Ask people about a trust fundraiser's most important skills and I bet these would be common answers:

• Knowing which funders to approach and what they're looking for
• Their existing relationships with funders and the ability to build them
• Writing clearly, concisely and convincingly
• Organisational skills to keep track of tasks and deadlines

These are all vital, but I've got an underrated one to add to the list: the ability to ask the right questions.

The trouble with the art of ‘writing convincingly’ is that it can be misunderstood as ‘papering over the cracks to make sure we've got a good chance of succeeding’.

As a trusts fundraiser, have you ever been guilty of the following:

• Rejigging a budget to disguise a lack of detail or figures that don’t really make sense?
• Writing some creative waffle to make up for missing evidence or impact data?
• Knowing deep down there’s a weakness in your project but hoping the funder won’t notice?
• Burying that gut feeling because challenging your colleagues feels awkward?

Many organisations approach us for fundraising support to help make their jobs easier. And in many ways, we try to be easy to work with: we plan ahead to allow time for deadlines, we condense funding guidelines into a few key bullet points, we'll sift through dense background reading to find a few key points for an application.

But you know what - sometimes we’re a bit of a pain to work with, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

It’s easy to keep people happy, pretend you’ve got everything you need for a strong application and submit it as quickly as possible. Initially, everyone will feel great. Then when the funder comes back and says no, suddenly everybody is a lot less happy.

That's why it's important to avoid papering over the cracks and be prepared to ask the difficult questions:

• Have we provided enough consultation data, key statistics or third party research to convincingly articulate why our project is needed?
• Have we been specific enough about our planned activities - what, where, when, who, how often?
• Have we explained exactly what we’re looking to achieve, and how we'll measure the results?
• Have we demonstrated why we’re the best organisation to do this work, and how we're different from any similar services that exist?
• Have we been crystal clear about exactly how much money we need, and what we'll spend it on?
• Have we gone looking for the perfect case study or quote to capture the essence of what we do?

This isn't about voicing your personal concerns. It's about trying to really get under the skin of the funder and anticipating what they'll think when reading your application. What will they be looking out for as proof that you know your stuff? What aspects might they be concerned about, given their own funding priorities? Will they understand all the language you've used if they don’t have specialist knowledge of the subject?

Sometimes this means having a certain amount of distance from the cause is a good thing. Our clients often tell us that they chose to work with us because we're knowledgeable and passionate about their work. I agree this can be a good thing, particularly when approaching specialist funders, but it's also risky to know far more about a subject than the person who’s going to be reading your work, or so convinced about a project that you lose the ability to critique it objectively.

All that said, when you’re working with people who are super busy and a funding deadline is looming, I appreciate that digging your heels in and asking difficult questions won’t always make you popular.

But ask yourself this - would you rather have a difficult conversation during the drafting process when there's still time to address something, even if people think you're being too cautious? Or deal with the disappointment later when an application is rejected and you're powerless to fix it?

I’d always rather trust my judgement and stick to my guns on a point that could be crucial to the funder, than regret having backed down later.

People do usually appreciate this in the long run. We've had plenty of tricky conversations with clients when working on a major application, but they frequently tell us later that it was worth going through the pain to make it stronger. 

​With rising levels of social need and ever-increasing competition for grants, the National Lottery Community Fund remains one of the few bright spots of hope in the UK funding landscape for many charities.

While the £600million+ they give away each year through various programmes is a lifeline for many organisations, some are put off applying because of the time required to understand the different programmes and funding criteria, concern about the level of competition, or not being sure that they’re eligible.

We’ve helped charities to secure over £1million of Lottery funding in recent years, and have developed a good understanding of what Lottery are looking for, and how to emphasise key strengths and address weaknesses in your application. And since many community-based organisations need stable multi-year funding more than ever before, we wanted to share a few tips:

​A common misconception is that when Lottery say they provide funding to ‘communities’, they only mean physical, geographical communities. This isn’t the case, because Lottery can and do fund organisations supporting communities of interest, which they define as ‘people with similar interests or life experiences’.

We recently worked with The PKD Charity to secure Reaching Communities funding for their programme of face-to-face, online and telephone support for patients and families affected by polycystic kidney disease. The people they support live all around the UK, and some rarely if ever physically meet up with others.

However, feedback from beneficiaries and charity staff emphasised that people forge important relationships through the charity’s social media support groups, telephone befriending or periodic meet-ups – and that these relationships help them to overcome challenges and live more fulfilled lives. That’s the true definition of a community – and it was a community that relied to stable funding to flourish.

If your organisation works with people united by certain interests or challenges, rather than a geographical location, then you may well be eligible for Lottery funding if you can make a similar case for support.

This is arguably the most important criteria for many Lottery funding programmes. You need to show that your services are genuinely based on people’s ideas, aspirations and unmet needs, not just dreamed up in a boardroom somewhere.

This can be difficult to demonstrate, particularly if it feels like second nature. For example, if you run a local community centre, your frontline staff will interact with service users on a daily basis, and naturally develop activities in response to their ideas and needs. As we’ve written before, you still need explain and provide examples of how this happens, as well as detailing more formal consultation methods, such as surveys and focus groups.

Working with The PKD Charity, we had an unfair advantage – they’d actually commissioned us previously to run a stakeholder consultation exercise, which involved surveying hundreds of patients on their needs and opinions about the charity’s support, and interviewing prominent medical professionals. This type of exercise takes time and money, but is hugely beneficial for Lottery applications – and indeed for other funders. So don't hold back from including your consultation data in your application.

A strong funding application doesn’t just rely on written words. Images and video bring your work to life, inspire empathy, and allow people to tell their story in their own words. This again helps to demonstrate community support and involvement in your project. Audio clips are an underused tool for people who have a story to tell but don’t feel comfortable talking in front of a camera. And diagrams and infographics can often explain something succinctly that'd otherwise need a few hundred words.

Lottery encourage and appreciate the use of imagery, audio and video. For some funding programmes, you can actually by video rather than in writing. And you can really bring a detailed second-stage funding proposal to life by including things like infographics, embedded audio clips and video links.

Like many funders, Lottery are anxious to avoid duplication – in other words, funding multiple organisations to deliver overlapping services.

This doesn’t mean that your work needs to be 100% unique – and claiming that it is may show that you haven’t researched your project well enough. However, you should explain why other services aren’t accessible to the people you support, or appropriate for their needs.

For example, when we secured funding for a youth employability charity, we provided evidence that young people were put off accessing other local services because they didn’t have an opportunity to build a trusting relationship with the service providers, and because of the complexities of local gang rivalry and ‘territory’. In another successful application, we showed how people with a learning disability weren't benefitting from mainstream health and wellbeing activities, because they needed extra time and support to address their complex needs.

This is a way to both demonstrate an in-depth understanding of your sector, and provide further evidence that your services are based around people’s needs and views.

Receiving feedback and even criticism about your work can feel uncomfortable, but embracing this scrutiny will improve your chances of securing funding. Take every opportunity to clarify feedback that you don’t understand, and pro-actively check that you’ve explained any complexities in your project clearly.

For example, for a recent application that we supported, the Funding Officer expressed concern about the financial sustainability of the project. This was something we felt had already been addressed adequately – but by drawing their attention to what we’d written already and asking what they felt was unclear or missing, we were able to drill down into exactly what the assessment panel was looking for, and how best to provide it.

We’re confident that following these tips will increase your chances of securing Lottery funding, and indeed other grants too. Feel free to suggest any further tips in the comments below. Good luck with your application, and take a look at how we could potentially help you with funding applications.

​We work with many charities and social enterprises who are trying to get new fundraising income streams up and running and/or are tight on unrestricted funds. Perhaps it’s not a surprise that we sometimes get asked if we’d consider working on a commission or performance-related pay basis.

I can see why, at first glance, this might appeal to organisations that have limited cash available to resource fundraising, or feel nervous about committing to expenditure without a guaranteed return. Investing in fundraising often feels like a Catch-22 situation, particularly when you’re prompted to do it because other funding sources have dried up.

However, there are many reasons why payment by commission is actually harmful to you. The simplest answer is that the Institute of Fundraising discourages both fundraisers and charities from taking this approach, however this in itself doesn’t explain the challenges and issues that can arise as a result.

Here’s why we don’t undertake any fundraising work on a commission basis, and why you should think twice about doing so:

In fundraising you inevitably hear ‘no’ more often than ‘yes’, so a fundraiser working on a results basis would have to set a fairly high commission percentage to make it work. Imagine how a funder or donor would feel knowing that the first x% of their donation is going straight into somebody else’s pocket – particularly if they’re donating a large amount, and particularly at a time when there’s so much focus on how donations are used and what percentage is spent on overheads etc. Payment by commission can lead to you excessively rewarding a fundraiser, and is very likely to cost you donations.

Fundraising is already a delicate balancing act between the financial needs of the organisation, the wishes of the donor and any ethical considerations. Now factor in a fundraiser who feels desperate to secure that donation, otherwise they won’t get paid. Sometimes we all have to walk away from potential donations, for example if the donor seems vulnerable and unsure about giving, or if the organisation may be compromised in some way by accepting. Paying a fundraiser on a commission basis makes it less likely they’ll make that difficult decision to say no when you need them to.

Fundraising is a collective effort. When we work with an organisation, we may be responsible for crafting the ask and coordinating the process, but we can’t do it without you: your project information, your impact data and your contacts. If the fundraiser is the only one who loses out if things go wrong, you’re not creating the right conditions for success. When you pay a fundraiser a salary or a day rate, you’re making an investment in fundraising too, so the whole organisation has a vested interest in playing their part.

As per Simon Scriver’s blog, a surprisingly small percentage of a fundraiser’s role involves asking for money. They spend most of their time researching prospects, building relationships, saying thank you, gathering project and impact data, and developing processes: this is essential for successful fundraising, even if it doesn’t always lead to a donation. If a fundraiser only receives commission, they’re not being paid for the vast majority of their hard work. So will they still feel motivated to do those all-important support tasks? If they're pressured into a quick-fire ‘spray and pray’ approach, this has a negative impact on your organisation.

Fundraising is a long game. You might wait 6-12 months to hear back from a trust. A corporate donation or major gift is often years in the making. Several fundraisers may feed into the process (one makes the introduction, one writes the copy, someone else attends the final meeting). So how do you decide who receives what commission, and when? How do you avoid multiple fundraisers ‘competing’ for the same commission? How do you reward a fundraiser who moved on ages ago? And how can a fundraiser plan their income with so much uncertainty?

We work with a broad range of organisations, from start-up social enterprises with a £50,000 turnover to charities running multi-million pound capital appeals. The work involved with a £10,000 application and a £1million ask may actually be similar, yet payment on a commission basis values them completely differently. If a fundraiser is working on both simultaneously, with competing tight deadlines, you can imagine which one will get most of their attention, even if this is sub-conscious.

​So here's the clincher: payment by commission, which at first glance may seem so appealing to you as a smaller organisation, can in reality penalise you and de-value your donations.

​If you’re looking for fundraising support, get in touch with us now and we’ll explain exactly how our day rates and fixed fees work – but don’t expect us to use the word ‘commission’ at any point!

Statistically, events fundraising has never been one of the more profitable forms of fundraising. While both special events (e.g. a gala dinner or concert) and challenge events (e.g. a marathon or sporting challenge) can sometimes raise a lot, promotion costs are often high and a lot of staff time is required. For example, while you might expect a return on investment of 10:1 (£10 raised for every £1 spent) from trusts fundraising, or 5:1 from corporate fundraising, events are often closer to 2:1 or 3:1.

Even this figure is decreasing as fundraising events are hit by the current financial climate, market saturation and supporter fatigue (the challenge of keeping on going back to the same limited pool of supporters). If you have a small fundraising team, you’d be forgiven for wondering whether it’s worth your time committing to new fundraising events at all.

So in what circumstances are events still worth your time, and how do you decide whether they’re right for you?

Despite the challenges, events provide plenty of advantages, not all of them related to short-term income:

Special events are excellent for engaging corporate and major donor prospects, encouraging existing supporters to introduce people from their own network, and recognising the contributions of key supporters. Particularly when your event features stories and speeches from the people you support, or creates an inspiring and celebratory atmosphere, or when senior staff and trustees are on hand to mingle with people.

When planning an event, liaise with people across your organisation to map out who should be invited. Then invite them well in advance, warmly, and with a personal message. Depending on how much you want them to be there, you can consider offering discounted or free tickets where appropriate, particularly if the long-term benefits outweigh the short-term cost.

On the night, make sure key prospects get plenty of time and attention, and take every opportunity to educate and inspire them about your organisation’s work. If you have a long-term plan about how you ideally want them to support your cause, you might be able to cunningly sow some seeds on the night.

Carry on the personal touch after the event, by thanking people and sending any follow-up material promptly, personally and creatively (for example with a handwritten card or colourful social media image). This often requires some advance planning, particularly if staff plan to take some much-needed time off after your event.

Bear in mind that high-value prospects expect ‘senior’ attention, so you need to enlist support from management and trustees at every stage - before, during and after your event. Particularly for corporate and major donor fundraising, it's rare to be successful without senior level buy-in.

Building long-term relationships with challenge event participants is typically much harder, but not impossible.

Firstly, you need to consider whether this is a realistic goal at all. This will depend on the nature of your event. If it's a big brand in its own right, or if it has no natural link to your cause, people are more likely to be participating in the event on its own merits, and have less natural interest in supporting you further. If your event has a high fundraising target - or, perhaps more importantly, involves a bigger fundraising effort - this provides greater scope to engage people further.

If you're trying to keep people engaged for the long term, a few things can really help:

• Make sure their event experience is brilliant - including registration, build-up, on the day and after.
• ‘Drip-feed’ relevant information about your organisation’s work throughout their fundraising effort – for example include a case study in their registration pack, or explain what your organisation can achieve with £500 when they reach this sponsorship landmark.
• Go the extra mile with your thank yous and follow-ups (as above for special events)

If 'converting' participants into long-term supporters feels unlikely, it could be better to focus on maximising short-term profit instead. This can be achieved through:

It's often said that good fundraising and dating etiquette have a lot in common. We're frequently using dating analogies during our fundraising training and work with charities, so we've taken the plunge (prompted by a chat with our consultant Gemma Pettman) and included all our favourite lessons in one place...

We've all had one of those terrible experiences with someone who can’t stop talking about themselves. You keep asking them questions but they never ask you anything in return, and you can’t get a word in.
 
Doesn’t feel great, does it?
 
Charities can be guilty of the same thing. Of course it’s important to tell your supporters and donors what you’ve been up to, but also take the time to find out about their interests and reasons for supporting you. It’ll make them feel valued and will help you to improve and personalise your content in future. Like with dating, finding common ground helps to create chemistry.
 
I remember hearing someone once say that it’s a common mistake to “we all over your supporters” (I’d love to give credit for this delightful phrase, but I can’t remember where I heard it). When you’re next writing a newsletter or annual review, instead of just talking about what “we” have achieved, try engaging your supporters better by talking about what “you” have helped to accomplish.

One for the major donor fundraisers out there. You probably know it takes time to get to know a donor prospect and cultivate a relationship with them, but fundraisers often feel under pressure to make the ask and secure that donation immediately.

If you’re not sure why this is a bad idea, try going on a first date with someone and asking them to marry you or hop into bed with you after one hour.

When you have a first meeting with a prospective donor, you’re probably both expecting it to lead somewhere eventually. But while you might both have done your research, you need time to explore their interest in supporting your charity, understand which of your projects or activities most appeal to them, and build a picture of how much they might be willing to give.

This may take several meetings, and cultivating a major donor to the point of making that first donation can easily take 12-18 months. The long-term payback will be worth it, but rush things and you’ll get nowhere.

​Trusts and foundations often say that they won’t fund work which they consider to be a statutory responsibility, even at a time when statutory funding is being withdrawn for critical services. This is understandably very frustrating for charities, and it can be hard to work out what a funder means by this.

Often, funders simply don’t want to feel that they’re just picking up the slack for government spending cuts, or that you’re only interested in them because another source of income has disappeared. Telling a funder that you need their support because statutory funding has been cut is a bit like going on a date and talking about your ex the whole time – hardly a good way of making the new person in your life feel special.

Instead of just re-hashing a previous statutory-funded service, show that you’re over the past by talking about your work as an exciting and valuable project in its own right, clearly explaining why it's a response to your beneficiaries' real needs and how you'll deliver social impact.

Accidentally calling someone by your ex’s or another person’s name is just about the worst thing you can do. In both dating and fundraising, it can easily happen if you’re not careful.

We all use previous funding application content as a shortcut for writing new bids. But please, check it VERY carefully to make sure that it doesn’t contain the name of a previous funder or contact, or your application could be destined for the bin.

While we’re on the subject of names, always personalise your letters. That funding appeal or thank you letter which begins with ‘Dear Supporter’? If you’re wondering what impression that makes, try going on a first date and calling them ‘Date’ for the whole night…

​Most relationships begin with a honeymoon period where everything is new and exciting, and you can do no wrong. Sooner or later, you start noticing the little things about the other person that annoy you, you forget your manners, and you have to find new ways to keep things interesting or it might all fizzle out.

In the same way, most donors won’t just keeping giving to you unless you keep paying them attention, educating them about your work and giving them new ways and reasons to support you.

A good donor relationship is built on engaging newsletters, memorable thank yous, invitations to events and maybe even the occasional call to say “I love you”. This takes time but it’s well worth the effort, as well as being the right thing to do. It’s easy to just focus on acquiring new donors, but it can be far more valuable to keep the spark alive with current ones.

​Sometimes a donor or funder simply isn’t the right match for your organisation – and, just like in a relationship, it can be nobody’s fault.

A trust may have financial restrictions (e.g. on the percentage of overheads you can claim) that could put your organisation at risk if you accept a grant. A major donor may want a level of recognition or control in return for their donation that you’re not able to provide. Accepting a corporate donation may compromise your charity for ethical reasons, even if it wouldn’t be a problem for another organisation.

Successful fundraising involves being confident enough to sometimes say no for your own good, without pointing any fingers. After all, there’s plenty more fish in the sea.

We often get asked by charities and social enterprises for advice on how they can raise more unrestricted funding from trusts and foundations.

Many organisations are very successful at securing grant income, yet still find themselves in a tight financial position because the majority of funding tends to be restricted to a specific purpose. While project funding is vital, it rarely gives you the flexibility you need to thrive as a resilient and innovative organisation.

We've compiled some of our best tips on how to achieve the holy grail of unrestricted grant income - from some obvious funders to approach, to how to think outside the box when it comes to improving your financial position through trusts and foundations fundraising.

While it’s understandably tempting for funders to want to fund tangible and exciting projects, this doesn’t give organisations the freedom to pay key staff or cover central costs. Not unlike yoga, strengthening your core is vital and will make you much better at everything else you’re trying to achieve too. 

​There’s a growing recognition in the sector that smaller organisations in particular need access to more flexible funding if they are to survive and thrive, particularly at a time when so much local authority funding has dried up. Lloyds Bank Foundation CEO Paul Streets has been particularly vocal about the damage caused by 'projectitis'.  

Here are a few funders that give core funding to a broad range of charitable causes:

• Lloyds Bank Foundation (no surprise given the above)
• Tudor Trust
• Esmée Fairbairn Foundation 
• Masonic Charitable Foundation
• Paul Hamlyn Foundation

If you’re looking for core funding, here are a few tips:

• Check out the above funders and see if your organisation is eligible to apply.
• Use a funding directory like Funds Online or Funding Central to search for other core funders. We suspect that other funders will pop up over the coming months. These directories have a subscription fee for most organisations but it’s often a worthwhile investment, as they have an option to search specifically for core funding.
• Develop a strong case for support for why you really need core funding. For example: why don’t you have much unrestricted funding already? Why would it be so valuable to you – would it enable you to recruit a key member of staff, respond to a new opportunity or restructure in an important way? What makes your organisation such an expert at what it does, therefore such a strong candidate for core funding?

It's easy to focus on core funding, but what are your specific development needs which mean that project funding isn't suitable? For example, you might be looking to scope out an innovative new idea, invest in a building or specific piece of equipment, or improve your digital capabilities.

For each of these areas, there are specialist funders who can help. For example:

• National Lottery’s Digital Fund and Social Tech Trust provide digital funding
• The Fidelity UK Foundation fund "organisational development and planning initiatives"​
• Garfield Weston Foundation and Clothworkers Foundation provide capital funding

Clearly these types of funding will be a little more restrictive than no-strings core funding. However, being specific about your needs will enable you to make a more convincing case for support and open up a broader range of potential funders, thereby increasing your chances of securing that much-needed investment.

Many funders don’t explicitly provide core funding, but will consider providing unrestricted grants to organisations they know, value and trust. But getting in position to access these opportunities takes time, effort and patience.

You’ll probably need to secure at least one, possibly several project-specific grants from a funder first, then focus on building a relationship with them. It helps to go above and beyond expectations by thanking funders quickly and in a memorable way, then reporting well on the grant you received – either by demonstrating that the project went well, or by reflecting honestly on any challenges or complications experienced.

We recently blogged about the importance of building relationships with individual donors and how many organisations get this wrong. The same principles apply to trusts fundraising. A funder that’s engaged in your work is worth 10-20 funders on a cold prospects list, yet so many organisations prioritise the wrong thing.

Once a funder knows you well, they could support you by inviting you to apply for an invitation-only funding round, proactively supporting you with an urgent fundraising campaign, recommending you to other funders, or even just sending you an unsolicited extra cheque. This happens surprisingly frequently but almost never by accident - you need a strategic focus on building great relationships.

This tip isn’t so much about securing unrestricted funding, but reducing how much you need in the first place. Trusts and foundations fundraising isn’t just about writing applications – with a better approach to project planning and budgeting, you can ensure you have a smaller funding gap to fill.

Create a budget calculator for staff, with fixed rows for venue hire, volunteer expenses, travel etc. This helps people to cost up projects accurately in the first place and avoid budget overspends which then need to be covered by unrestricted funds.

Calculate staffing costs for projects carefully, checking with every funder what you’re allowed to include. Don’t just include the main project staff – if other staff (e.g. your Director) are committing time for line management or evaluation, include a percentage of their time if possible. This ensures your project funding fully covers the true cost of your projects, meaning your unrestricted funds can go on something else.

Include a contribution towards overhead costs in each project budget – this could be a blanket 10% or a more specific calculation, depending on the funder's requirements. Collecting lots of small core contributions in this way is often easier than leaving yourself with a big funding gap to cover with core funding requests.

Trusts and foundations fundraising is not a numbers game, and we don’t recommend the ‘spray and pray’ approach of sending generic funding applications quickly to lots of funders.

That said, if you’ve conducted prospect research to develop a funding pipeline, you might find you build up a collection of potential funders who have very broad funding interests and no specific application form or guidelines, making it difficult to identify a specific project to approach them about.

You could therefore consider putting together a core funding template, broadly explaining your work and impact in 2-4 pages and giving a couple of examples of how a small grant would benefit you. You could then send this to batches of say 10-20 funders at a time. Expect a low success rate (even 5% might be optimistic) but treat this as a shot to nothing with funders whom you wouldn’t otherwise approach.

This is likely to work best for smaller, community-rooted organisations whose work is easy to explain and has emotional impact, and who don’t have high reserves. It’s only worth trying in some circumstances, and the usual recommendations for trusts fundraising still apply – you should try to contact the funder first to check if they can give you any advice on applying, and you should tailor each application to their funding interests and average support level as much as you can.

Buzzwords come and go in fundraising. They get picked up as flavour of the month by fundraisers, charities and funders alike, and fade away just as quickly. Although the words frequently change, the concepts behind them are often more fundamental and enduring.
 
For me, one of the most important buzzwords in trusts fundraising at the moment is co-production. This is also commonly referred to as co-creation or co-design, and linked to ‘ABCD’ (or asset-based community development). Isn’t jargon exciting?

What is co-production and why is it so important?

Co-production has a broader definition in project management circles, however in a charity context it usually refers to the practice of involving your service users, clients or beneficiaries (more fun lingo to choose from) in the development of your services.

Funders value knowing that your projects aren’t planned in a top-down fashion based on what you think people want or need, but are genuinely based on their ideas, aspirations and unmet needs. This isn’t about token consultation exercises, but actively involving the people you support in your project design. For example here’s a guide to co-production in social care, along with some key principles.

This isn’t a new idea, and it’s not really a fundraising concept at all – it’s fundamental to service delivery.

However I’m seeing increasing examples of funders specifically talking about or asking for evidence of co-production. I review draft funding applications on a daily basis, and it's one of the most common areas where I feel that organisations can make improvements. In a competitive funding climate, failing to show evidence of this can give funders an easy excuse to discard your application.

So how can you build co-production into your project planning and tweak your funding applications to better emphasise what you’re doing?

​Don’t underestimate what you do naturally
​
For many organisations that we work with, co-production can feel like a strange thing to focus on. It’s not something they consciously try to do, because it’s second nature already.

If you run a local community centre, for example, your frontline staff will be interacting with your service users on a daily basis, and constantly evolving activities to reflect their ideas and unmet needs.

And this is fine – in fact, it’s often ideal. Co-production doesn’t always mean contrived exercises. But don’t expect a funder to assume you’re doing it, or give you credit for it, unless you tell them.

Spend some time reflecting on how this happens organically in your organisation, then include at least a paragraph about this in your funding applications. For example you could explain how staff and service users typically interact, the questions that your frontline staff like to ask, and your internal processes for factoring people's feedback and ideas into service design.

Demonstrate how you gather structured feedback

Depending on the nature of your work, co-production may not happen quite as organically. And even if it does, it can be useful to gather more structured, formal feedback periodically.

Surveys are excellent for quickly gathering broad feedback. Online surveys usually enable you to reach more people more quickly and analyse data automatically, but only if your service users have online access. You can use focus groups to test specific ideas or explore topics in more detail and gather more in-depth feedback.

Demonstrate your approach to gathering feedback in your funding applications. Cite both your quantitative results (e.g. survey data) and qualitative results (e.g. individual quotes). If a funder asks a specific question about co-production, use the space to explain your approach and rationale in more detail.

If you have the budget, appointing an independent consultant or agency to design the feedback process and/or analyse the results can bring added credibility. We recently designed an independent consultation process for a charity and later helped them to write funding applications, and the independent feedback data has been invaluable in demonstrating the need for their work and the extent to which service users are involved.

Explain how you use feedback and work with people to improve your services

Of course, listening is only one part of the process. And it counts for little if you don’t act on what you’re being told.

Successful projects often have steering groups or committees who meet regularly to review impact data and service user feedback, then take action where needed. Steering groups should include (ideally multiple) representatives who have lived experience of the issue you’re tackling. Organisations that really succeed in embedding co-production in their work - and maximising their impact - often have representatives with lived experience on their Board of Trustees.

Providing evidence of all this should impress funders, however it can still sound a bit theoretical. So go one step further and include some concrete examples of how you’ve co-created services. For example, were your service users instrumental in designing any of your current services, or have you improved or evolved a project in specific response to feedback?

This is especially important if you’re trying to do something unusual or surprising that a funder may not naturally value. Funders often have specific ideas about how work should be delivered, yet also say that co-production is important to them, which can feel contradictory!

And what about if you’re writing a final report for a project which needs further support, where you already know that the funder won't provide simple continuation funding? Would they be more receptive if you demonstrated your learning and proposed a slightly different, co-created project as a follow-up?

Finally, not everything that you tell a funder needs to come from the horse’s mouth. Testimonials and endorsements – from either service users involved in your work, or delivery partners who are impressed with your approach – are great for increasing your credibility in a funder’s eyes.

​The charity sector isn’t short of excellent blogs about the importance of thanking your donors – including this guest blog from our associate Gemma and this article about SUPER thank yous.

Most fundraisers are well aware that thank yous are key to building a relationship with donors, and that increasing support from existing donors tends to be easier and more cost-effective than recruiting new ones. But how many charities are actually putting this into practice, particularly when faced with the realities of lack of time and competing priorities?

I’ve been doing a little experiment to find out, making 10 modest donations to different charities over 10 weeks.

Professional curiosity wasn’t my only motivation – we work with so many fantastic charities, and since moving to Bristol I’ve found out about many worthy local causes. Every year I have to calculate my charitable donations for my tax return – and although I support a few charities regularly, this always reminds me that I could do more.

10 donations later, here’s how I got on and what I think you need to know – about thank yous, conversation-starters and payment platforms...

The methodology

Each donation was a one-off online gift of £20 – this felt significant enough to have a genuine impact, but small enough to perhaps fly under the radar for charities who don’t routinely thank their donors. I suspect many £20 donors could be persuaded to give again – maybe regularly – if treated well enough.

I’d never supported any of these charities before. Although I have contacts at a couple, I didn’t tell them I was going to donate.

My passion lies with smaller charities, so most donations were to small, local causes that I personally feel passionate about – including youth, homelessness, refugees, food banks and city farms. As a 'control', I also donated to two large charities who really should have the resources to thank donors properly – including one spontaneous donation for Cyclone Idai, which has been scandalously under-reported in the British media.

When given the option, I always included a message explaining my reasons for giving, and opted in to further contact by post, email or both – these are causes I’m naturally interested in after all.

I haven’t named any of the charities in this blog, unless to show examples of amazing things they did – this is about general lessons learned, not naming and shaming.
 
The headline results

I don’t know who first said ‘silence is golden’, but I doubt it was a donor
 
It was disappointing to never hear back from two charities, and wait weeks for a reply from two others.
 
I’m realistic enough to know that a £20 donation isn’t going to change the world, but making a contribution definitely feels good. There’s plenty of research to suggest this feeling can be an addictive buzz for donors, and a nice thank you – and some further information about the cause – is a great way to nurture that buzz. I know that I’ll support several of these charities again, based on my interactions so far.
 
On the other hand, doing nothing is a sure-fire buzz-kill. More than being rude, it’s a missed opportunity. There are so many worthy causes out there, and if someone has chosen yours then that’s an opportunity worth investing in – because if you don’t make them feel good about their support, another charity will.
 
Sure, thanking a donor isn’t guaranteed to lead to further support. But think of all the other fundraising activities you willingly do which don’t guarantee success – grant applications, corporate pitches, mass appeals. My gut feeling is that a memorable thank you takes much less time and has a better chance of paying off.
 
Don’t miss an easy opportunity to start a conversation
 
For most donations, I was given the opportunity to add a message, which I used to explain why I’d decided to donate, and which aspect of the charity’s work particularly interested me.
 
None of the 10 charities referenced this in their thank yous. Maybe they didn’t see the message, or just didn’t think it was important. This surprised me, as I’ve already considered this one of the simplest and most natural ways to personalise your reply and start building a relationship.
 
Phrases like ‘Since you expressed an interested in X, I thought I’d tell you…’ or ‘Is there anything else you’d like to know about Y?’ show donors that you’re listening, and encourage them to open up about their motivations and interests. It only takes 30 seconds to start a conversation – and you can potentially use this information to make future asks more personal and relevant, therefore more successful.
 
Great thank yous go the extra mile – but you need to follow through
 
So that’s the bad news – but did I receive any mind-blowing thank yous that you can learn from?
 
I received this lovely handwritten thank you card and annual report from Bristol-based Bridges For Communities, who connect people of different cultures and faiths through events and activities, in order to increase tolerance and understanding:

​The card emphasised how much they rely on and feel motivated by donations, and the report really emphasised the impact they’re having locally. Some people might query the cost of buying and posting a thank you card in exchange for a £20 donation, but it’s worth considering the bigger picture – isn’t a new donor who feels valued, welcomed and engaged likely to contribute more in future?
 
This lovely personal reply from a local food bank also made a splash:

Wow – this was a lovely idea! I replied saying I’d love to pop in – anxious about not wanting to waste their time, but sure I’d donate again once I found out more. I felt excited, both personally to understand a local organisation better, and professionally to be able to share the story of a brilliant thank you.
 
The only problem? Five weeks later, I haven’t received another reply. I'm still hoping I'll get a chance to speak to them again about their work. The lesson here is that if you’re going to thank your donors in a way which genuinely stands out, make sure you’re ready to keep up the conversation.
 
You’re only as good as your third party systems
 
Many charities use payment platforms like PayPal, Justgiving or Localgiving to handle their online donations, as the cost of building your own system can be prohibitive.
 
Most charities that I donated to had clearly invested time in placing a prominent donate button on their homepage and writing a convincing message about why you should donate. But frustratingly – and sometimes amusingly – things often went wrong when I left their site:

• When I tried to donate to my local city farm, their Localgiving page told me 'this charity is not accepting donations at the moment.' Another charity got my donation instead.
• PayPal generally felt like a clunky tool all round – prompting me to 'leave instructions for the seller' rather than a message of support. One charity hadn’t configured PayPal to ask for Gift Aid - £5 instantly lost.
• Once I was asked to “prove I wasn’t a robot” before donating, which was surprisingly difficult. When our automated cousins one day rise up to conquer the world, but decide to indulge in a little philanthropy on their way, they’ll probably wonder what harm their donation would’ve done.
• One charity hadn’t checked their donation process since re-working their website, so my reward for donating was a lovely “This page does not exist” confirmation page.
• One site recognised my email address and refused to let me donate until I’d remembered a password from years ago, even though I could’ve donated as a guest with a new email address instantly.

 
Ok, some of these are minor issues, but that’s over 50% of my donations which had something that went wrong or made donating difficult. A smooth donor experience is important – and it’s not possible if your third party platform isn’t up to the job or not configured properly. A less patient donor could well have given up a few times, particularly someone less confident with technology.
 
The moral of the story? No matter how good your own website, your third party payment platform can make or break the experience. Choose your platform carefully, and test how it works from a donor’s perspective before going live. Then keep testing it periodically, in case something breaks over time.

As an organisation, how do you manage risk in your fundraising activities? Do you focus on financial or reputational risk, or both, or other things too? Do you keep going until you’ve eliminated every possible risk from your plans? If so, are your activities still worth doing by the end?

I recently popped along to the Arnolfini for the latest Bristol Fundraising Group talk about risk management in fundraising. The speaker was the excellent Ed Wyatt, an experienced Compliance Manager for multiple big charities and long-time fundraiser and trustee. Ed has kindly given us permission to share some key learning points here…

The problem

Conversations about risk in fundraising can be frustrating and unproductive. It can feel like natural risk-takers and risk-averse people are speaking entirely alien languages, and often the loudest voice in the room wins.

This can have several consequences:

• In their bid to find The Next Big Thing in fundraising, some organisations instead stumble into The Next Big Headache.
• Being too risk-averse can dilute promising fundraising ideas until they’re perfectly safe but no longer appealing or profitable enough to be worth doing.
• In trying to avoid risk, it’s easy to inadvertently take the biggest risk of all – stagnating in a tough fundraising climate, then hitting financial difficulties as your safer income streams dry up.

Reviewing your current fundraising portfolio, and where you might find The Next Big Thing

In his talk, Ed demonstrated a simple way of reviewing your current fundraising portfolio and defining your activities using four categories:

Low risk, high reward activities are the obvious sweet spot to aim for. Most of your fundraising probably falls into this category already but, since everybody else is thinking the same thing, the growth potential or uniqueness of these activities may be limited.

Low risk, low reward activities might've been very easy to get approval for, but they may not be worth the effort. And in the unlikely event that you have any high risk, low reward activities, you should flag these up urgently. In both cases, terminating these activities could be a good way to free up capacity for something else.

That leaves high risk, high reward activities. Scary territory, but if you’re looking for The Next Big Thing in fundraising, you may need to creep beyond your comfort zone into this space.

To do this, first you need to define your organisation’s risk appetite (the blue line above) - the line you're willing to creep up to, but not cross. ‘High risk’ and ‘low risk’ are likely to mean very different things if you work for an international conservation charity with a history of provocative campaigning activities, compared to a local community library.

Your risk appetite should depend on the nature of your mission, your beneficiaries, your financial position and the characteristics of your existing fundraising activities. It’s crucial to avoid being guided by anybody’s personal judgement, even management and trustees – we recently explored this same topic in our blog about ethical fundraising policies.

It’s vital to remember that ‘high risk’ must never mean breaking the law, fundraising regulations, your internal guidelines, your ethical fundraising policy or your gift acceptance policy.

Identifying risks in new fundraising opportunities

Before you decide what level of risk you’re prepared to live with, you need to identify all possible risks associated with your activity or event. Ed suggested using your own ‘risk library’ of common categories that most risks fall into, for example:

This works best as an energetic debate, not a dreaded tick-box exercise for one person alone behind a desk. Try to ask a few different personality types to sit in a room together and discuss - both natural risk-takers and risk-averse people have a key role here. You need to create the right atmosphere and reassure people that there are no right or wrong answers at this stage.

This was illustrated nicely by a group exercise at the end of the talk. Ed asked us all to imagine we were the Fundraising Team at a local animal park, who had been approached by an events company with a new idea: a series of late-night parties at the animal park for 18-30 year olds. This would be a new and potentially lucrative audience for the charity, but hardly risk-free.

My group had five minutes to consider all possible risks, and came up with the following:

As you can probably guess, this was a light-hearted attempt at risk assessment. But Ed said that humour is a useful tool in real-life scenarios too. ‘Eaten by a bear’ might have been a joke, but it helps to highlight a real risk (injury inflicted by the resident animals) that the organisers of this event might otherwise have forgotten to flag up.

Discuss how to manage risks but decide what level of risk you’re ultimately comfortable with

When deciding what to do about each risk, use the Four Ts:

• Transfer – some risks can be transferred to a third party if you have the right contracts in place and pay for the privilege. For example, you can buy insurance, pay for a first aider, or work in partnership with an events company.
• Tolerate – for some risks you might decide to do nothing, out of choice rather than ignorance. For example, the risk might be low impact, integral to your idea, or too expensive to mitigate. If you tolerate a risk, you should always monitor it in case circumstances change over time.
• Treat – develop policies, processes and procedures in the event that something goes wrong, and make sure that people are trained to follow them.
• Terminate – this involves finding a way to eliminate a risky element entirely – or if you can’t, being brave enough to walk away from your idea if necessary.

It’s crucial to adopt a varied approach. Tolerating everything would be reckless, but treating everything is likely to be exhausting and impractical. Transferring everything would be prohibitively expensive, and terminating everything would leave you with a vanilla fundraising activity, or no activity at all.

By taking ownership of your risks, and making sure they’re all within an acceptable level, you can move to a more Zen-like state with your fundraising. Most lucrative fundraising activities carry some level of risk, so you need to think back to your risk appetite (the blue line below) and decide what level of risk your organisation is prepared to accept given the circumstances:

Contrary to popular belief, compliance and risk management shouldn’t be about saying ‘no’ - it's more a case of ‘not like that’. Risk-free activities are rarely financially or commercially realistic, but that’s not an excuse for failing to take responsibility of the situation or control of your risks.

In other words, don’t let your participants get eaten by a bear, but don’t let compliance bears eat up all your good fundraising ideas either.

Charities are often brilliant at holding up a mirror to society and making people notice and care about injustice. But are we always good enough at holding up a mirror to ourselves? And what holds us back?

​When you’re short of time, it can feel easier to present a simple, sanitised version of yourself and your work. Crafting messages about your struggles and weaknesses feels like it must be done carefully. After years of negative media coverage about charities, it's natural to want to present yourself positively: we know exactly what we’re doing, and every penny we spend goes to plan.

I don’t think it always has to be like this. Here are a few ways of showing your more honest side, and why it's worth the time and effort:

1. Show that your work is challenging and things don’t always go to plan

Many projects are complex to deliver. Talking about your setbacks gives people an insight into what your work is really like and makes them more emotionally invested. Think of the narrative of any good film or book - it's rarely plan sailing to the end, and the setbacks draw you into the story.

​Great fundraising is often a response to adversity. For example, in 2014, Manchester Dogs' Home raised £1.2million in 48 hours after a devastating fire. Communities rally around organisations in times of crisis, particularly with the rise of crowdfunding. Hopefully you won't experience a disaster, but being honest and open about minor setbacks – for example if you experience a delay or issue with building work after a capital campaign – can help you to raise vital extra funds if needed.

2. Trusts and foundations reward honesty too

It’s not only public fundraising – honesty with funders usually pays too. With the precise focus on outputs and outcomes, we can often feel mortified if we're unable to deliver a project exactly as planned. However most funders are too experienced to expect everything to go as planned. If there's a hitch they’re usually on your side – they want things to go well too, and are often surprisingly willing to help.

I know one charity that's delivering a big six-figure project. They rely heavily on volunteers, but had struggled to find a good volunteer coordinator, and failed to achieve some outcomes as a result. Instead of disguising or finding excuses for this, they explained the situation honestly in their mid-project report. The funder’s response: how much would it cost to increase the hours of your volunteer coordinator post and pay a better salary to find the right person? A top-up grant of £10,000 was on its way a few weeks later.

3. Involve your supporters in decisions that affect them

I often see charities second-guessing how to communicate with their supporters. Would they prefer a monthly or quarterly newsletter? What types of story do they most want to hear about? Will they prefer Event A or Event B? Staff often have differing opinions, but rarely think about actually asking supporters.

Perhaps charities assume their supporters won’t appreciate the question – will they feel the charity should know the answer already, or simply not bother to respond? However, consulting your supporters on important decisions shows a willingness to learn and leads to better engagement and more reliable insights. The real honesty here is asking for advice, and admitting that you don't have all the answers.

4. Handling complaints well is worth its weight in gold

We all make mistakes sometimes, but it's too easy to respond with a weak excuse or with the defence that "we're just following our policy". Have you ever responded to a complaint with: “You know what, no excuses, we just got this wrong”?

Most supporters complain because they care, and want to give you a chance to get things right. They’re not trying to catch you out. They’ll usually understand if you made a mistake because, guess what, they also make mistakes sometimes. A well-written apology and honest explanation actually builds trust and appreciation for what you do - several times I've seen this not only salvage a relationship with a donor, but also lead to increased support.
​
5. Show the people and personality behind your work

Finally, being honest is also about showing what your work is really like – even if you look stressed, your desk is messy and your office is cramped! Showing the real you leads to empathy and familiarity more than judgement or criticism, in my experience.

In my first job in the sector, I ran a major student fundraising event. We frequently tried to post photos on social media of us sending out welcome packs, taking deliveries of T-shirts or welcoming new staff. Our fundraisers  genuinely liked this – for some reason, most seemed to think we were running the event out of a broom cupboard, and were amazed that the charity had a ‘normal’ office! It helped people to get to know us and appreciate that we were a professional organisation doing a lot of work behind the scenes.

So thank you Andy Murray for the reminder about the power of honesty - and if you've got any other tips or stories about putting this into practice with your supporters or donors, we'd love a comment below!