Applications received after 18 March 2024 will not typically be considered.
Guidance for applicants and their mentors
The Tom Fund awards grants to third-year BA Design students at Goldsmiths to help them take risks and accelerate their projects during the research and practice stages of their third year. The award could assist both the Contextual and Studio elements of a project, and could be used for, but is not limited to, acquiring materials, travelling to undertake site specific research, hiring equipment and accessing information.
What is the Tom Fund (not) for?
The Tom Fund provides financial support to BA Design students at Goldsmiths during their third year, up until the Easter break of their final year, to help develop specified components of final their major projects. We do not make awards to cover costs retrospectively.
The Tom Fund is open to individual and group projects. An award should enable creativity, rather than being an easy option that curtails innovative thinking and experimentation, or further exploration of ideas. It is important to explain in your application how the proposed work will move the project forward or act as a catalyst for further learning or development of the work. We do not make awards that simply improve the presentation of work for the degree show or simply ‘outcome’, and in general acceptance rates go down as the end of the year gets closer–apply early, explore things!
Most awards will be between £50 and £300. Applicants requesting more than £300 may be required to provide more information, possibly including via a brief video call interview. No award is likely to exceed £800. There is no absolute limit on the amount that may be awarded in a year; each application is assessed on its merits. Awards are assessed and paid swiftly (mean time from application to decision in 2018/19 was 5 days). If mentors believe that a student would benefit from additional funding they should certainly suggest applying for the Tom Fund.
Who runs the Tom Fund?
The Tom Fund is not a part of the Design Department; it is run by an external group of administrators that includes Design Department staff. More information about the Tom Fund can be found here. The administrators are comprised of three groups: Tom’s family, Tom’s friends from Goldsmiths and Design Department staff. A number from each of these three groups must all approve the award application for an award to be successfully made. The funds are held in an account administered and managed by Goldsmiths.
How does application work?
The application form can be downloaded from www.tomfund.org/apply. The form is in docx format and can be edited using a variety of software, including Google docs (which is free).
Applicants can include links to websites, videos or images on the form, or attach up to c.2 A4 pages of additional images to the application form - but this is entirely optional. Applicants are advised to take note of the word counts, and of the need for a clear explanation as to how they intend to spend the award. A breakdown of costs is usually helpful, as is some evidence suggesting you have a good idea of the costs involved (e.g. a link to a price list or a quote).
Applicants require the support of their mentor to apply, there is space on the application form for a statement of support from the mentor. Completed applications, including the completed mentor statement, should be submitted to applications@tomfund.org by the applicant.
After receiving an application the administrators aim to reach a decision within 10 days. That decision will be to either make an award, reject the application or request further information. If an application is rejected feedback will be provided to the applicant.
Once an award is made, the applicant will be contacted by Goldsmiths’ administrative staff to arrange the transfer of funds.
Award recipients are required to feed back in writing about how the award benefitted their project. These write ups are circulated to donors to the fund and added to the project archive on this website.
How likely are applicants to receive funding?
The Tom Fund ran for the first time in the academic year 2016/17. There were 10 applicants, of whom 8 received awards totalling £2,600. In 2017/18 there were 15 applicants, of whom 13 received awards totalling £3,300. In 2018/19 we received 20 applications and made 16 awards totalling £7,700. In 2019/20 we received 30 applications and made 25 awards, totalling £5,400. In 2020/21 we received 8 applications and made 7 awards, totalling £1,125. In 2021/22 we received 8 applications and made 6 awards, totalling £1,629.
Our feedback to rejected applicants has included the following points:
We want to fund discrete aspects of a project needed to explore specific concepts, when this is currently not possible due to cost. Your application focusses on too many aspects, and it is not clear what the current limitations of your project are.
We don’t want to diminish your resourcefulness or the collaborative nature of your work by providing ‘easy cash’ - your expensive costings for hire of a film assistant and hire of an iPad are not things we would want to cover, for instance.
We don’t expect very many applications to total more than £500, if this amount were to be awarded we would ask for a more complex application, and this would have to be extraordinary.
We don’t object to funding students in order to pay for professional assistance with particular aspects of a project, however in your case it seems that the software designer would be contributing a more substantial proportion of the work to your final piece than we are happy to fund.
What sort of ideas have we funded before?
You can read about all of the projects we have funded previously in our project archive, and find examples of the specific costs we have helped meet.