Fit for Funding: Investment Lab 2: Making the case for investment now
This Lab will help you to successfully sell your project idea to colleagues and decision makers, as well as to grant-making bodies
Date and time
Location
Online
About this event
- Event lasts 1 hour 30 minutes
If the ticket type for your region has sold out, please join our waitlist here https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/116SQO/
Museum Development South East is pleased to be working with Kate Measures of ‘Heritage Insider’ to deliver a suite of 6 compatible online training sessions covering all the important areas that will improve your project management knowledge and ensure your museum is ‘Fit for Funding’.
These 6x 1.5 hr individual training sessions will offer participants a chance to look at a myriad of tools and techniques to improve their skills to devise robust and accountable projects, create successful funding bids, build confidence to work in partnership, increase financial resilience, or in other words become ‘Fit for Funding’!
Why should you attend this training?
Think your project is ready to start? ...But wait...Do you know why you are doing it? What are your objectives? How have you prepared? Have you connected with people, partners and funders before drafting your project plan? What evidence or data have you collected for benchmarking? Do you know how to write good SMART targets and use evaluation to ensure your museum gains meaningful outcomes?
Come along to all 6 sessions, running once a month to get a complete refresh of the project management cycle, or just attend the topics you specifically need to improve your project planning process, or grant application preparation.
Trainer: Kate Measures, Heritage Insider
Kate Measures is an Ecologist and qualified Museum Curator, as well as being a very experienced evaluator and strategist. She has over 25 years’ experience working across the sector and has been heading up Heritage Insider for 20 years. She is passionate about helping organisations and professionals achieve their goals with a healthy dose of enthusiasm, and new ideas.
Kate is most at home when mentoring others, cracking a strategic problem, or designing inclusive and participative evaluation tools. She is also a National Lottery Heritage Fund mentor.
What will be covered?
To successfully secure funding, you'll need to be able to make a compelling case that stands up to scrutiny in a competitive funding environment.
Put simply, this Lab will help you to successfully sell your project idea to colleagues and decision makers, as well as to grant-making bodies. This is the first step in making your idea a reality - turning it into a funded, well-supported project.
Learning objectives
Attendees will leave with:
- An understanding the kinds of evidence which can be used to show the need for funding
- An awareness of where evidence can be found, for example, through free to access 'big data'
- A clear awareness of the role of evaluation, trialling and consultation in finding out more about the need for your project
- A set of clear actions on how to collect the necessary evidence
- Ideas for how to communicate the need for investment.
Who should attend?
All delegates are welcome from any size and type of museum, and can be trustee, staff, volunteer or a consultant who is currently working in partnership with you on a project or bid.
Anyone who;
- needs to develop or refresh their Project, Partnership and Fundraising Skills to be ‘Fit for Funding’.
- wants to understand what funders require, and how to write and build a stronger case for support to attract and secure money for your museum.
The session will be aimed at a beginner/intermediate level.
The Fit for Funding Series
This is the second in our series of Investment Labs which are designed to get you 'investment-ready' for grants and other funding. You can follow the whole series of six Labs or dip in and out to suit your training needs. Attendees will also have access to Investment 1-1 Advice where you can follow-up on your learning from the Lab or bring specific questions or challenges to chat through with the trainer.
You can sign up to the other sessions using the links below:
- Fit for Funding: Investment Lab 1: Shaping your investment idea – Friday 14 Nov 2025
- Fit for Funding: Investment Lab 3: Defining success - Friday 16 Jan 2026
- Fit for Funding: Investment Lab 4: Measuring success - Friday 6 Feb 2026
- Fit for Funding: Investment Lab 5: Partnering up for success – Friday 6 March 2026
- Fit for Funding: Investment Lab 6: Review, adapt and report - Friday 27 March 2026
Accessibility
To help us ensure you get the most out of the session, you will be asked to email us with any access requirements you may have when you complete your order form. Please see the list of examples of adjustments we can make. This list is not exhaustive and we would be happy to accommodate other requirements where possible, please email us to discuss.
Eligibility
MDSE is funded by Arts Council England (ACE) to support museums in the South East of England within ACE’s Accreditation scheme. The South East is defined as the local authority areas of:
- Bedfordshire (Bedford Borough, Central Bedfordshire and Luton Borough)
- Berkshire (Bracknell Forest, Reading, Slough, West Berkshire, Windsor & Maidenhead and Wokingham)
- Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes
- Cambridgeshire and Peterborough
- Essex, Southend-on-Sea and Thurrock
- Hertfordshire
- Kent and Medway
- Norfolk
- Oxfordshire
- Suffolk
- Surrey
- East Sussex and Brighton & Hove
- West Sussex
We prioritise places on our training programmes for museums which are Accredited or officially Working Towards Accreditation. ACE publishes the official lists of Accredited and Working Towards Accreditation museums on its website. Where possible we will make places available for museums which do not meet these criteria but the number of places will vary depending on the event format.
Terms & Conditions:
For full details of our programmes conditions, see our Terms and Conditions on our website
By booking a place on to a Museum Development South East training event, you are agreeing to the following terms and conditions:
- That you are from a South East museum which is in Arts Council England’s Museum Accreditation Scheme. Where this is not applicable you acknowledge that MDSE will facilitate your attendance if availability permits and that you or your organisation will pay any fees which may apply.
- It is a condition of receiving this ACE funded training that the online evaluation sent to the email address provided at the point of booking is completed by the specified deadline. This deadline is in the email notification unless a paper evaluation is specifically requested and submitted on the day of the training session.
- By booking a place you agree that you will make every endeavour to attend the event and you will give us at least 24 hours’ notice if you need to cancel your booking. If you repeatedly cancel your booking without sufficient notice you agree that we may exercise our right to remove you from future event bookings.
Organized by
Museum Development team for training, support & advice in the East and South East of England. Previously SHARE Museums East and South East Museum Dev.