21FND003 The New Infrastructure Design Lab - Established

Prior to the start of this contract, the Fund will award up to 8-10 small grants to infrastructure organisations (4 pr 5 to 'established ' infrastructure organisations, 4 or 5 to emerging infrastructure organisations). These grants will fund the resourcing and 'headspace' needed within these organisations to engage with the Design Lab process. The needs, challenges and activities of established /existing infrastructure organisations will be greatly different than those of emerging infrastructure organisations. We are therefore procuring two different organisations or consortiums.

We are seeking two support partners to each design and run a design lab to support these two cohorts to be ready for the future, and provide some answers on what is needed in civil society in terms of infrastructure now and into the future, and what role can The National Lottery Community Fund take on to support infrastructure? 

Established Infrastructure Organisations It will be useful for bidders to know what we will be looking for when making these grants to established infrastructure organisations - so they are clear what kinds of organisations they in turn will be supporting.

For the established infrastructure cohort, we will seek to support applications that: 1.  Demonstrate that they are playing a vital role in terms of an infrastructure offer, and with no new infrastructure providing a clear alternative. 2.  Demonstrate that they are willing to reimagine and redeliver what they do in a way that makes use of digital approaches. 3. Demonstrate organisation wide buy-in to digital change, and an understanding of the opportunities and challenges ahead.  4.   Are frank and detailed about their strengths and weaknesses in terms of digital skills. 5. Demonstrate a generosity of spirit in how they intend to share their learning, technology or opportunities with other civil society organisations. 6.  Can demonstrate that their networks and/or membership are active and representative. 7. Have a small core team that can demonstrate that by investing in them to change, there will be a ripple effect in terms of value and impact. 8.  Demonstrate how their funding will free up staff time to engage with our support contractor and that the work will lead to sustainable change in how they work. 

The successful bidder will provide expert advice and practical support to the cohort through a dedicated team which will provide the following:

1. Service audits. 2. Identifying what to stop doing. 3.  Identifying new skills and capabilities. 4. Becoming user centred. 5. Approaches for testing, experimenting and iterating. 6.  Better segmentation of users. 7. Support to become more responsive and able to continually adapt. 8. Better use of digital tools and data. 9. Content design and different channels for distribution of content. 10. Building partnerships.

It is our intention that this work will provide an opportunity to embed deep learning, by worki