New workgroup on ‘funding the unfundable’ for transformative research
In response to the limitations of conventional research funding models—often competitive, rigid, and ill-suited for the kinds of transformative work needed to address today’s complex challenges—a new initiative is underway. Led by Foundation We Are in close collaboration with Utrecht University and Erasmus University Rotterdam, the New Ways of Funding workgroup of the Dutch Climate Research Initiative (KIN) brings together researchers and practitioners to rethink how funding systems could better support collaborative, transdisciplinary, and action-oriented research.
By experimenting with new approaches, the group seeks to uncover and co-create alternative funding mechanisms that align more closely with the demands of a rapidly changing world. Currently there are two opportunities available:
“Impossible Projects”: an experimental call for ideas
Open 12 June – 15 July 2025
The experimental call for ideas Impossible Projects aims to surface and explore brief descriptions of ‘unfundable gems’—the kinds of collaborative, imaginative, and transformative research that people would be excited to pursue, if the conditions permitted, but which are deemed impossible to fund.
By opening space to allow otherwise invisible dream collaborations to surface, the group aims to uncover the unmet desires and promising alternatives in the funding landscape in order to explore how these can shape new funding instruments. The collected repertoire will be shared within KIN and its broader network to expand the collective imagination of what funding could make possible and to explore new possibilities of doing so.
The call will close on 15th July. Do you have an ‘unfundable gem’? Find more information including how to send in your idea here.
Probing New Pathways: co-design session to create new instruments
In November, the New Ways of Funding group is organising a collaborative design session to prototype new types of funding calls which can support unconventional approaches to climate transition research and collaboration, taking a first step towards more open and responsive funding approaches which are capable of supporting the kinds of work the future demands.
Bringing together a diverse network of programme makers, policy officers, legal experts, researchers, innovators, and other key stakeholders, the session will focus on five ‘unfundable gems’ - promising research ideas which fall outside traditional funding structures. The session will probe constraints that block their fundability and harness the collective expertise to shape imaginative funding models around them.
Would you like to take part in the session? Email opencall@foundationweare.org.
The KIN Workgroup approach
Mainstream funding models are largely premised on competition between research consortiums, designed to support specialisation, and assume that collaborations should function as projects, with well defined plans from the onset. These features, while conducive to some forms of research, often constrain the ability to conduct more alternative, yet truly necessary, transformative work: transdisciplinary, collaborative, action-oriented, process- or place-based research – essential in addressing the climate crisis. Although many experimental ways of funding are being explored, many constraints often remain.
With the New ways of funding workgroup, Kornelia Dimitrova and Alex Szwaj (Foundation We Are), Jonas Torrens (Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University), Mattijs Taanman (Erasmus University Rotterdam) and Stephanie Holst (KIN) have set out to undertake an experimental co-design research in order to develop a deep understanding of how the current funding system could work differently and cater more closely to the knowledge demands of a rapidly changing climate.