#19 Funding Opportunity for MH Startups
Access up to $9 million to scale your digital intervention
Hi friends,
I’ve got some great news for you.
Wellcome have announced a funding program for digital mental health interventions. And it’s a big deal. You can get up to $9 million to fund your project.
When I heard about this, I thought, that’s something I need to share with the readers of The Hemingway Report. So this week we take a break from company and industry breakdowns to tell you everything you need to know about this funding opportunity.
Whether you’re just getting started or run a well established organisation, extra funding is always helpful, and this is a great opportunity to access a significant amount of capital for an important project.
I wanted to give you as much helpful information as possible, so I reached out to the Wellcome team to learn more about this funding opportunity. I wanted to know exactly what is available to startups and how you can maximise your chances of success.
So I had a chat with the person from Wellcome who has led this funding call, Elena Netsi.
In this post, you’ll learn;
- Everything you need to know about this funding opportunity
- How much funding you can get
- How to know if you are eligible
- How to apply
- The assessment criteria and key timelines
Let’s get into it!
TLDR;
- Up to £7 million ($9 million) is available for each project
- Businesses and non-profit organisations can apply
- Focus is on scalable, digital interventions to advance early intervention in depression, anxiety and psychosis
- Projects must be innovative and have potential for scalable, sustainable impact
- There are four assessment criteria: the proposed work (40%), the team (20%), lived experience involvement (20%) and the research environment (20%)
- Applications closes on December 5th
What is this funding opportunity?
Wellcome is a global charitable foundation focused on solving urgent health issues. One of their primary focus areas is mental health where they want to;
“Drive a transformative change in the ability to intervene as early as possible in the course of anxiety, depression and psychosis in ways prioritised by the people who experience them.”
And they are investing significant amounts of capital to do so. Pretty awesome.
Over the last few years they have launched multiple funding opportunities in different areas of mental health.
This latest funding opportunity is specifically focused on developing scalable and sustainable digital interventions to advance early intervention in depression, anxiety and psychosis. It’s open to both businesses and non-profits that focus on interventions that reduce symptoms and/or functional impairments related to anxiety, depression or psychosis.
What do you get?
I mean, the main benefit is getting a substantial amount of capital to fund your project. But there’s a bunch of other benefits to this funding that will be helpful.
- £3m - £7m in funding ($4m - $9m)
- This funding can be used for up to five years (but you definitely don’t need to take all this time if you don’t need it)
- Access to an independent expert to guide you through your project
- Access to an IP and commercialisation expert
- Support in developing plans for lived experience and translational activities
- Bespoke support from Wellcome to help you with your project goals
- A community of other successful applicants with access to events and networking
- Access to staff from the Wellcome team to support you throughout the project
What can I use the funding for?
Essentially, you can use the funds for any reasonable expenses and investments needed to test and scale your intervention. The main thing they won’t fund is working capital costs. You can check out the specifics here, but you don’t need to worry about it being restrictive.
Who can apply?
I’ll include a link below with the full list of requirements on who can apply. But here are the most important things you need to know;
Your organisation can be;
- A Higher education institution, a Research institute or A non-academic healthcare organisation.
- A Company, a not-for-profit organisation, or a non-governmental research organisation.
Your intervention should;
- Be designed to lead to reductions in symptom(s) and/or functional impairments in depression anxiety or psychosis
- Have the individual with mental health problems as the end user.
Your project should;
- Include collaboration between researchers and a company / not-for-profit organisation
- Be designed for sustainable delivery at scale (i.e., designed to reach a lot of people at appropriate costs)
- Already have an MVP with some feasibility data
- Clear plans for how you will evaluate your intervention
- Have involvement from people with lived experience
- Ensure that your intervention is inclusive and safe
- Use one or more of Wellcome’s recommended common measures
Your team needs to have;
- A lead applicant
- The research expertise required to drive the proposed research
- At least one individual from an organisation that can take the intervention to scale
- People with lived experience of mental health problems.
To re-emphasise, this funding is really focused on achieving scale and sustainability of interventions. As Elena mentioned to me;
“We didn’t want to create several more small scale pilot projects, we really want to take what is out there already and take it to reach the population it’s intended to reach.
Our expectation is that applicants are really going to consider scalability and sustainability from very early on. ‘How am I going to scale this up, who is going to deliver this, what is my business model for taking this to scale?’
That’s why we are asking for partnerships between research experts (who can evaluate if the intervention works, under what conditions and for whom), and organisations (that can take it to scale).”
How do I apply?
The process is pretty straightforward and there’s really just two steps for you to get through;
- Submit Your Application: The first step is to submit your application, outlining your project, its goals, and how it meets the criteria. Because this stage forms the bulk of your overall application, it does take some time to complete so you should make sure to start early. Your application needs to be in by December 5th 2024.
- Interview: if your EOI is shortlisted, you’ll attend an interview with a panel of experts selected by the Wellcome team. This will include a presentation and a Q&A.
What if I don’t know exactly how to scale my intervention?
Some of the organisations I chat to understand that they need a better model to scale their offering. But they may not know exactly what that model should be.
Can they still apply? The answer is yes.
It’s OK not to have figured out exactly how you are going to scale. But, you do need a hypothesis for how you would approach scaling and reaching sustainability, as well as a clear plan to test and evaluate it.
What if I don’t have a research or scaling partner?
If you’re a researcher that needs an organisation to support scaling (or vice versa), not to worry, Wellcome will actually help you find a suitable partner to support your application.
Honestly, Wellcome are just a cool organisation, like that really helpful mate who will come around and help you clean out your garage (or perhaps more relevantly, set you up with their friend).
They’re running their next matchmaking event on September 12th and you can sign up here.
How many teams will get funded?
They don’t have a set number of teams they want to fund. Instead, they have put aside a substantial amount of capital and Elena told me they want to fund every project that meets their bar. This is a very logical approach. If you meet their bar, Wellcome will fund your project. Simples.
If I’m applying as a business, are there any specific requirements?
Because Wellcome is a charitable organisation, if they fund a for-profit business, they need to implement a method for generating a return to their fund if the project goes on to make money. This is to ensure they stay within their requirements as a charitable organisation.
If you want the details on how they do this, it’s through what’s called a Programme Related Investment (PRI). This could be in the form of a loan, a convertible loan (where a loan is made by Wellcome to a company and we have the option in the future to convert the loan into shares) or a revenue share agreement (where the business pays Wellcome a portion of the revenue generated from commercialising the technology they funded).
They have a standardised template for their convertible loan and will always work with organisations to ensure the agreement is something they feel is fair to all parties.
What’s the timeline?
- Application Submission Deadline: 5 December 2024, by 17:00 GMT
- Shortlisting of applications: February 2025
- Interviews for Shortlisted Applicants: 8-10 April 2025 (Virtual interviews)
- Final Funding Decision Announced: April 2025
What do I do now?
- If you want to learn more, sign up for the information webinar on September 10th
- Read the full details on the funding opportunity here
- Prepare your application and get it in before December 5th
It makes me so happy to be able to write about cool initiatives like this. From my experience with Wellcome so far, I really like what they are doing. They are extremely well-informed, smart and bold in their ambition.
What I’ve been specifically impressed with is their understanding of startups. Elena told me how previous funding calls had been more focused on researchers and non-profits but they really want this one to also be accessible to businesses - because they see them as having significant potential to scale important interventions.
And they’ve done a great good job at making this a funding opportunity suitable for startups. It’s a substantial amount of funding that will allow you to actually move the needle on an important initiative. It’s not super restrictive. It’s a straightforward application process. And above anything else, they just feel like the exact kind of funding partners you’d want to work with.
If you have any questions about this funding opportunity or want to bounce application ideas around, feel free to send me an email. Many thanks to Elena Netsi, Lynsey Bilsland and all of the Wellcome team in creating this funding opportunity.
As always, I’d love to hear from you so feel free to respond to this email.
Keep fighting the good fight!
Steve
Founder of The Hemingway Group
P.S. feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn
