Our Member’s Panel

With organisations such as ours on a yearly funded cycle – decisions for the year ahead are often made some time in advance. One decision we made in 2025, was to increase the participatory nature of our Climate Action Fund to feel more inclusive and shaped by the community organisations who apply for our funding.

Our Climate Action Fund has long been a popular choice for community groups and organisations who wish to carry out a climate action project, or to carry out some community engagement and consultation. We have explored many ways over the last 5 years where we can make improvements and make the process easy, accessible and fair. Sometimes this has meant ongoing deadlines throughout the entire year, or dedicated funding rounds that open and close on specific dates. One thing we have particularly noticed over the last couple of years is that demand for our Climate Action Fund is ever increasing and becoming particularly competitive whilst small pots of funding up to £1,000 don’t exist as much as they previously did.

Whilst exploring other forms of participatory budgeting such as Soup events, and the Climate Action Ting held in Shetland – we thought there could be some real value in exploring how we make our Climate Action Fund a much more democratic process for 2026. We had a process where we used to make decisions on applications received to our Climate Action Fund by scoring these internally, as the Highlands & Islands Climate Hub team. Whilst this system did work well, there was just always a part of this process that niggled away that we wanted involvement from the members of the Hub in making these funding decisions.

In May 2026, we began recruitment for what we now call our Members Panel. Our Members Panel is made up of individuals who either volunteer, work for, or are affiliated with an organisation who is a member of the Highlands & Islands Climate Hub. Some of the members of our panel have either applied for, and been successful in securing funding via our Climate Action Fund, or members who have not been successful in securing funding from us previously. We have a wonderful mix of experience in our members panel – for some it is a great learning opportunity to see how a funding stream operates, and for others it can be interesting to see what types of projects and activities other organisations work on.

We currently have 6 members on our panel that represent 6 different and unique organisations across the Highlands & Islands. We have representation from Shetland, Orkney, Caithness, Sutherland, Lochaber and Badenoch & Strathspey – so a brilliant geographically spread that really represents the area that the Highlands & Islands cover.

When a climate action fund round closes, our members panel are invited to score all of the applications we have received through our online portal. Our members panel score the applications we receive against the following areas:

·        Community engagement

·        Impact

·        Value for Money

·        Sustainability

·        Delivery

Once scoring is completed by all members of our panel, we then meet virtually to discuss as a group all of the applications we have received in the funding round. This is a really valuable and insightful experience, to hear what everyone’s thoughts are on the vast range of projects that come to us through our Climate Action Fund. It is in these virtual meetings that the panel decides what they would like to fund, and the applications that may require a couple of tweaks before being submitted to us again.

Our members panel is supported by me, and I undertake a technical assessment of all the applications we receive and also communicate with the groups who have applied to our Climate Action Fund. The next round of our Climate Action Fund opens on the 1st November 2026, and will close on the 30th November 2026. This will be our last funding round of 2026.

With many thanks to our panel members who give up their time to support our Climate Action Fund:

Emma Walters – Lochaber Environmental Group

Yoel Howard – Shetland Bike Project

Sarah Forrest – Lairg & District Learning Centre

Donna Booth – Waterlines

Simone Burke – Stromness Community Development Trust

Margarete Paschke – Carrbridge Community Orchard

If you are a Member of the Highlands & Islands Climate Hub and interested in joining our Member’s Panel in the future please drop us an email to funding@hiclimatehub.co.uk and we’ll be happy to discuss with you.