Setting up a new project financing program at KWF

Bringing informal care closer to (ex) patients and their loved ones

Project Overview 

KWF Dutch Cancer Society has been working on scientific research to fight cancer for many years. And with success: there are more and more people who survive the disease. But, even when cured, living with the consequences of cancer can be challenging. In recent years KWF has broadened its activities, aiming for a better quality of life for (recovered) patients and their loved ones.  When people are struggling with social, emotional or practical challenges related to cancer, they could, next to receiving support from family and friends, often benefit from informal care: support from volunteers and peers. Formal care providers (e.g. oncologist, oncology nurse, GP) can help to identify the needs and refer people to appropriate care and support. However, they do not always know or consider informal care – such as support provided by trained volunteers. 

Envisioning a world in which more (ex) cancer patients and relatives will find the informal care that suits their needs, KWF initiated a new project financing program in 2022. The program also aims to stimulate cooperation between formal and informal care providers, so that they will find and refer to each other better.  

The process and system for allocating funding at KWF are designed to ensure appropriate use of donated money. These are fairly elaborate and complex, because of the financial and legal requirements related to allocating grants to scientific research; mostly multi-year projects, staffed by large academic research institutes. The new financing program for Informal Care is aimed at financing practical projects, to make direct impact, run by much smaller organizations that rely mostly on volunteers. This required a different and less complex approach, which was developed in 2022. While at the same time executing the program for the first time. This agile way of working enabled KWF to start funding projects with their 2022 budget for Informal Care, as well as learn in practice how to improve the new approach further for consecutive rounds of funding. 

Action and Impact

After completing the Informal Care strategy project with KWF, IPSO, NFK and Kanker.nl in April 2022, Heartbeat Ventures was asked by KWF, as a direct follow-up assignment, to lead the development of the new project financing program Informal Care as well as run it for the first time. We led a project team (8+ team members) at KWF through the various stages of initiating and running the program, from May 2022 through to the announcement of the awarded grants on 22 November 2022.  

As a team we developed the program in all aspects: goals, conditions, criteria, process, system, tools and communications. We helped KWF with setting up a pre-screening team and an assessment team, and helped with managing roles and responsibilities among internal KWF staff, external experts and external assessors.  

We had an agile and lean approach, pragmatically running the program while still designing it at the same time. We opened up the program for applicants already at the start of July 2022. So we had to build, learn and adjust continuously throughout the various phases. 

To enlarge the chances of success for applicants, we organized a pre-screening phase. Potential applicants were asked to submit their project idea through a simple online form. They received feedback on the suitability of the project idea, as well as suggestions for improvement. Only the applicants who received positive advice could continue to submit a full project proposal. 62 project ideas were ​submitted, of which 40 received a positive advice.  

For the registration and assessment of the project proposals, we worked with many internal experts at KWF to adjust the existing KWF systems, operational processes and standards for assigning funding, where necessary. It was a challenge to make the system easy-to-use for small volunteer organizations since it was originally designed for research grants. However, with additional support from KWF, 33 applicants were able to submit their project proposals with a request for funding. From these, 11 projects were granted funding, which meant that KWF could spend the assigned 2022 budget of 2,5 million for Informal Care, enabling these projects to start making the difference for people living with cancer. 

For this first round of funding we developed the program and executed at the same time, learning a lot. We gave ample attention to evaluate the set-up and execution of the program with all people involved. With the improvement points, the next rounds of funding can be even better tailored to the field of Informal Care. 

Impact in numbers:  

• 2.5 million euros awarded to these 11 projects aiming to improve the collaboration between formal and informal cancer care, enabling more (ex) cancer patients and relatives to find the informal care that suits their needs.  

• Currently there are 830.000 people in the Netherlands who have (had) cancer and the number is growing. A third of them has a need for some form of emotional, mental or social support.  

• The lives of partners and family members of cancer patients also get disrupted. Many of them could benefit from informal support of people who are going through similar experiences. 

Contact person: Liesbeth Scholten