What we fund
The Which? Fund seeks to address the consumer harms experienced by diverse and disadvantaged communities, by funding specific, strategic projects, with the potential to benefit large numbers of people by changing policy, regulation or practice.
But what does that actually mean?
Consumer harm takes many and varied forms, and is often difficult to spot. Consumer harms include:
- When choices are complicated, making it hard for consumers to find the option that is right for them, or to make an informed decision.
- When businesses take unfair advantage of consumers, for example using information they know about certain people to charge them more than others or where it’s so hard to resolve problems and complaints that consumers end up out of pocket.
- When poor safety standards or criminal scams put consumers in physical danger, or cause stress, financial losses or other emotional harm.
We know that different groups of consumers can experience different consumer harms, and be affected in different ways. We want to make sure that the voices of all consumers are heard and that the issues facing diverse and disadvantaged communities are tackled. We understand that, in some cases, other organisations who work more closely with specific communities, or who have specialist technical skills, will be better placed than Which? to complete this work. The Which? Fund is our way of supporting these groups, to help ensure that we live up to our ambition of tackling the harms facing all consumers.
So what’s on offer?
The Which? Fund offers restricted grant funding to allow UK charities, universities and not-for-profit Community Interest Companies to undertake new research exploring the consumer harms faced by diverse and disadvantaged communities, or identifying and testing innovative solutions to these issues. This means we fund specific projects seeking to understand what’s going on for different groups of consumers, or trying to find ways to tackle problems.
Our pot of funding is limited, so to maximise the impact of our spend, we seek to fund specific, strategic projects which, by generating evidence, have the potential to benefit large numbers of people by changing policy, regulation or practice. Sadly, the Which? Fund is not suitable for funding service delivery projects - we know this important work takes significant investment over long periods of time, and that’s not something we are able to support.
To help you get a sense of what types of project we fund, here are details of all our grants so far.
Want to find out more?
If you’ve got an idea for a project you think the Which? Fund may be able to support, please check our Who can apply page to check if your organisation is eligible, and then our Guidance for Applicants for more details on how to apply.