Mission Incubators Match Fund
Help us to expand community Mission Incubator models in south-east Europe
To genuinely activate mission-led processes of change, communities need to invest in their Mission Incubator models. These are dedicated organisational models that are empowered to be the ‘backbone’ of inspiring, activating and incubating radical change towards a community’s missions.
Mission Incubators are a key part of our approach to tackling the core problem of how communities can organise, resource, plan and manage radical enough change so that they can genuinely come to live and thrive within planetary boundaries.
Without proper investment in Mission Incubators, the opportunities and value of radical change are staying in the abstract, not action.
Our experience has proven that if the job of activating radical change becomes only an ‘add on’ to already-busy people’s workload, it will never work. Realistically a strong Mission Incubator team needs to cover 20-30 roles, in order to cover the breadth of work and expertise needed. Budget is also needed for additional technical expertise and triggering small experimental actions. So, indicatively a Mission Incubator should be set up with an annual operating budget of €2-5 million to give it a strong chance of success.
Viewed in context of the capital investment and social value that Mission Incubator teams are tasked with catalysing and unlocking, this is a small, sensible and essential investment. For example, see here our high-level reflection on this investment against the economics of a decarbonisation mission.
However, it is our experience that communities struggle to make this initial investment on their own. Therefore, this is a common investment gap that urgently needs to be filled.
Therefore, we are establishing a Mission Incubators Match Fund to offer match-funding for community Mission Incubators. Communities will have to demonstrate high levels of commitment to achieving mission-led change in order to secure initial funding. Funding would then be staged, and phase down over a period of around 5 years as communities develop and secure a longer-term funding model for their Mission Incubators.
One strand of our work is also to create Mission Incubators and match funding that is organised at a national level. This is an opportunity to work with national governments to accelerate mission-led change in communities across their state.
We are seeking partners that are able to invest grant funding to help us establish and grow the Thriving Communities Mission Incubators Match Fund.