Round 2 of Innovate Now with Wellcome is Now Open

Round 2 of Innovate Now with Wellcome is now open, and this time, we want to be clearer than ever about what this fund exists to do.

At its heart, Innovate Now with Wellcome is about the people who make research possible.

Across the UK, Black and Mixed Black heritage researchers are contributing knowledge, asking important questions and helping shape how we understand the world around us. But progressing through research can also mean navigating isolation, racism, burnout, limited access to networks, and systems that were not designed with Black researchers in mind.

At the same time, Black-led initiatives are already responding to those challenges. They are creating communities, mentoring researchers, providing safe spaces, protecting wellbeing, opening pathways into research, building leadership and advocating for change.

Too often, that work is underfunded, dependent on volunteers or sustained by people giving far more of themselves than is reasonable.

Innovate Now with Wellcome exists to invest in those initiatives.

Through the programme, Do it Now Now and Wellcome are providing multi-year grants of between £13,000 and £48,000, alongside capacity-building support, to help Black-led initiatives strengthen both the support they provide to researchers and the organisations that make that work possible.

Round 2 is open now and closes on 27 November 2026. Apply here.

We are funding support for researchers, not research projects

One of the most important things we have clarified through our information sessions is that Innovate Now with Wellcome is not a research grant.

We are not looking to fund research studies, data collection, laboratory work, audits or product development.

We are looking to fund the people and structures around research.

That means initiatives helping Black and Mixed Black heritage researchers to start, stay in and progress through research careers, while also protecting their wellbeing and creating the conditions in which they can thrive.

That might mean mentoring and coaching, mental health and wellbeing support, peer communities and safe spaces, training and skills development, leadership support, pathways into research careers, or advocacy aimed at removing systemic barriers within universities, the NHS and other research institutions.

A simple way to think about the programme is:

Supporting researchers = what we want to fund.
Doing the research itself = not what this grant is for.

Wellbeing is not separate from career progression.

We also want to be explicit about something that can sometimes get lost when we use the language of “research careers”.

This programme is not only interested in conventional career development.

For Black researchers, being able to progress often depends on whether they have access to community, support, safety and spaces where they do not have to navigate difficult experiences alone.

That is why wellbeing and mental health support are firmly within the scope of this programme.

An initiative providing counselling for Black researchers could fit. So could a peer support network for Black PhD students, a community helping researchers working on traumatic subjects, a mentoring programme for early-career researchers, or a Black researchers' network building stronger connections and reducing isolation.

Supporting someone's wellbeing can be an important part of enabling them to remain in research, develop as a researcher and build a sustainable career.

And we mean “researcher” broadly

Research does not only happen in universities.

Academic researchers are a priority for the programme, but our definition also includes people working across professional and community research settings.

That can include PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, lecturers and research fellows, as well as NHS researchers, policy researchers, researchers working in charities and think tanks, peer and community researchers, and students preparing for research careers.

We are interested in the wider ecosystem that enables Black people to enter research, remain in it and progress.

If your initiative supports Black researchers generally or supports a particular group such as Black women in academia or Black early-career researchers, your work may fit the programme. Where an initiative is focused on researchers within one particular discipline, that discipline should have a connection to human health, life or wellbeing.

You do not have to be a large organisation.

Some of the communities making the biggest difference to Black researchers did not begin as formal organisations.

They began as WhatsApp groups. Informal mentoring relationships. Networks. Events. Communities of people who recognised that something was missing and decided to create it themselves.

We want those initiatives to consider Innovate Now with Wellcome too.

You do not necessarily need to be a registered charity or CIC. Limited companies, sole traders and unincorporated or unregistered groups can also be eligible, and fiscal hosting arrangements can be used where appropriate.

What matters is that the work already exists in some form and that you can demonstrate a track record of meaningfully supporting Black or Mixed Black heritage researchers.

This is a programme for Black-led initiatives, so more than half of the initiative's leadership must be Black or Mixed Black heritage. Applicants must also be based in and operating in the UK and have annual income of up to £150,000.

The funding is designed to give you time to build.

The grants are deliberately multi-year because sustainable support cannot always be built within a twelve-month funding cycle.

Eligible unregistered initiatives, sole traders and registered organisations with annual income below £10,000 can receive £13,000 over two years. Registered initiatives with income between £10,000 and £30,000 can receive £21,000 over three years, while registered initiatives with income between £30,000 and £150,000 can receive £48,000 over three years.

But Innovate Now with Wellcome is not only about the money.

The programme is also designed to help initiatives strengthen their governance, leadership, operations and long-term sustainability, so that they are better equipped to continue supporting Black researchers well beyond the lifetime of the grant.

We want to invest not only in what you do, but in your ability to keep doing it.

Start by watching our application information video here.

If you are wondering whether your work fits, start with our application information video.

We have used our information sessions and conversations with prospective applicants to clarify some of the areas that people have found most difficult to interpret, including what we mean by a researcher, what supporting research careers looks like, how wellbeing fits into the programme, and the difference between supporting researchers and carrying out research.

We have also published an expanded Eligibility FAQ alongside the Round 2 guidance.

And if, after reading and watching, you are still thinking, “Our work sits somewhere between the two and I'm not quite sure,” please speak to us rather than ruling yourself out.

You can email [email protected] to book a 1–2–1 with a member of the team. Application support drop-ins are also running on Mondays during the Round 2 application window.

Round 2 is open. Apply here.

If you are already creating the community, care, opportunities or infrastructure that helps Black researchers thrive, we want to hear about it.

If you know someone quietly running a network, mentoring researchers, building pathways into research, creating safer spaces or advocating for change, send this opportunity to them.

And if you have spent years doing this work with too little funding and too much reliance on your own time, energy and goodwill, Innovate Now with Wellcome may be an opportunity to give that work the resources and infrastructure it deserves.

Round 2 closes on 27 November 2026.