I am sympathetic to the cause (both accessibility issues and LHS’s move) but I don’t personally think that spending capital on fixing an issue with the building which you could get kicked out of with little notice (being a meanwhile contract) is a good use of LHS funds, let alone HSF funds.
In my view the money would likely be better spent trying to get LHS legal help and a deposit to get a commercial mortgage to get a permanent home that could be invested in.
I think we need to think strategically about how we spend the money to ensure long term benefit of the money. If we spend money fixing short term issues it will disappear over night. Using it to encourage more spaces, more collaboration, and investing in supporting older spaces like LHS to move into the next stage of a permanent home would be a useful process that would further the goals of HSF and be a learning process that could be documented for other spaces.
Also funding often begets more funding, we should think about this too?
It’s going to be a little while until we start allocating grants, not least because we need to get the foundation itself shipshape first.
Assuming we go ahead with the provisional grant plan, we’ll be publishing full documentation on the application process, the kinds of things that the HSF will fund, and the maximum amounts we’re willing to fund by category. It is likely that we’ll go down the same route as many funding organisations and ask that a percentage of the funds from the HSF are fund-matched by the group requesting them.
Regarding @unknowndomain’s comment about funding; I’m going to be looking for potential grant organisations we can apply to for more funding. If we find any that look suitable, I’ll suggest that we hire a professional grant-writer using the funds we have - yes it’s possible for us to do it voluntarily, but it is a colossal amount of work and people who do this professionally substantially boost your chances. It’s possible I may be able to persuade someone to work pro bono, but no guarantees!
If anyone would like to help with that, let me know.