond­ents inde­pend­ently arrived at a ver­sion of the same idea: cri­ter­ia fil­ter first, then a com­munity event or pan­el makes the final call in a vis­ible, pub­lic way.

Ideas chal­lenge sits at 33%, most often described as a way of set­ting the dir­ec­tion and gen­er­at­ing strong applic­a­tions before a more rig­or­ous pro­cess takes over — not as the decision-mak­ing mech­an­ism itself.

Pub­lic vote is not­ably high­er here than for small or medi­um grants. Five respond­ents selec­ted it, and the reas­on­ing is con­sist­ent: the big­ger the decision, the more the wider com­munity should have a say. This is a prin­cipled pos­i­tion worth tak­ing ser­i­ously rather than dismissing.

Dis­trib­uted dia­logue is at 27%, col­lect­ive mod­els at 13%. Both lower than for medi­um grants, sug­gest­ing people see large grants as need­ing a more con­cen­trated rather than dis­trib­uted decision-mak­ing process.

Peer review received no votes and can be removed. Col­lect­ive mod­els has min­im­al sup­port and feels mis­matched to the scale and scru­tiny expect­a­tions for this pot.

Prac­tic­al con­sid­er­a­tions: Park Author­ity will have a role as an account­able body. Spe­cific­ally what that role looks like is avail­able to be shaped. It could involve:

• the Park Author­ity con­firm­ing if ideas meet the Cairngorms 2030 themes
• the Park Author­ity doing sift­ing against cri­ter­ia set by this Panel
• the Park Author­ity doing a due dili­gence on the project(s)

The Park Author­ity does expect to:

• Admin­is­ter the dis­tri­bu­tion of funds
• Report back to the Nation­al Lottery
• Sup­port logist­ics and deliv­ery of the decision-mak­ing pro­cess with sup­port from their intern­al engage­ment team