Community Co-Design Grant Clinics 2025

Community co-design grant clinics ensure the people you serve co-own your proposals. Use this workflow to recruit the right voices, host inclusive sessions, and feed insights directly into Crafty so narratives, budgets, and metrics reflect lived experience.

TL;DR

Run quarterly co-design clinics with beneficiaries, delivery partners, and local stakeholders.
Capture priorities in structured canvases linked to your storyboarding workflow.
Upload insights to Crafty and close the feedback loop with participants to build trust.

Why co-design clinics strengthen bids

Funders evaluate authenticity. The Local Trust 2024 research on community-led development found bids co-produced with residents were 25% more likely to secure long-term partnerships. Co-design creates equitable narratives and highlights risks before submission.

Plan the clinic: participants and agenda

Aim for 12–15 participants across beneficiaries, partners, councillors, and lived-experience experts. Offer stipends or vouchers. Draft an agenda that covers problem statements, ideal outcomes, and delivery challenges.

Facilitate inclusive sessions

Use accessible venues, provide translation, and establish ground rules. Combine plenary discussions with breakout canvases. Capture insight live using Miro, Jamboard, or paper templates; photograph outputs for audit trails.

Align tasks with your pipeline board, so clinic outputs feed the relevant stage (e.g., discovery, drafting).

Synthesize insight into grant artefacts

Within five days:

Map community priorities onto your change control register for future variations.
Update Crafty prompts with phrases, evidence, and tone identified in the clinic.
Log consent for quotes/photos following the impact consent workflow.

Share a summary back to participants and note how their ideas influenced the bid—closing the loop is key to long-term trust.

Next steps and template pack

Download the recruitment checklist, clinic agenda, breakout canvases, and follow-up email template. Store them in Crafty so every programme replicates the process.

Action plan

Schedule a clinic in the next four weeks for your highest-priority grant.
Recruit a facilitator who can balance community and organisational needs.
Upload clinic outputs to Crafty with tags for narrative, evidence, and risk.

Key takeaways

Co-design clinics centre community insight and strengthen funder confidence.
Plan inclusive sessions, capture consent, and translate outputs rapidly.
Feed insights into Crafty workflows so every bid reflects lived experience.

Summary and next steps

Co-design is more than consultation—it’s partnership. Build clinics into your pipeline, honour community time, and let Crafty translate insights into compelling, authentic proposals.

Adopt the clinic templates and recruit a diverse participant list.
Run sessions quarterly to align with key funding deadlines.
Close the loop with communities and track commitments in your governance reports.