Innovation Fund

The Innovation Fund will support museums to develop, trial, and implement activities that directly improve the museum’s financial position. We are keen to fund innovative, ambitious and experimental ideas that may be considered impossible or too risky without external funding. Proposals to improve your museum’s financial position may include, but are not limited to:

• Use of your museum and outdoor spaces for event hire, including adapting your spaces to be more suitable for events, and hosting larger-scale events such as festivals
•  Sharing your space or renting your buildings to other organisations, including adapting your space to be suitable for leasing
• Holiday accommodation, including camping, glamping and self-catered accommodation
• Collaboration with other organisations, including commercial partners, focused on generating income or sharing costs
• New tourism offers, including experience tourism, ancestry tourism, and voluntourism
• Events programmes, including events that are not related to your collection, such as board game evenings or murder mysteries hosted by the museum
• Workshops or courses, including for crafts and skills
• Developing profit-focused digital offers
• Innovation to retail offering, including the development of bespoke retail products or developing partnerships with local suppliers or artists
• Innovation to catering offer, including pop-up cafes and developing partnerships with local suppliers and organisations
• Developing a philanthropy strategy
• Energy generation to support community energy needs or trialling new forms of renewable energy

The fund can support the creation of new activity or significant development to existing activity that will directly improve the museum’s financial position. This includes upscaling or embedding ideas that have already been successfully trialled. The fund can also support initial testing of a new idea, including through feasibility studies and exploratory pilots. The fund cannot support the continuation of existing activity or activity that does not directly improve the museum’s financial position.

• Organisations that run Accredited museums in Scotland.
• Organisations that run non-Accredited museums in Scotland, including museums with Working Towards Accreditation status. The eligibility criteria for non-Accredited museums are listed below.
• Formally constituted groups of museums (eg, geographical forums).
• To be eligible for this fund, organisations must demonstrate compliance with the Scottish Government’s Fair Work First policy. This requires paying all workers at least the Real Living Wage and ensuring staff have access to appropriate channels for effective voice. Further information can be found in Fair Work First – Guidance for funding applicants. For Museum Futures funding, MGS may consider exceptions for organisations that are not yet paying the Real Living Wage but are actively working towards it. Exceptions will only be considered if the requested funding supports the organisation’s progress towards paying the Real Living Wage. All other Fair Work requirements must be met.

Eligibility for non-Accredited museums 

To be eligible for funding, your organisation must meet the following criteria:

• Have a formally adopted constitution which states what the purpose and core activities of your organisation is.
  Meet the 2022 ICOM definition of a museum:

“A museum is a not-for-profit, permanent institution in the service of society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage. Open to the public, accessible and inclusive, museums foster diversity and sustainability. They operate and communicate ethically, professionally and with the participation of communities, offering varied experiences for education, enjoyment, reflection and knowledge sharing.”

This means that we cannot accept applications from museums whose collections are entirely in private ownership.

• Your museum must be a physical site that is open to the public at least 20 days a year. Your organisation must engage the public with your collection.
• Operating a museum in line with the above definition should be one of your organisation’s main purposes, or the main function of a dedicated department.
• Benefit deriving from the grant must demonstrably be primarily for your museum function.

To assess whether your museum meets this definition, we will ask you questions about:

• The size of your collection and the types of objects you care for. Some collections are not considered museum collections, for example, the live collections of zoos and gardens; collections of archives; and digital collections.
• Who owns your collection. We ask about collection ownership to understand your role and responsibility in looking after your collection. You do not need to own your collection to apply, but we may require further details about your organisation’s agreement with the collection owner. We are unable to fund museums whose collections are entirely privately owned.
• If and how you add to your collection. Museum collections must not be ‘closed’ collections. You must be able to continue to add to your collection and develop it.
• Your organisation’s purpose and museum activity. This will include questions about your venue, when it is open, and how you engage the public with your collection.

Organisations can apply for grants between £20,000 and £250,000. Projects can last up to 3 years and must begin with 6 months of the award date.

We are keen to fund ambitious projects and are encouraging museums to apply for grants of up to £250,000 to support these big ideas. Equally, we recognise that projects of all sizes can deliver significant impact and will award grants from £20,000 to support smaller-scale initiatives that will make a difference to your museum.

Before applying to this fund, you must complete an Organisational Health Checker and return it to the Museum Futures Team, who will arrange a follow-up call to discuss opportunities for support. The Organisational Health Checker can be downloaded at the bottom of this page and can be sent to MuseumFutures@museumsgalleriesscotland.org.uk.

If you did not discuss the focus of your application with us during conversation about the Organisation Health Checker, please contact your Museums Future contact and let them know you are planning to apply for this fund. They will be able to offer further advice on your proposal.

Before you apply to this fund you must complete the Fair Work First Employer Declaration. You do not need to complete the declaration if you have already completed the declaration this financial year or if your organisation is entirely volunteer-run. The declaration can be downloaded from the bottom of the page and sent to grants@museumsgalleriesscotland.org.uk by the date of submission of your application.

Applications will be available on our online portal, MGS Online, in the coming weeks. In the meantime, you can contact the Museum Futures team to discuss a proposal:  MuseumFutures@museumsgalleriesscotland.org.uk or you can book a 1:1 surgery call with our team via Eventbrite.

The Innovation Fund operates as a rolling fund, meaning you can apply at any time once you are ready. Applications will be assessed on a continual basis, with decisions provided within 8 weeks of submission.

Applications will be available on our online portal, MGS Online, in the coming weeks.

The fund will remain open until February 2026.

Organisations can also apply to the National Lottery Heritage Fund for match funding through the National Lottery Heritage Grants £10,000-£250,000 programme. We have aligned our application forms to help streamline the process, making it easier to apply to both funds. The Heritage Fund is happy to offer pre-application advice. Interested organisations can get advice by submitting a Project Enquiry Form.

In line with MGS timescales, The Heritage Fund aims to review applications and provide a decision within eight weeks of submission.

Strength of Idea

We want to fund strong ideas that have a good chance of succeeding and generating income for your museum. Tell us about your proposal, what the market for your ideas is, and why you think your idea will work. Include evidence that supports your idea, including consultation and market research you have undertaken, advice you have sought and any pilot activity you have carried out.

Potential Impact

We want to fund proposals that will have a significant and sustainable impact on their museums. Tell us how this project will improve your museum’s financial position. Share projections of income generation and cost savings and tell us how this will benefit your museum. If your project generates income, this income must primarily benefit your museum. We cannot support proposals for income generation where income is used to benefit parts of the organisation other than the museum.

We want to support innovation and give museums a chance to try new things that they would not otherwise be able to explore. We know some museums may have previously had opportunity to try something that has shown potential, but then not had the means to develop it sufficiently to make it sustainable. We can, therefore, also support you to significantly develop or scale up an existing or previously piloted income-generating activity if you can demonstrate that doing so will substantially improve your financial position in a sustainable way.  Tell us how this proposal represents an innovation for your museum or significant development of an existing activity.

Environmental Sustainability

We want to fund environmentally conscious proposals. MGS expects museums to be taking steps to become more environmentally sustainable. Tell us how you have considered the environmental impact of your proposal and sought to increase the potential positive impact and reduce the negative impact of your proposal.

Deliverability

Tell us how you’ve planned the project, how you’ll deliver it, and what skills your organisation has to make it a success. Explain why the proposed approach is the most suitable method for delivering this project. Strong applications will include a detailed project plan, a detailed project budget with evidence of costs, work briefs for any commissioned work, and job descriptions for any new posts.

Financial Need

Tell us why you need additional financial support to carry out your project. As part of the assessment process, we will consider your organisation’s financial capacity to deliver the proposed activity. This includes whether you are in a stronger position than other applicants to fund the project from your own reserves, or whether you have access to a wider range of alternative funding sources.

This fund will support costs directly associated with developing and delivering new or expanded activity that will improve your museum’s financial position. This includes:

• Costs for new staff or additional staff time required for developing or delivering your project
• Indirect staff costs for existing members of staff who will support the project
• Consultant costs related to innovation activity
• Capital costs
• Purchase of fixtures, furnishings and equipment
• Purchase of limited amounts of stock to enable trialling of bespoke or local stock
• Staff training
• Marketing for the funded activity

This fund cannot support activity that does not directly generate income. This includes:

• Display and gallery redevelopment
• Collections management work
• Continuation of your existing activity unless the proposal is for a significant development to this activity
• Marketing activity on its own. We will fund marketing activity that promotes the proposal
• Fundraising posts.

If your project generates income, this income must primarily benefit your museum. We cannot fund income generation activity where income is used to benefit parts of the organisation other than the museum. If your application is successful, it will be a condition of the award that profit generated through your funded activity is ring-fenced for reinvestment in the provision and development of your museum offer.