Lights, Camera, Action: films for funding

As the saying goes “a picture is worth a thousand words” so you would think that images are invaluable to a fundraiser struggling with a restricted word count when applying for funding. But how are pictures within funding bids received? Do they help?

An image could help in the following ways:

-        To engage the reader

-        To help your bid stand out

-        To reassure the funder that you exist and do things

-        To tell the funder something that text can’t

But in my experience they don’t really add anything. When reading applications, my focus is on the words and how the questions are answered. Many charities don’t have the skill needed to capture a story with a single image. And I don’t think many decision-makers would be swayed by a good image anyway.

However, the inclusion of photos can be helpful in capital bids. If you want funding to refurbish a dilapidated building, then a picture can show clearly why you need a new toilet block in ways that a lengthy paragraph can’t. And they do help on your website, which may well be looked at as part of the assessment process. Here images can convey tone, personality and activity.

If you have some budget for photography, a good investment is in short films that demonstrate the difference you make. You can include a link in your bid and they are a great way of having the voice of beneficiaries heard within the application process. I watch lots of these and they are a really useful tool for understanding what exactly an organisation does and who it supports. It is not so much the imagery but the storytelling that matters. With the rise in smart phones and free editing software, videos have never been cheaper or more accessible to make. Research shows that short films work e.g. your crowdfunding campaign is more likely to be successful if it includes a video.

As with any application, it is important to make sure it is good work you are funding and not just good presentation but good communication plays an important role. Both Lankelly Chase Foundation and Paul Hamlyn Foundation have experimented with incorporating video into their application processes. Nominet Trust and the Baring Foundation have included a video pitch in their new Digital Arts & Creative Ageing programme.  I believe this is a trend that is likely to grow. 

Emma Beeston Consultancy advises funders and philanthropists on giving strategies and processes; researching and scoping options; selecting causes and charities; assessments and impact monitoring. www.emmabeeston.co.uk ; emma@emmabeeston.co.uk; emmabeeston01

How are trusts and foundations like snowflakes?

In the latest BBC documentary series with Brian Cox, Forces of Nature, he explained that snowflakes look similar because they are formed by the same forces but every one is also different as each is formed by travelling a unique path.

Grant makers are the same. There are around 10,000 Trusts and Foundations in the UK alone. Each has different aims, priorities and criteria. They are all similar in that they are trying to make a difference through allocating their resources as best they can. But each is different because of all the choices made along the way.

This weekend I was a guest lecturer on the Cass Business School Charities Masters course as part of the Grantmaking, Philanthropy and Social Investment module (see link). I guided students through just some of the choices needed to create a grant making programme, from the strategic considerations such as: ‘Do you want to help people or change the world?’ to the practical aspects such as: ‘Which assessment methods will you use?’

Each step in the process of creating a coherent grant making programme involves making a decision and the order the decisions are made in matters. For example, if you decide to respond to the needs defined by applicants then it is much more likely that this will dictate an open grant process. For the students, each decision they made created much debate as there are no right answers. The result was that, within the session, the students created grant making programmes that all started from the same point but, two hours later, were all, like the snowflakes, completely different.

http://www.cass.city.ac.uk/research-and-faculty/centres/cce/msc-programmes

Emma Beeston Consultancy advises funders and philanthropists on giving strategies and processes; researching and scoping options; selecting causes and charities; assessments and impact monitoring. www.emmabeeston.co.uk ; emma@emmabeeston.co.uk; emmabeeston01

The temptation of cherry-picking

The definition of cherry-picking is “to select the best or most desirable people or things in a group”.

It can sound like a good thing, but with charities it is referred to most often as a negative consequence of contracts. If you are only rewarded for your positive results, then there is a real incentive to work with clients who are the ‘easiest’. So in employment projects you work with those who are most likely to get a job rather than those who are furthest from the labour market with the most complex needs. Charities avoid this temptation by adhering to their values and ethos but in doing so may well lose out in a competitive bid process, and will need to raise other funds to continue to support those in the greatest need.

Does the same temptation to cherry-pick apply to funders?

One of the consequences of cuts in statutory funding has been increased competition for grants from trusts and foundations.  This means that funders can chose to only fund the best: the charities that can already demonstrate a successful track record, prove their impact, are financially sound with robust management in place. Funding the highest quality is a good thing but it can also mean adopting a safe strategy.

How do funders still take risks when they are spoiled for choice?

One way is to have a separate strand of funding where there is a greater tolerance of risk. Another growing trend is to fund the organisational development of charities who are doing good work but need to improve their functioning or sustainability in order to survive and thrive. There are lots of examples of this e.g. the Foyle Foundation has a funding strand for supporting young and emerging artists and another which helps arts organisations to reduce their overheads or generate new income. One local example is the Harpur Trust which focuses its grants on:

1. Keeping good services going
2. Bringing new ideas and services to Bedford
3. Helping to create better functioning organisations

One of the strengths of independent funders is that they can back things that are risky or take a long time to prove. So they need to resist the temptation of picking only the best cherries and take active steps against playing it too safe. 

Emma Beeston Consultancy advises funders and philanthropists on giving strategies and processes; researching and scoping options; selecting causes and charities; assessments and impact monitoring. www.emmabeeston.co.uk ; emma@emmabeeston.co.uk; emmabeeston01

How to make a long story short

Stories influence how people feel, think and behave. As Ken Burnett says in his latest book, ‘Storytelling can change the world’: “one of the best tools we have to help change this flawed world is a story, told well”. As any fundraiser knows, storytelling is a great way to connect with donors. But how do you get the power of a story into a formal funding bid?

In funding application forms the focus is on answering the questions posed about the need for your project, how you measure your outcomes, the aims of your organisation etc. The person reading your bid will be looking for the fit with criteria and weighing up the evidence you provide against other applicants. But they are still human and it is important to remember that funding decisions are just as much an art as a science. So stories will still help your bid to stand out and be remembered, and bring to life the issues affecting those you help.

But application forms often have tight word counts, which place a constraint on storytelling. The people at the other end of your bid, whether an assessor, grants officer or grant panel member, will be reading a lot of bids at any one time and so may well skip over long case studies due to time pressures. So if you can’t use long case studies, how do you fit in a story?

My advice is to use ‘for example’ – a lot. It is your best friend when it comes to adding mini-stories to your bid. Here are some examples …

This role will provide advice and support to homeless migrants and refugees.

to

This role will provide advice and support to homeless migrants and refugees e.g. we help people who are sleeping on the street to get ID, a deposit and rent, and find somewhere to live. 

We ensure specialist skills don’t die out. 

to

We ensure specialist skills don’t die out e.g. there is only one person in England remaining who conserves portrait miniatures and he is about to retire.  We need funding for a trainee to carry on his work.

We provide basic computer skills training.

to

We provide basic computer skills training e.g. on setting up and using email so that parents can receive the information sent out by schools. 

Mini-stories will help you to illustrate the nature and depth of your intervention and can convey credibility by grounding your words in reality. With these extra words you can create pictures in the mind of the reader which means they will have a fuller sense of what it is that you do and how their funding will help.

 The End

Emma Beeston Consultancy advises funders and philanthropists on giving strategies and processes; researching and scoping options; selecting causes and charities; assessments and impact monitoring. www.emmabeeston.co.uk ; emma@emmabeeston.co.uk; emmabeeston01

The path not taken

The other day I was sat in a queue on the M4 caused by an accident which sent my brain into a stream of ‘what ifs’. What if that was me? What if I had left 5 minutes earlier? Every day is filled with these moments – not as dramatic (or lucky) as missing a collision – but all the things not done, that did not happen, that we did not chose. When we think about the paths not taken they can become too numerous to comprehend.

And these same thoughts come with us to work.

·         For fundraisers it can be the income streams not backed: What if trading had been the right path to take?

·         For project managers it can be the opportunity costs: What activity are they missing or what are they not achieving because they are busy delivering this project or plan?

·         For charities it can be trying to demonstrate to a commissioner what would happen in someone’s future if they had not intervened: What choices would our clients have made if we hadn’t been able to help?

·         For funders it can be wrestling with the consequences of all those applications not funded: What if we had used different criteria for our decisions?

Sometimes there are so many unknowns flowing from acting or not acting that it is difficult to know what to do for the best. This is a common dilemma for the philanthropists I work with. They are rightly concerned with wanting to do the best with their gift and not wanting to see it wasted. But being faced with so many possible recipients for their donation can lead to paralysis.

Psychologist Barry Shwartz explains this beautifully in his TED talk (see link) ‘The paradox of choice’. The more choices we have the less likely we are to act. We become paralysed and put off making decisions. We also feel less satisfied by our decisions, even if they are great, because we can easily imagine the choices we could have made and how they could have been better.

Sometimes I feel like I am bursting a philanthropist’s bubble because they come to me wanting to help everyone and I work with them to narrow that down. But I know that it is only through reducing their choices that they will be free to act.

Despite all the options, you need to make a decision and do something. That way you can enjoy the rewards from good decisions and learn from your mistakes. And as a Philanthropy Advisor, my job is to help you navigate your way to the right path.

http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice#t-651214

Is it easier to give or to get?

At Quartet Community Foundation’s recent annual philanthropy debate, the question posed was:

This house believes it is more difficult to give money away intelligently

than to earn it in the first place.

As someone who earns my living advising donors which charities to invest in, I had a foot in both camps. It is hard to make a living as a philanthropy advisor in the UK. But the very reason I do get paid to do my job is it is not easy to give to charity, if you want to do it well.

Speaking for the motion were philanthropist Helen Wilde and Bevis Watts from Triodos Bank. They made a good case for the difficulties that come with giving intelligently:

• How do you find effective charities that are not the big high profile ones?  
• How do you choose which ones to support? 
• How do you sift through the poor proposals to find the quality ones?
• It takes time and effort to spend wisely. 
• It takes experience and good judgment to identify those charities that need money but are not about to fold.
• You need to find out which are meaningful, credible, ethical, will have impact and are working with others to maximise resources and avoid duplication. 
• Backing a charity involves taking a risk and that is a hard thing to do with your money.

And surely this is harder than making money by sitting in your house whilst it values accrues?

But it was the case against that won the vote by 73% to 27%. Stephen Fear and Andrew Garrad’s basic argument was that making money is hard work. Yes there is an element of luck and it helps if you are born into social advantage or inherit. But it is down to putting in the long hours and surviving that leads to business and financial success. Whilst giving to charity? Well, they argued that that is easy – it is just common sense and uses the same skills anyone would use to decide what project to run with.

So I ended up in the minority. I agreed with the winning speakers that it is easy to give to charity. But only if you go along with their premise that any charity is worth giving to. I still take the view that giving intelligently is harder to do as charities are not all equal. If you want to maximise the benefit from your gift then you have to put in the work to discriminate between the many options.

It was a lively debate and a good evening. And I left suspecting that those not at the table - the charities out there delivering - probably have it hardest of all.

Emma Beeston Consultancy advises funders and philanthropists on giving strategies and processes; researching and scoping options; selecting causes and charities; assessments and impact monitoring.

www.emmabeeston.co.uk ; emma@emmabeeston.co.uk; emmabeeston01

You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear

I am frequently asked “what makes a good funding bid?” I do deliver workshops on how to write successful applications and there are lots of training courses, guides and blogs out there that all seek to answer that same question.

But what often gets overlooked, is that in order to write a good bid, it is crucial to actually be good in the first place. It is much easier to focus on producing good copy when your charity already has a clear mission in place and is delivering a needed and quality service. It is the same as a job application: it is easier to craft something when you can demonstrate how you meet everything in the person specification than it is to put a positive spin on your gaps.

But it is very difficult to be good at everything all of the time. A charity may spend time on reviewing and strengthening its governance. But that means it has less time to spend on other work such as reading about all the latest new developments in their sector. So what do you do in a funding bid when not everything is 100% how you want it to be?

Funders will assess and rate different aspects of your work and will have different tolerances. For example, if your work is reaching out to a very marginalised community and getting good results, they are less likely to worry that you have work to do on your business plan. So the first thing is to try and work out the likely response of a potential funder. If they highlight that user involvement is important and you have this down as something you need to improve, then it is not the right time to write that bid.

If you seem a good fit with the criteria but things fall short of what you (and the funder) would like them to be, then it is time to be upfront and work hard on your presentation. There is a world of difference between “we don’t have a business plan” and “because of the funding issues we faced last year our business plan became out of date. Now we have funding in place for the next two years, it is a priority for our Trustees to create a new business plan to take the charity forward. We have started discussions and have an away day planned for May.”

This response brings the charity to life, is honest and confident. In a world where marketing spin is easily spotted, this approach is far more credible.

Emma Beeston Consultancy advises funders and philanthropists on giving strategies and processes; researching and scoping options; selecting causes and charities; assessments and impact monitoring.

www.emmabeeston.co.uk ; emma@emmabeeston.co.uk; emmabeeston01