Why grants are good

The launch of the Grants for Good Campaign brings a welcome focus on grants as a valuable funding mechanism. The newer arrivals on the funding scene (such as loans, social impact bonds and crowdfunding) have been getting a lot of attention. Novelty is always appealing and makes the more familiar ‘grant’ come across as a bit old fashioned and dull.

The Association of Charitable Foundations estimates that £6.1 billion of annual grants were transacted through grant-making foundations in 2013/14. Even with the reduction in government grants (down by more than £3.8bn over the last decade), they still have a significant role to play in funding charities and warrant our attention.

Debrah Allcock Tylor (see link below) has written about the benefits of grants for funders: they are straightforward (unlike contracts conforming to EU regulations); quick; flexible and good value (relatively low transaction costs). But why are grants a good thing for the recipients? Here are my top five benefits:

1. You don’t have to pay them back – there will be a social return expected but you won’t need to worry about making a financial return as well. 
2. They are valuable when needing to cover activity costs like research and development where it is difficult to generate enough income to cover costs.
3. You get the money upfront – it is trusted that you will do what you said you would with the money so there are no cash flow problems unlike Payment by Results models. 
4. They give credibility and can act as leverage to more money – if you have a grant approved from e.g. Henry Smith or Heritage Lottery Fund then it gives confidence to others who are considering supporting you. 
5. They represent a partnership – the funder's involvement can bring added value such as access to a network of similar organisations or help with influencing policy.

And finally, fundraisers may disagree, but I find that the discipline of applying for a grant helps ensure that projects are well thought through. The external scrutiny can help hold you to account for the activities you deliver.

If you agree that grants are good, then the Grants for Good Campaign would like to hear from you: https://www.dsc.org.uk/grants-for-good-2/get-involved/

http://www.theguardian.com/voluntary-sector-network/2016/feb/11/grants-local-charities-campaign-appeal-government-cuts

Emma Beeston Consultancy advises funders and philanthropists on giving strategies and processes; selecting causes and charities; assessments and impact monitoring. Services for charities include external perception reviews; bid reviews; training for fundraisers and non-fundraisers involved in bids. www.emmabeeston.co.uk ; emma@emmabeeston.co.uk; emmabeeston01

Mark my words

If like me, you read lots of funding applications, reports and strategy documents you will start to notice trends in the words used. Over the past year or so I have noticed that:

confidence has become resilience

user involvement is now co-design or co-production

outcomes has shifted to impact

There will be reasons for these changes. For example, when it comes to the shift from confidence to resilience, perhaps in times of austerity it is more important to bounce back from difficulties than just believe in ourselves? I shall leave it to the linguists and social scientists to analyse what these trends in language mean in terms of changes in society.

What I do know is that when charities start using these terms in bids, it is important to know exactly why you are using them and what they mean to you. Don’t say ‘we are working to increase people’s resilience’ just because it is the latest buzzword. It could undermine your case if you can’t say what you mean when asked, and if this is not something that you measure when monitoring. If you mean ‘confidence’ or ‘self-esteem’ or ‘coping skills’ then continue to say this even if you think using the popular ‘resilience’ looks better.

It is also important to know what funders mean when they use different words – and indeed that funders also can define their terms. ‘Outcomes’ and ‘impact’ seem to be being used interchangeably at the moment but they are different. For example, the Big Lottery Fund states: “we define impact as any effects arising from an intervention. This includes immediate short-term outcomes as well as broader and longer-term effects.” Whereas the Charity Evaluation Service defines impact as “impact is the broader or longer-term effects of a project or organisation's outputs, outcomes and activities.” So when asked to demonstrate your ‘impact’, do remember to ask what is meant before you answer.

Every word counts in a funding bid. Make sure you choose yours carefully.

Emma Beeston Consultancy advises funders and philanthropists on giving strategies and processes; selecting causes and charities; assessments and impact monitoring. Services for charities include external perception reviews; bid reviews; training for fundraisers and non-fundraisers involved in bids. www.emmabeeston.co.uk ; emma@emmabeeston.co.uk; emmabeeston01

Eat local, shop local, give local

On my way to visiting a charity the other day, I stopped at an ATM to get cash. It was the sort of ATM which asks you if you want to donate to charity. Out of curiosity I pressed that button and my options included British Heart Foundation, Diabetes UK, ChildLine, Young Minds. Probably all good causes and also charities of a scale that can negotiate inclusion on a national ATM network.

The charity I was visiting was just two doors down. It is the sort of small, local charity that comes to mind when people think of a ‘charity’. It supports homeless people into private rented flats and helps them keep their tenancies. It is heart-driven: the kind of place where staff drive across town to collect a donated radiator when a client’s heating has stopped working. It is small: two staff and operating on c. £50k per year. If you are homeless you will have heard of this charity or will be directed to it pretty quickly. Otherwise, they struggle to get themselves known.

In the UK, we have campaigns to source food locally and shop locally. But what about giving locally?

For those making donations, giving to a local charity makes a lot of sense. You are likely to understand the issues and see the results of their work. You can visit the charity and so can better trust that your donation makes a difference. Your donation is also more likely to have a bigger impact as local charities tend to be smaller - £500 is a huge windfall for a charity running on £50k per year.

There are arguments against local giving. If we all give locally then the money tends to go to those living near to the wealthy and not those in the greatest need. As Caroline Fiennes says in her book ‘It ain’t what you give it’s the way that you give it’: “some of the most under-resourced and horrible issues remain out of reach to local donors”. Many donors like to give to groups both at home and overseas for that very reason. And it is also important to remember that local does not necessarily mean good. So do always check out the effectiveness and support those doing a good job. (see my blog ‘Tips for giving’: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/tips-giving-emma-beeston)

But don’t be lured by the easy option of hitting the ATM button. You may well be just a few steps away from a great charity where your donation will be appreciated even more.

Emma Beeston Consultancy advises funders and philanthropists on giving strategies and processes; selecting causes and charities; assessments and impact monitoring. Services for charities include external perception reviews; bid reviews; training for fundraisers and non-fundraisers involved in bids. www.emmabeeston.co.uk ; emma@emmabeeston.co.uk; emmabeeston01

In praise of fundraisers

Last year was not kind to fundraisers. They and their practices came in for a lot of criticism in the sector and wider press. The start of 2016 does not look much rosier: diminishing public funds and the discussions about regulating fundraising look set to continue this year. I meet a lot of very hard working and inspiring fundraisers and so I thought I would start my new blogging year with some well-deserved praise.

At the end of 2015 I attended some great training on financial sustainability at NCVO. I was the only funder in a room full of fundraisers and I learned a lot from listening to the issues they were all grappling with in coming up with funding strategies for their charities. When assessing charities, I get to read lots of business plans and funding strategies. It is relatively easy to critique these and comment along the lines of “this charity is over-reliant on one source of funding and needs to diversify its income streams”. What the fundraisers I met with at NCVO reminded me is that I am in the lucky position of being able to comment on strategies, while these fundraisers have to actually deliver. They have to come up with a sustainable funding strategy with diverse income streams that turns into actual cash – oh and at the right time and in a steady, planned flow please.

Three things in particular struck me about just how difficult this task is:

1. It weighs heavy – it is one thing to analyse funding sources and trends and come up with a plan in theory. But fundraisers have to do that whilst deeply engaged with the work of the charity, knowing what difference it makes to clients and working alongside the staff and volunteers. That means they bear the responsibility of people’s jobs and whether services continue or not.

2. It takes resources - to have diverse income streams means having funding coming from several different sources e.g. contracts, legacies, regular donors, grants, community events, corporate sponsorship, trading. Each income stream needs to be managed and reported on separately. A small charity with lots of different income streams has to engage and manage a lot of different supporters and funders which all requires time and expertise.

3. It involves managing people – small charities are likely to have volunteers and Trustees doing the fundraising or may employ one or two paid fundraisers. No one individual or small team will have the skills needed for all areas of fundraising. Writing a tender document is very different from persuading someone to run a marathon for your cause. Switching emphasis from one type of fundraising to another will often mean letting current staff go and recruiting for the new expertise needed. And it will certainly mean managing change and all that brings.

Fundraisers have to do all this in a hostile climate. Their costs divert precious funding from front line services. They need to convince the Trustees that the return on any investment in fundraising is worth it. And yet no-one knows for sure that the chosen funding strategy is going to be right.

I for one, am going to be heading into 2016 with a reinvigorated respect for all those charities – and their fundraisers – who are trying to diversify their funding and secure a more financially sustainable future for those they support.

Emma Beeston Consultancy advises funders and philanthropists on giving strategies and processes; selecting causes and charities; assessments and impact monitoring. Services for charities include external perception reviews; bid reviews; training for fundraisers and non-fundraisers involved in bids. emma@emmabeeston.co.uk ; www.emmabeeston.co.uk ; @emmabeeston01

How to avoid unwanted gifts

The exchanging of gifts at Christmas brings with it the awkwardness of what to do with an unwanted gift. Do you pretend to like it? Do you return it or perhaps give it away?  We all get gift giving wrong sometimes – it is hard to choose the right present and wanting to achieve the element of surprise means you cannot ask the recipient what they most want.

There are no such excuses when it comes to giving a gift to a charity. 

If you read the research, charities are clear that what they want is an unrestricted donation so that they can chose how best to spend it and will most likely spend it on their core costs. It can sometimes be difficult for them to say this to you directly as they are trying to second guess what you would be happy with – think of a teenager coming up with gift ideas for Grandma when what they really want is cash.  If it is important for you to know exactly how your donation will be spent, ask and the charity should be able to tell you what item, staff role or project is a current priority for them. Many of them will already have come up with some packages to help you e.g. £15 or £200 or £2,000 or £10,000 will pay for …

When donors direct how a donation can be used, without consulting the charity, it can cause difficulty. For example, in one recent example, people with good intentions donated clothes and shoes to a small charity supporting refugees. The stretched charity staff and volunteers were diverted from their usual work to spend time getting rid of unwanted items when actually what the charity really needed was money to pay volunteer expenses and the utility bills and extra staff hours to keep their centre open longer to cope with the rise in demand of refugees seeking help. In other examples I have seen generous gifts left in a will cause nothing but frustration as they were so tightly tied to a project that was already fully funded or a piece of work that was not the most needed.

So to avoid the difficulties associated with unwanted gifts this year, do the best you can to ensure your donation brings smiles all round. Check out the charity and their impact. When you are confident they are good, give a donation with no strings attached. I am sure they will be delighted to tell you how they spent it.

Emma Beeston Consultancy advises funders and philanthropists on giving strategies and processes; selecting causes and charities; assessments and impact monitoring. Services for charities include external perception reviews; bid reviews; training for fundraisers and non-fundraisers involved in bids. E: emma@emmabeeston.co.uk; T: emmabeeston01

Tips for giving

Christmas is a time for giving …

Every Christmas a group of my friends pick a charity to support instead of giving each other presents. And because it is my job to assess charities, they ask me which one I would recommend. Many people do this, but most won’t have a philanthropy advisor to help.

It is easy to pick the usual big brand charities but there are lots of great, smaller charities out there where your donation could make a bigger difference. To find them try one of the tools available such as CharityChoice, Charity Navigator, CAF, or Localgiving to help you select a charity working for a cause you are passionate about.

But then how do you know if they are any good? It is my job to advise on which charities should be funded based on desk-based research, assessment interviews, scrutinising accounts and panel discussions. I don’t recommend you do all that before parting with £100, but here are five quick things you can do to reassure yourself that your money will be well used:

1. Check out the charity’s website – this should at least let you know they are active and is likely to include case studies about the difference they make. It may also show if they are members of any professional bodies or hold any quality marks.
2. See who else has funded them – if they’ve had money from say Comic Relief or the Big Lottery Fund recently then you can rest assured that a professional assessor has had a good look at them.
3. Consider keeping it local – there are 48 Community Foundations in the UK that pool donations to fund local projects. Again, all checked by them as part of the grant giving process.
4. Look your chosen charity up on the Charity Commission website. You may not want to read all their accounts but there is an overview page that will tell you how big they are and if they have reported as they should and on time.
5. Ask around – friends, family and colleagues may well know of a charity that really supported them when they, or someone they know, needed help.

There are some brilliant charities around that don’t have money for high profile marketing so it pays to dig a little to give you the confidence to give to charities which aren’t necessarily the household names.

… giving more …

Look out for ways to increase your giving, for example the Big Give Christmas Challenge will see donations made from 5th to 14th December matched. Some employers run matching schemes so it is worth asking if they will double your donation. And don’t forget gift aid increases your donation by 25%.

… giving together …

Pooling money with friends means your chosen charity gets a larger donation. You can also take part in giving circles or live crowdfunding events like those run by The Funding Network or the Soup method. (The latter is an idea from Detroit that is taking off in the UK where people come together over soup to hear pitches and vote on who gets the money taken on the door).

… and receiving.

Research shows we are happier when we give to others. So giving well to a charity of your choosing should bring you a bit of festive cheer too.

Emma Beeston Consultancy advises funders and philanthropists on giving strategies and processes; selecting causes and charities; assessments and impact monitoring. Services for charities include external perception reviews; bid reviews; training for fundraisers and non-fundraisers involved in bids. www.emmabeeston.co.uk ; emma@emmabeeston.co.uk; emmabeeston01

How to spot founder's syndrome

Running a charity is hard. I take my hat off to all those non-profit founders who bring their vision, energy and drive to create social change. However, when assessing charities and deciding which ones to fund, the term ‘founder’s syndrome’ often comes up.

There are lots of inspiring charity leaders and there is nothing wrong with a charity having a compelling and persuasive founder involved – often they are absolutely vital for attracting support. The problem occurs where the founder has too much power. But how do you spot it?

This is what sets off my ‘founder’s syndrome’ alarm when assessing charities:

On paper:

1. There is a high turnover of Trustees or conversely, the same Trustee group staying for years and years. The first pattern suggests challenges to the status quo fail and the second can indicate that no challenging is taking place.
2. There is no formal plan – because there is no point having one, it is in the founder’s head and subject to change as they decide. In fact there is generally a lack of formal structures e.g. performance management, Board skills audits.
3.  The charity is not part of any external quality assurance schemes or formal partnerships.

On a visit:

1. They don’t listen – they tend to avoid direct questions and tell me what they think is important.
2. They meet you on their own – they don’t bring in a Trustee, finance director, frontline worker or a service user to speak with me.
3.  They lack awareness – founder’s syndrome is much talked about so if you are a founder meeting with a funder it should not be a surprise that they will ask about succession planning, governance, or exit strategies and you should be happy to discuss these.

I am not saying any one of these or all of them means there is definitely a case of ‘founder’s syndrome’ but it does set me off on a line of questioning about decision-making, conflicts of interest, performance management etc.  And neither is this confined to founders – there are other non-founding leaders with the same issues of control.

At a recent charity, I met with the founder who, before I even asked, had told me his exit strategy (after 10 years), the work he and the Trustees were doing on succession planning and stated his wish “I want the charity to flourish without me”. Now, that’s the way to do it.

Emma Beeston Consultancy advises funders and philanthropists on giving strategies and processes; selecting causes and charities; assessments and impact monitoring. Services for charities include external perception reviews; bid reviews; training for fundraisers and non-fundraisers involved in bids. www.emmabeeston.co.uk ;  emma@emmabeeston.co.uk ; emmabeeston01