Three ways to fund your innovation ideas

The InnovateNoW programme offers three different types of award:

The Innovation Bursary Award provides up to £25,000, primarily as a contribution to staff costs, to release staff to implement the adoption of an innovative service where the impact is confined to one pathway, in particular where implementation enhances working and minimises disruption to other teams.

Enabling Change Award

The Enabling Change Award offers up to £250,000 - or up to £50,000 per organisation involved in the application (e.g. the maximum award will be £150,000 for an application involving three organisations) - and is designed for situations where the innovation will be implemented across or will affect a range of teams or delivery providers.

Innovation Sharing Award

The Innovation Sharing Award provides up to £5,000 to encourage greater understanding of an innovation, for example to run a workshop, produce written material or allow for staff time to explain its benefit to others.

For details of the type of projects which are eligible see awards criteria.

Innovation Bursary Awards

This award is to enable adoption of a new or an existing innovation, or further improvement of an innovation developed within the NHS organisation applying for the award or by another NHS organisation.

The award is aimed at projects where the impact is confined to one pathway, in particular where implementation enhances working and minimises disruption to other teams.

If the impact of the innovation has not been previously measured, the applicant should explain the anticipated benefits.

The award recognises the significant time commitment by clinical teams involved in innovation activity and can be used to back-fill posts and pay for applied action learning. This will include adopting and applying new service models from outside the North West.

Commitment to part fund the overall costs by the applicant’s host organisation will be considered favourably.

The funding can be used for:

Implementation and evaluation of an innovative service
Staff time to lead and contribute towards the implementation, although this does not include ongoing operational costs following implementation.

An example of its use could be the adoption and evaluation of a new monitoring system within a department, which is used by a wider team, or implementing a new service that takes a novel approach to treating patients.

The bursary will be up to a maximum of £25,000 for an application which must be primarily for a contribution to staff costs (to release staff to carry out the project). Applicants for the Innovation Bursary Award can also apply for an Innovation Sharing Award to help promote their innovation once it has been proved successful.

Enabling Change Awards

This award will enable the implementation of an innovation which is likely to have an impact across several teams, specialities, departments, organisations or care delivery providers – for example both in the NHS and the voluntary sector.

The award will be granted for scalable, innovative, fundamental complex-systems change incorporating structures (attributes), processes (sequence of events) and patterns (behaviours). This may include changing organisational boundaries, responsibilities, introducing new roles, tools, teams and so on to bring about transformational change.

The innovative service may have been developed within the NHS organisation applying for the award or by another NHS organisation, provider or company.

Where two stages of funding are required, for example where there is an initial pilot followed by wider implementation, the applicant will need to apply for both tranches of funding at the same time, making it clear that the project will be staged.

This award can be used for:

Addressing specific barriers to adopting an innovation which will realise both local efficiency and quality improvement but also will offer transferable knowledge.
Implementation of the innovation.
Evaluation of the innovation once implemented.
Demonstration of the innovation to other organisations to encourage adoption elsewhere – encompassing all the activities listed in the Innovation Sharing Award section.

Commitment to part-fund the overall adoption costs of the innovation by the applicant's host organisation will be considered favourably.

An example of its use would be transferring services from an acute 'traditional setting' to a non-acute or alternative care setting, redesigning a service across a number of organisations to provide patient-centred care, or adopting a proven method of service delivery from another region or country.

It is anticipated that a return on investment can be demonstrated for Enabling Change Award applications.

Applications should also include a plan to promote or disseminate the innovation once it has been evaluated, and applicants may allocate up to £5,000 of the funds for this purpose. Enabling Change applicants may not apply for an Innovation Sharing Award separately to fund such activity.

he Enabling Change Award will be a maximum of £250,000 for a system wide, multi stakeholder application (where up to £50,000 is available per organisation involved in the consortium), or up to £50,000 for applications involving a single organisation.

Innovation Sharing Awards

This award aims to encourage understanding and adoption of an innovation through facilitation and shared learning materials.

This award is to fund a discrete programme of activity across a team, organisation and/or external organisations, to demonstrate the innovation to others and to encourage adoption elsewhere.

The innovation may have resulted from an Innovation Bursary Award or an innovation that has been implemented and evaluated without InnovateNoW funding.

The funding can be used for:

Running a workshop to demonstrate how the innovation was developed, implemented and evaluated.
Funding an innovative service leader from outside of the North West to share information with interested organisations within the region.
Developing information material to aid understanding and dissemination, such as leaflets, booklets, posters and a website.
Patient involvement in sharing or promoting the innovation.
Staff time to educate others about the approach.
Presentation of the innovation at a relevant conference whether by oral presentation or by visual means such as a poster.

Commitment to part-fund the overall adoption costs of the innovation by the applicant’s host organisation will be considered favourably.

An example of its use may be training individuals to teach others in a particular skill required for the innovation to be transferred to other teams or organisations, or spending time working with another organisation in the region to support them in adopting an innovative service.

The award will be up to a maximum of £5,000 per application.