The situation
A community-led trust ran a wellbeing-to-work programme that was at risk of losing its funding when a key funder withdrew support. Without a new funding pathway, a programme with a genuine track record of helping people move toward paid work was at risk of closing.
What we did
- Wrote and structured a full funding application from the ground up, translating the trust's community work into a clear, evidence-based case that funding panels could assess.
- Developed a second, complementary funding proposal to a different funder, targeting wraparound support costs.
- Designed a structured questions process to draw out real stories and evidence from frontline programme staff, so the application was grounded in lived detail rather than generic claims.
- Ran multiple rounds of revision, applying detailed feedback consistently across entire documents rather than in isolated fixes.
- Produced professional, brand-consistent document design, so the application presented with the same credibility as the programme it described.
The outcome
The trust received a polished, well-evidenced funding application and companion proposal — built to give a values-led, community-run programme the strongest possible chance of continued funding, without compromising the authenticity of how the work is actually delivered.
Why this matters for employment services: good employment and community programmes often struggle to translate relational, on-the-ground work into the kind of structured case funders need. This is what that support looks like in practice — taking real work and real impact, and building the case for it properly.
ESNZ