Funding Projects that COULD work, not WILL work | Tom Dawkins - Co-Founder & CEO of StartSomeGood
“Could it work? Is it worth finding out if it can work? Yeah, let’s give that a go.”
Show Notes
Are you up for a high-level, fast-paced, challenging conversation about some of the limitations of grants? This episode is not for the faint-hearted!
Tom’s thoughts on grants and innovation is what led me to invite him onto Grants Uncovered. I wasn’t expecting this to be a cruisey, ‘grants-are-amazing’ conversation about grants. Rather, I was hoping we would get real about some of the downfalls and frustrations of grants, specifically, around some of the limitations that funding providers place on providing grants for truly innovative, risk-taking, cutting-edge projects. I got what I asked for!
The quick wrap:
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DGR challenges
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The need for more grants to try new, unproven concepts
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The scarcity mindset and its impact on funding decisions
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The example of cancer research funding and how it breaks the traditional funding rules. Funders could apply the familiarity of funding something unknown and unproven (like cancer research) more broadly across social sector funding.
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Tom’s perspective on the limited-lived experience of some funders and how this influences their funding approaches
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The importance of understanding where a funder has earned their money from, the difference between entrepreneurial wealth versus generational wealth, and how this impacts the willingness to fund risk
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Will the growth of the tech sector in Australia positively change the openness to fund risk in the future?
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The need for an Angel Investor model within the grants space
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The beauty of San Francisco’s culture of a massive tolerance to failure, and their bias towards trying new things
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How Tom would love funders to ask ‘WILL it work?’ compared to ‘COULD it work?’
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Crowdfunding is more than just the dollars, as the social capital generated lasts far longer the grant
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How Tom is working with funding providers through StartSomeGood and Crowd Match to help funders be more risk-tolerant in supporting new and emerging ideas
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Question of the day: How many Beatles have we missed out on?
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Tom’s answer to Philanthropy Australia’s National Conference Question, What does the future need from us, now? “Courage and commitment…I think you need the courage to try things that may not work. And that’s also based on the commitment to finding the answer and to getting to an outcome, even if it’s uncomfortable and has stops and starts along the way.”
More about the episode
Tom Dawkins is what I would call a die-hard passionate Social Entrepreneur. He is the Co-Founder and CEO of StartSomeGood and Social Entrepreneur-in-Residence for Optus' Future Makers Accelerator.
Tom is also a Non-Executive Director at the Centre for Social Impact, Director at the Centre for Civic Innovation and a Founding Board Member at the Social Enterprise Council of NSW & ACT. When a program like Impact Boom’s Elevate & Accelerator Program pops up in your email or social feed, you can expect to see Tom involved.
“The only true way to differentiate great ideas from those that really can’t work is to try things. To run experiments. And to accept that most of those experiments won’t work out exactly as we hoped. But that involves risk. It involves accepting failure. It involves admitting we’re infallible and don’t really know the answers.This is the discomfort innovation requires, which so much of the social impact funding ecosystem, from governments to foundations to corporate CSR and high net-worth individuals, are unwilling to suffer through in the pursuit of transformation changes. But these are the changes we need most in this rapidly-changing world, and this is the innovation ecosystem we must build.”