​There's plenty to worry about at the moment - in fundraising and in society. With every passing crisis, charities and social enterprises face increasing need, but more financial pressure - and it’s no different now with rising inflation and the cost of living crisis.
 
On top of that, there’s much entrenched frustration directed at funders, whose grantmaking processes and policies add a further headache. Only last week, new research estimated that organisations spend £900million per year meeting the demands of applying to funders.

Our own blog charts this rising frustration. We've written almost enough rants to fill a small book, whether about the human cost of bad application processes, the need for funders to turn over a new leaf, the injustice of the lack of infrastructure core funding, or the general frustrating things that funders say.
 
While it feels important to be honest and realistic about these challenges, it's also nice to focus on positivity where we can find it. And it's true that the pandemic has prompted some positive reflection and reform from many progressive funders. When updating our training content recently, I really enjoyed preparing this slide highlighting some of the current movements and reports on grantmaking that give us reasons to be optimistic. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it’s also one of our most colourful slides:

​On the right of this slide is a book that I’ve been promising to review for months, because it gives a glimpse of a possible future for grantmaking that is better for everyone - more accessible, more respectful, more even-handed, and more impactful as a result.
 
Modern Grantmaking is written by Gemma Bull and Tom Steinberg. Both have worked for funders and been responsible for giving away money - a job that many people, particularly those outside the sector, might think sounds enjoyable and straightforward, but is actually fraught with challenges.

Both have evidently experienced the creeping unease and frustration that comes with the territory of seeing money given away badly. So they sat down and spoke to countless experts about what the common issues are, and what good grantmaking should look like – and Modern Grantmaking is the result.
 
Obviously, this book isn't written for people like me who seek funding, but for those on the other side of the fence who give money away and want to do it better. But for fundraisers, there's plenty of useful insight - and reassurance - in understanding more about the issues that grantmakers are wrestling with.

The first reason for positivity is simply that a modern grantmaking movement exists. That a growing number of people in influential positions are talking and writing about how grantmaking isn’t good enough, and how it can be better.
 
Early on, the authors write that in the last decade, such ideas are “growing up like green shoots through cracks in a pavement. These shoots are now so numerous and so vigorous that the paving slabs of traditional grantmaking practice are threatening to buckle.”
 
Yet I wonder how many of these reformist ideas actually make it far beyond a tight circle of people. Certainly, the vast majority of fundraisers who come on our training courses and share frustrations about the things funders say and do, show little sense of this buckling pavement under their feet. So to have a new book that brings together these ideas, shouts about the need for reform, and signposts people towards a number of growing modern grantmaking movements, is a beacon of hope for fundraisers in a difficult landscape.
 
As well as influencing funders, this helps to legitimise the frustrations that fundraisers feel, and galvanise them to find small ways to challenge and push back. If more of us are talking the same language, change happens faster. Last week, I saw a small but significant example of this on Twitter:

​Modern Grantmaking gave me a telling glimpse into the curious career of a grantmaker - one with few structured development opportunities, and little incentive to do things differently. In the authors’ words, "grantmaking can also be an ideal career for people who just want a quiet life and a reliable salary.”

Firstly, grantmaking comes across as at best a very young profession, and arguably not a recognised profession at all. The authors explain how there's no established career path into grantmaking, very little tailored training to help with the key skills required, and no accreditations or recognised standards to measure performance against.
 
Secondly, there’s not much accountability. In a world without enough funding to go around, if a funder treats you badly, where are you supposed to take your ‘business’ instead? Can you afford to complain? If funders don’t recognise themselves as needing to provide a service to grantseekers, they won’t measure themselves in those terms.
 
Reading this, suddenly many of my past experiences with funders made sense. Seeking funding is a lot like being a UK rail passenger - you might not enjoy the experience, it might feel unpleasant and at times dehumanising, but good luck finding an alternative. Now imagine the added fear that if you complain about the delays and overcrowding, they might simply stop offering you a seat at all.​

It's cathartic to read this insight in Modern Grantmaking, and I'd recommend you do so yourself. But the best thing about the book is how it creates an alternative vision for grantmaking, as a profession with the service mentality, the standards and development opportunities, and the pressure to be better.

There's advice about how to recognise and manage the power and privilege that you have as a grantmaker. How to convince colleagues that you may not have the right perspective and lived experience in the room to evaluate funding proposals and make fair decisions. How easy it can be to strong-arm a charity into completely changing their project or budget, because of a seemingly innocuous suggestion you make.
 
There are whole chapters dedicated to improving how you treat applicants, even if nobody is demanding it. How to understand what the experience is like for grantseekers trying to navigate your website, fill in your application form and go through the agonising wait for a decision - then take steps to improve that experience.
 
A recurring theme is the importance for humility - just because you have all the money, it doesn’t mean you have all the knowledge. For grantmakers with this mindset, the book contains practical advice on how to commission independent research to understand a social issue well enough to judge funding proposals, and how to start reading evaluation reports with a critical eye that genuinely broadens your understanding, rather than just looking for quick evidence that your grants are working.

Reading all this was music to my ears as a fundraiser. And what makes Modern Grantmaking so convincing is that it’s peppered with horror stories of grantmaking done badly, and inspiring case studies showing how funders have reaped the benefits of making positive changes.

The book also has a real grassroots feel. While it may be picked up by the occasional Chief Executive of a funder, it's really written for those people whose day-to-day work has the power to make grantseeking a good or a miserable experience – the people who design application forms, respond to emails and answer the phones. Of course, we can hope that these people will still influence those working above them, and will ultimately go on to lead trusts and foundations in the future, and set a new standard for grantmaking.

​​I hope that any grantmaker wanting to genuinely maximise their social impact will read Modern Grantmaking, then do what they can to push through change. I guess that will be the ultimate measure of the book’s success.
 
But, in the meantime, if you’re a frustrated bid writer wondering if, how and when things will ever be done better, I’d also recommend getting yourself a copy - you’ll be able to take plenty of ideas and much-needed hope from it.

You can buy your copy of Modern Grantmaking, and read more about the movement and the authors, by clicking here.

We do a lot of strategy work with organisations that need to make a major change in how they raise money, and become a true “fundraising charity” for the very first time.
 
They're often very established organisations with a significant turnover, who have been delivering successful services for a long time. But they're coming at public fundraising from a standing start, often prompted by an unexpected development like the loss of a key statutory contract, or the realisation that grant funding alone is no longer enough to sustain them.
 
For organisations like these, helping them with everyday fundraising tactics is only part of the focus. Yes, they may need to decide when to run appeals, whether to set up a regular giving scheme, what suggested donation amounts to use. But they also face a more fundamental challenge - they need to make people aware of the simple fact that they're a charity in need of public support.

We live in a world where everybody loves to have an opinion on charities - what they do, how they fundraise, how much they’re allowed to pay for things - but most people have little sense of what a charity is. They certainly don’t realise that it includes a vast range of organisations that they use every day - including schools, hospitals, community centres - or the extent to which these organisations are increasingly reliant on public support to stay afloat.
 
Tinkering with fundraising tactics won’t achieve very much unless you can address this fundamental issue. So this blog is all about some ways to communicate the fact that you’re a fundraising charity at all.

There's no shame in not being able to accomplish everything you want with just statutory or grant funding, particularly in the current climate. But if people don’t see you as a fundraising charity, and haven’t heard you ask before, they're going to need educating about what you need, and why now.

Be honest and matter-of-fact about your funding realities, and be prepared to debunk myths. People might be surprised to know that you don’t receive local authority funding, or a lot less than you used to. And focus on the positive side of your fundraising - identify things that you’d love to be able to do or provide for your service users, that you know they want and need, and explain how donations will enable these things to happen.

Discussing this internally will enable you to craft a concise, convincing fundraising message that gives motivation and confidence to your organisation, staff and volunteers. You can then deploy this message in all kinds of ways, as we've outlined below.

Successful fundraising charities all have one very obvious thing in common - they openly ask for money. But it’s amazing how many organisations starting out with public fundraising don't do this clearly.
 
Make sure you have a prominent donate button on your website homepage and navigation bar. Include basic fundraising messages regularly on social media and in your newsletter. These shouldn’t be too pushy or intrusive, but they need to be there. And they don’t even need to be particularly-well crafted at this stage to have an impact.
 
Taking these steps won’t raise much money on their own, but they will ensure that people who interact with your organisation become aware that you’re trying to raise money from the public, which is the first way to shift perceptions.

​But people don’t just engage with your organisation via your website, newsletter and social media. If you're a community-based organisation, there will be plenty of other opportunities - perhaps you run a local café, a community centre, or deliver services or events in your community.

This is where the magic happens. People will see your organisation in its best light - helping people, providing work or volunteering opportunities, building grassroots relationships. Visitors will be feeling warmth and goodwill towards you - so not having a fundraising poster on the wall, or a ‘donate now’ message on a till, is a missed opportunity.

Again, don’t expect these things to raise loads of money initially, and be mindful that many people won’t be a in a position to donate. But you're still changing how your organisation is seen, and introducing timely messaging that some people will act on.

When you're first starting out, fundraising success stories may be limited, and the financial numbers small - but you still have something to shout about.

If somebody makes a modest donation, thank them publicly (ask their permission first, or do it without mentioning their name or details). If somebody does a fundraiser for you, write a short news article or social media post about it. If you have a loyal supporter, consider interviewing them and sharing their story about what they do and why they donate.

This achieves three things. Firstly, it's another way of communicating that you're an active fundraising charity, offering more variety than just a financial ask. Secondly, it shows that you value donations and fundraising support, and that even modest contributions are important to you. Finally, it's 'social proof' - seeing that people are supporting you will inspire and encourage others to do the same.

When you make the shift to being a fundraising charity, you need to bring everyone along with you. There's a common saying that “everybody is a fundraiser” - that’s not quite true, but certainly every staff member or volunteer can be an ambassador for you.
 
Crafting your central fundraising message (see above) is also an internal exercise – it's important that everyone understands why you're stepping up your fundraising, and what you can achieve if successful. Some staff will need help to overcome any misconceptions they have about fundraising, and identify small ways in which they can personally help.
 
Keep fundraising on the agenda by literally making it a regular agenda item in staff meetings, even for project staff. Every day, they'll be interacting with service users who might consider doing small-scale fundraising activities, or family members who might be in a position to donate. So this provides an ongoing mechanism to identify new fundraising opportunities and ideas, as well as addressing any barriers or teething problems.

According to Wiktionary, the above proverb is used to describe "a disappointing or mundane event occurring straight after an exciting, magnificent, or triumphal event."

Now it's a stretch to call any strategy process magnificent or triumphal - I love strategic planning and even I wouldn’t go that far. But you can probably remember a time when you saw a new strategy launched with much fanfare, the product of many exciting conversations about the future, and then…nothing. The strategy goes to its final resting place in a dusty drawer or the dark recesses of your shared drive, and everybody goes back to their daily business as if nothing has changed.

This is a huge waste of time. Everybody knows it, but it still happens more often than most people care to admit.

At Lime Green, we try to make any strategy process as collaborative and inclusive as possible - I'm a firm believer that the conversations are as important as the final document. You need to involve people from all levels of your organisation, rather than entrusting a senior leader or consultant to sit in their ivory tower and write your strategy alone. But this alone isn't enough to avoid the pull of the strategy graveyard.

There are loads of resources out there about how to create a strategy, but very little on the all-important topic of what to do after you've finished it. So here are some tips for making sure your published business plan or fundraising strategy remains a useful and relevant guiding document…

Expecting everyone to independently read and engage with a new strategy is a tough ask. Even if they want to, the realities of their job may get in the way, and words on a page are rarely that exciting or inspiring.

This is where a strategy launch session - for the whole organisation or your particular team - can work really well. Ask people to read the strategy in advance, but be prepared to summarise key points at the start. Encourage staff to ask questions, voice concerns, and think creatively about what they need to start doing differently to turn the strategy into reality. While this absolutely isn’t a substitute for involving people in the planning process, it's a great additional step.

Providing a space to discuss concerns is important, because a new strategy can inadvertently make people worry about things like job security or underinvestment in their area of work. Dealing with these worries head-on will reassure people and make them engage more positively with what you want to achieve.

If a strategy is meaningful and well thought out, it should ultimately result in you changing the way you work - but it's not the strategy itself that does the heavy lifting.

It’s highly likely you’ll need to update your budget and re-write your operational plan. Job descriptions and even job titles may need to be changed. Regular meeting agendas will need updating, so you can monitor and discuss the things that you’ve decided are most important. Forget to do this and your strategy quickly becomes irrelevant, because people won’t have the resources or permission to start doing things differently.

A good strategy, with a bold vision and clear direction, should build confidence and trust in your organisation and improve how you work with others. If that’s the case, you want it out in the open. So make sure that everyone you work with knows about your strategy, understands how it changes things, and holds you to account for turning it into reality.

But you can’t expect your strategy to be important enough to external people that they’ll sit down and read it in full. There may also be parts of it that are for internal eyes only. This is where a well-written executive summary or eye-catching infographic, which summarises key information in a concise and engaging way, can be hugely helpful.

​I don’t just mean saving it somewhere easy to find, although that helps.

If you've created a clear list of strategic priorities, milestones or values, make these impossible to miss. Print them and stick them up in your office and meeting room. Add them to login screens, backgrounds and screensavers. This makes your key messages impossible to forget and ignore, but it also shows pride in your strategy and promotes accountability - because someone, somewhere is going to look a bit silly if the whole team gets a daily reminder of all the things that the organisation changed its mind about doing.

If colleagues are wrestling with a tricky decision, remind them to refer back to the strategy and consider how it could guide them. If following your new strategy has enabled some kind of success - securing a new grant, forming a new partnership or receiving positive feedback - shout about it from the rooftops.

In my experience, there are enough badly-planned and painful strategy processes out there that a lot of people approach this type of work with a big dollop of suspicion and scepticism. Showing the value of a good strategy, and vindicating the time spent on it, can help to change attitudes. You'll be grateful the next time you need their time and input.

​No strategy gets everything right or accurately predicts the future. But that’s never a reason to hope everybody quietly forgets it ever existed.
 
To get real value out of a strategy, you'll need to review it part way through the strategic period, say after 12 or 18 months. Committing to this in the strategy itself, and scheduling a review process well in advance, makes it far more likely it'll actually happen.
 
Just before you publish a strategy is a great time to identify anything that will particularly merit a review. If you've faced a particularly tough decision, or committed to a direction that some staff are worried about, then promise to revisit this. Thinking like this may give you a list of natural questions to work through later. This again builds confidence and accountability, and might persuade doubters to give something a try for a bit.

March 2022 marked the end of an era, as the Small Charities Coalition (SCC) closed its doors for good. Hundreds of people listened to the voices and experiences of small charities by joining their final celebration event ‘The Power of Small’ or reading their ‘Small and Mighty’ follow-up report.

If you haven’t seen the report yet, it’s well worth a read. There are lots of interesting reflections on the value and future of small charity infrastructure support, as well as an announcement to bring relief to many: SCC’s free HelpDesk and Charity Set Up Tool will continue under the new joint stewardship of the NCVO and FSI.

The question of how the sector secures long-term funding for this type of vital infrastructure support, and how we can get people to value it, still looms large. I was really hoping the report would tackle this head-on, but it doesn’t really say anything new - that’s a disappointment, but a topic for another day.

The report outlines four Small Principles for those working with, funding and supporting small organisations. The first of these is ‘If you support or fund small charities, say so upfront.’ The context is that the small charities surveyed for the final report overwhelmingly said they trusted SCC because it was explicitly set up to support small charities, as well as being a small charity itself. While many organisations offer support and services to small charities as part of a much broader programme, this rarely inspires the same confidence.

This is a really important point, and on reflection something we at Lime Green need to say more clearly on our website and elsewhere. While we don’t work solely with small charities, they were the original reason why we started, and remain the main audience for our consultancy, training and resources.

So in response to Small Principle #1, this blog is about one thing: showing that we're here for small charities.

We could never, and don’t want to, replicate the broad suite of support and services offered by an organisation like SCC. There’s loads we don’t do, in which case we'll always signpost to others. But if you need something that we do provide, I hope you’ll feel able to come to us with confidence. Here’s why:

Our experience is small charity to the core. My entire time as a charity employee and trustee was with charities with a turnover below £1million. As a guide, in the past three years nearly three-quarters of our consultancy clients have been either registered charities or social enterprises below this turnover threshold, often significantly below it.

This small charity experience shapes how we work. I’ve personally felt that frustration when support is unintentionally alienating or irrelevant for small charities. You know, assumptions that you have a marketing budget, a ‘team’ of fundraisers, available reserves. Training that leaves you with plenty of ideas but no clue where or how to start implementing them. This frustration drives our approach - we always strive to be relevant and proportionate for small charities. It's great to get positive feedback about the quality of our work, but I’m equally proud that we’re seen as being friendly, flexible and kind - easy values and cliches to put on paper, but only meaningful when backed up by feedback.

We use expertise as a force for good. The knowledge and skills gained from working with a wide range of organisations can be a double-edged sword. Specialist expertise can solve problems, empower organisations and build confidence - but used incorrectly, it can overcomplicate things, demoralise people, and only serve to make the consultant look clever. We aim to do all of the former and none of the latter - in my experience, that's not as common in our sector as you'd think. While we do sometimes use specialist tools and frameworks (some designed ourselves, some borrowed from the business world), we’ll only do so if they genuinely solve a problem, and if we can explain to an organisation how to keep using them in-house. We strive to create practical content that make sense, and we’re vehemently anti-jargon - if you see us breaking these rules, please call us out!

We create free resources specifically for small charities. Too often, I feel like fundraisers and consultants operate in an echo chamber, endlessly recycling and debating issues that may be interesting but are ultimately irrelevant for small charities, who form the majority of the sector. While we do of course write and talk about topical issues, we do so with the explicit aim of demystifying them and being practically-minded:

• Our monthly blog is a conscious mix of practical how-to guides and passionate opinion pieces, for example on the importance of infrastructure support and kinder funder processes for small charities.
• Our podcast explores innovate ideas with the aim of making them actionable for small organisations with very limited time and budget.
• We've published a set of free fundraising helpsheets.

We train hundreds of grassroots organisations each year. We work with partners that focus on serving small organisations, including the School for Social Entrepreneurs and various CVSs (Councils for Voluntary Services). We were also an approved trainer for SCC up until their closure. Again, you’ll see that our training feedback reflects our small charity focus - I love that we’re seen as being warm, friendly and approachable, as making groups feel comfortable, structuring content clearly, and giving encouragement to people who are already doing things well.

Working with us costs less if you're a small charity. We offer a guaranteed discount of 10-20% (depending on the service) on our consultancy fees for small registered charities. The work we do with larger organisations helps to subsidise this, as well as generating new learning and resources that we can then use and share more widely.

Thanks to the Small and Mighty report for outlining their four Small Principles for future small charity support. I hope we can rise to the challenge and do our bit.

This month we're taking a breather from writing punchy opinion pieces or gazing into our crystal ball and focusing on something more straightforward but still vital - everything you need to know about the humble case for support.

A case for support is an internal document that you create to outline the problem your organisation exists to solve, what you do about that problem, and what you're going to achieve as a result. Quite literally, it's your case for why donors or funders should support your work.
 
A good case for support effectively acts as a comprehensive, well-organised filing cabinet of convincing content that you can pull out whenever you need it - for a funding proposal, a meeting with a donor, to create copy for a webpage.
 
It’s very unlikely that anyone outside your organisation will see - or would ever want to see - this full document in all its glory. But it should be the starting point for your external, donor-facing documents. It's never a case of just copy/pasting large chunks of content from your case for support into an external document and just adding images and a catchy title - the text will always need tailoring for the audience and context - but it’s still a brilliant shortcut.
 
(Just to confuse things, often organisations create a shorter, branded external document to 'sell' their work to donors and also call this a ‘case for support’, but that’s not what we’re talking about in this blog.)
 
Working with organisations to create their case for support is one of my favourite jobs. As well as it being a privilege to learn all about fascinating and important new causes, I love the process of asking a few targeted questions, rapidly building up an array of content on colourful post-its, then shaping it into a structured document.

And organisations always seem to really value having that outsider’s perspective - while they can supply all the passion, lived experience and raw content, a few ‘devil’s advocate’ questions from us can help to clarify details, tease out vital extra information and explain things clearly and convincingly for an external audience.

Many organisations shy away from creating a case for support, because they don't feel they have time. I’m not going to lie, it does take time to create. But it will certainly save you time in the long run, and also increase your return on investment from fundraising.
 
A good case for support will equip you with:

• Better fundraising content - you're making an investment in creating strong, reusable core content that you can start from every time, then focus on fine-tuning for different audiences.
• Brand and voice consistency - your staff, trustees and volunteers will feel more confident about writing and talking about your organisation's work. When they need to write an application, give a talk, or create some key information to leave with a donor, they’ll be able to use a consistent tone and always weave in those key messages.
• The ability to capitalise on last-minute opportunities - if a funder launches a programme at short notice with an urgent deadline (which they love doing), or a donor asks for information ahead of a meeting the next day, no need to panic - you’ll be able to respond quickly, using your case for support as a starting point.
• A stronger and more convincing argument - as you craft your case for support, you’ll be able to identify any weaknesses or gaps. For example, if you’re not clear why your organisation approaches things a certain way, or why a service user would come to you instead of another organisation, the chances are a funder will be asking the same question. So this is a chance to critique and fine-tune your arguments over time, on our own terms, outside the rushed process of a specific application. This is more important than ever if you want to stand out in such a competitive funding climate.

There are many ways to structure a case for support, and they can get pretty long and complicated, but fundamentally you need to cover four key areas:
 ​
The need for your work:

• The problem you exist to solve
• The people that you work with - their circumstances, experiences, wishes and needs
• How you know all this - who you have asked, what they have told you etc.

 
Your ‘solution’:

• What you do in response to these issues
• Specific details about your planned activities: what, where, how long, how often etc.
• Why you decided to do things that way, and how you have evolved your work over time

 
Your impact:

• The overall change you’re trying to achieve, and the long-term, big-picture consequences of that change
• The measurable outcomes you’ll achieve as you work towards that change
• How you’ll measure, report on and reflect on your progress

 
Your expertise and credibility:

• What makes you best-placed to achieve this change (in essence, why a donor or funder should trust you to do the work)
• To demonstrate this, you might highlight some brief background information about your organisation, as well as your unique skills, lived experience, knowledge, connections, track record and qualifications

​There are loads of potential information sources to draw on, but here are a few:

• Statistics (about the people you work with, their circumstances, and your previous impact)
• Information collected from your service users and staff via surveys, interviews etc.
• Third party research and reports
• Photo, video and audio content
• Case studies and stories
• Information about the local delivery landscape, your partners and funders etc.

 
This can feel like a daunting process if you’ve never done it before, but it's important to stress that you don’t need everything to get started. As it's an internal document, developing a case for support can be an ongoing, iterative process - start ASAP, but make a note of what else you'll need to research, gather and add over time.
 
The best cases for support are never finished, they evolve over time. For example if new research is published that reinforces the need for your work, or if you've just written a brilliant answer (even if you say so yourself) to a specific funder question that you want to re-use in future, find a place for it in your case for support.

We’ve tried to write this blog as a stand-alone free resource for anyone wanting to get started on their case for support. Remember that you're the expert on your work and the reasons why you do it, and your case for support is just a way of laying all that out in a logical, structure way.
 
If you feel you do need some extra support, we’ve got a couple of options:

• Come along to one of our fundraising training courses – we cover developing a case for support on both our fundraising strategy and trusts and foundations courses.
• Ask us for a quote to run a case for support workshop for your organisation - we'll design the session, ask the questions, take all the notes and write it up afterwards, so you can just turn up and talk!

When the news that the Small Charities Coalition (SCC) is closing first broke, people expressed a range of emotions: shock, sadness, gratitude for their help, concern for the grassroots charities they support.

This is all justified, but I think there’s been too much resignation (that this is just one of those things that happens) and not nearly enough anger.

I want to explain why this is a disaster - specifically for SCC and the many brilliant charities they support, but more broadly because of what it says about our sector and the lack of support for infrastructure organisations. This is a collective failure by grantmakers, resulting from short-sighted policy and too much ego.

I’ve been a pro bono trainer for SCC and general supporter of their work since 2015, so I can’t claim to be 100% neutral, although I should emphasise that we've never received any payment from our work with them.

Secondly, I don't have any knowledge of the inner workings of SCC, or exactly what they've done to try to secure funding. I'm sure there will have been things they could have done better or differently - that's the case for all of us - but I don't think that would fundamentally change what I want to say.

​The vast majority of charities and social enterprises are tiny organisations run by people with lived experience of the issues they’re addressing. I've personally worked with so many brilliant founders who have been full of knowledge and passion, but who haven’t benefitted from professional training or the best education, don’t speak English as a first language, or have little money for professional development.

Inevitably there are times when they need expert support in areas outside their comfort zone - for example finance, fundraising or IT - but they don't have the budget to recruit a specialist staff member, or pay a consultant.

Sometimes they secure ad hoc pro bono support from an expert – frequently a wealthy person in the twilight of their career after spending 40 years making money in the finance and business worlds, often perpetuating the same social issues they now claim to want to solve. For obvious reasons, this isn’t - and shouldn’t be - a solution for everyone.

I’ve seen a few people argue recently that local infrastructure organisations can step up to the plate after SCC closes. Indeed I've come across some truly brilliant local services. Yes their support is excellent, and yes being localised is really valuable, helping to promote collaboration not competition between organisations.

But in my experience, the quality of local support can really vary, and funding for it can suddenly evaporate in the winds of political change. It certainly isn’t available to everyone, everywhere. Economies of scale mean that most local infrastructure organisations can’t offer the same quality and cost-effectiveness as a national organisation. Even if they could, they'll still eventually face the same funding realities as SCC.

Certainly not this government, which has alternated between being antagonistic and totally disengaged with the charity sector. As austerity has bitten, charities have necessarily become more vocal about the injustice faced by vulnerable people, and this government has worked progressively harder to discredit and demonise charities in response. Think back to how Conservative MPs seized on things like the Olive Cooke scandal.

Not the general public, who realistically will never be engaged with the nuances of how grassroots charities should be supported. Especially not when, following the lead of the government and the right-wing media, most public focus has been on red herrings like how many pence in every pound charities spend on ‘admin’, or how much their CEO is paid. 

​You could argue that it shouldn't be their responsibility, but then again, they’ve done it for countless other underfunded, niche and unpopular causes during a decade of austerity.

Funders are ideally placed to understand the value of grassroots charities, and the need to empower them. But astonishingly few have been willing to fund infrastructure organisations – and that’s due to short-sighted policies and too much ego in their decision-making.

People with far more authority than me, including Paul Streets and Jake Hayman, have long criticised funders’ obsession with short-term, project-based impact, at the expense of strategic support, movement-building and core funding.

This collective failure has gradually shamed grassroots charities into playing down their core costs and development needs, and systematically devalued learning, collaboration, professional development and long-term strategic planning.

So many times, I’ve had to persuade small charity CEOs that they can include a contribution towards running costs in their project budget, and they do deserve to pay themselves a salary for their work. They’re terrified that they’ll be judged and penalised by funders. And sometimes, they're right.

Contrary to what we’re often told, most grassroots charities don’t ‘waste’ money on salaries and running costs - they chronically underinvest in them. If, as a result, staff can’t or won’t pay for even low-cost training, infrastructure organisations like SCC can’t develop a sustainable business model – but they haven't been able to subsidise it through grant funding either.

"Oh sorry, we really value the work that you do, we just can’t fund it ourselves."

If a few funders say this, it’s their problem. But when almost every funder does, organisations like SCC fold, and that’s a problem for everyone.

Because well-funded infrastructure support does actually exist, just mainly in the form of Funder Plus programmes.

This sees funders often hand-pick a small number of their grantees to receive infrastructure support, mentoring or training alongside a grant. These charities aren’t the only people to benefit. Experienced consultants get to do exciting, generously-funded strategy and consultancy projects, either in-house for a funder or as a freelancer. I know, I’ve been one of them.

I’ve previously been an advocate for the Funder Plus model because, in isolation, it achieves badly-needed, often transformational impact for a few charities. But if Funder Plus support comes at the expense of funding for centralised infrastructure support for everyone, it’s part of the problem - expensive to deliver, only benefitting a few, and driven by ego.

"I want to decide which charities get support. I know best what types of support that people and organisations who are nothing like me really need. I want to see and shout about the tangible impact of my contribution, not fund an experienced, national organisation to do it at scale, for everyone."

If this sounds like harsh criticism, consider this: SCC supports over 16,000 members and their annual budget has never topped £400,000, only rarely exceeding £200,000. They might have survived with just four or five moderate multi-year grants from progressive funders, or a smaller contribution from a slightly larger number of funders.

That this has proved impossible is a damning indictment of our sector. How can you possibly argue that Funder Plus models achieve more impact and better value for money?

I’m painfully aware that this comes too late to save SCC. That’s already a tragedy - but if we don’t use it as a wake-up call, we'll be facing an existential crisis.

As a sector, we’re not so much shooting ourselves in the foot, we’re tearing out our own heart.

There’s rarely a convenient time to be able to take a step back and commit to working on a new strategy, but recently it's felt harder than ever.

We’re nearly two years into a pandemic that has kept everyone guessing and in firefighting mode - and with a new variant raising the stakes again, sadly there’s no let-up in sight. But with so many things having changed since the start of 2020, if you haven’t done a strategic refresh yet, now might be the time to take the plunge.

Creating a new strategy is a unique process for every organisation - you’ll be facing your own cocktail of opportunities, barriers, community needs and tricky decisions. However inconvenient, there’s no definitive list of topics and issues that everyone should work through.

That said, we're seeing a number of themes that keep coming up in our conversations with charities and social enterprises. So here are some key topics to have on your radar - you'll be able to decide how much each one applies to you…

​Your team may now have spent nearly two years battling through rising community need, pressure to stay financially afloat, and uncertainty around where and how they do their jobs, combined with personal concerns about health, job security and the impact of multiple lockdowns on mental health. Few people are feeling energetic or clear-headed, and the festive break (if we get a proper one) won’t be a complete reset.
 
Any strategy that doesn’t acknowledge or address this risks falling flat, no matter how good the rest of your decisions. Talk to your team about how they're genuinely feeling, and what they need to have in place to do their jobs to the best of their ability in 2022 - which could mean more support, flexibility or encouragement than they previously needed.

​That might have an unexpected budget implication, but leaving people to just muddle on through could cost you more in the long run.
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​Should we go back to running meetings and services in person, or keep them online? This was already a dilemma, even before the Omicron curveball.
 
During the initial lockdowns, many organisations realised they could reach new people and deliver services more cheaply online. On paper, this seemed like a surprising positive from the pandemic, but there’s been rising concern about digital exclusion - who are we inadvertently leaving behind, and does digital delivery exacerbate inequalities?
 
And there’s the added complication of how - and whether - to cater for everyone when some people want to be in a room with you and others want to participate remotely.
 
These are key strategic challenges to wrestle with. Check out our original blog on digital exclusion from early 2021, our guide to running engaging and accessible strategy workshops online, and Zoe Amar’s excellent tips on making the right decisions about hybrid working.
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For me, one highlight of the past two years has been seeing funders engage more meaningfully and collaboratively with charities. This started with the collective commitment to flexible funding and reporting early in the pandemic, but has continued as many funders have acknowledged that grassroots community organisations are best placed to be their eyes and ears on the ground in a rapidly-changing landscape.
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But too many organisations are missing opportunities to build meaningful, mutually beneficial relationships with funders. Amid the pressure to bring in new grants and submit more applications, it’s too easy to neglect the positive impact of things like a well-written and honestly reflective grant report to an existing funder.

And if we only value conversations with funders that are about immediate financial impact rather than learning and collaboration, we risk prioritising short-term target-hitting over long-term growth.
 
While I get that organisations living hand-to-mouth will struggle to prioritise long-term relationship-building, if you have the breathing space to build this into your strategy, you'll soon see the benefits. Our recent blog on building relationships with invitation-only funders is a starter for ten here - we’ve had feedback from several funders that these are exactly the things they’re looking for.

While this felt particularly pressing back in spring/summer 2020, it’s not too late to bear in mind.
 
The amazing community response to Covid-19 saw many people get a new taste for donating, fundraising or volunteering. Crucially, many actions were all about grassroots humanity - helping your neighbour with their shopping, or donating to the local foodbank. While big charities have household name brands, finely-tuned structures and economies of scale, grassroots organisations could promise immediate impact and a direct connection to those in need.
 
Some charities have done an exceptional job of nurturing this - continuing to inspire, engage and connect new donors and volunteers through stories, events and further opportunities to make a difference. Treated right, these people have the potential to be their loyal regular givers, major donors and community fundraisers of the future.

Have you benefitted from a surge of grassroots support during the pandemic? What have you done to keep that passion and humanity burning? And what can you still do to nurture and replicate it in future?

Beyond the physical lockdowns, the pandemic is having a long-term impact on how people behave, consume, congregate and interact. Offices have remained half-empty and high streets still feel eerily quiet. I was in central Bristol last Friday to buy my daughter’s first pair of shoes and most shops were deserted, two weeks before Christmas.
 
This has massive implications, particularly for fundraising. ‘Old ways’ of doing things no longer feel fit for purpose, maybe permanently. What does it mean for corporate fundraising if most employees are never in an office together? How will your previous major donor tactics work if you rarely get to ‘work the room’?
 
When we finally catch a longer break between variants, maybe some aspects of our pre-2020 life will gradually return. In the meantime, activity plans and budgets need to look very different. If you’re still spending more time designing printed materials than landing pages, or more money on branded stationery than search engine optimisation and social media advertising, you need to have a very good reason. Few of us can afford to wait until we can get people in a room together again before resuming our public fundraising.

Nearly 18 months on from the toppling of the statue of Edward Colston - just two miles from my house - philanthropy and ethical fundraising remain hot topics. In the past few weeks, we’ve received more enquiries about ethical fundraising reviews than pretty much anything else.
 
Many organisations have woken up to the importance of understanding the source of their donations and grants. What created that wealth in the first place? Are people and companies using philanthropy to ‘buy a seat at the table’ and gain influence over things like equality, social mobility and climate change? If your organisation is complicit in that, is this an unfortunate necessity in a tough financial climate, or an unforgivable oversight?
 
These are difficult questions with no easy or short-term answers, but if you’re working on a new strategy then it might be time to put them on the table. We’ve shared a few ideas and potential solutions in various talks and blogs recently – this slightly provocative piece is probably the best starting point.

At the end of August, we commissioned a joint survey with the School for Social Entrepreneurs to explore how the pandemic has impacted the training needs and preferences of fundraisers, with a particular focus on small-to-medium charities and social enterprises.
 
We received 54 responses in total - thank you so much to everybody who took the time to share their detailed experiences and feedback. While this is a small sample and not representative of the sector as a whole, I wanted to share a few thoughts on what we’ve learned and how we’re responding...

​It was striking how varied the responses were to this question, mirroring what we've heard from organisations taking part in our online training over the last 18 months. Encouragingly, 37% of organisations said their financial position had improved, particularly for those well-positioned to access emergency grant funding, albeit with some concerns for the future:

Worryingly, 31% of organisations felt financially weaker, particularly those whose work isn't directly related to the pandemic:

​It’s clear that, for many, emergency funding has done its job in shoring up the sector and ensuring organisations survive. As a result, some organisations have been able to develop promising relationships with new funders, presenting a long-term opportunity. But as always, there’s a danger that more complex and/or less popular causes are being left behind, particularly where their impact is longer-term and harder to measure - for example, infrastructure organisations that play such a vital and under-appreciated role in supporting smaller organisations in the sector.

We'll continue to offer practical tips on how organisations in this position can build a convincing case for support, through our regular blogs and fundraising training.

If you're feeling varying degrees of challenged, disillusioned and exhausted, you're not alone. 46% of people reported becoming less confident about fundraising, compared to just 24% becoming more confident. It's clear from the written responses that while fundraising itself is tough, it's the challenge of juggling the demands of running an organisation, securing vital funding and navigating current life that's really hard:

Respondents voiced a particular need to build skills and confidence in high value fundraising i.e. corporates and major donors. These areas are particularly susceptible to the combined financial damage wreaked by Covid and Brexit, and the logistical difficulties that come with limited face-to-face interaction. We'll be exploring how we can put a stronger emphasis on these areas in future courses.

In general people seemed more confident with public fundraising (events, community and individual giving) with many organisations benefitting from a groundswell of grassroots support during the pandemic.

Given the amount of firefighting done over the past 18 months, and the comments above about how people are generally feeling, we were surprised and hugely impressed to see more than half of organisations feeling clearer and more confident about their future strategy. Some organisations have benefitted from the breathing space afforded by emergency funding to be able to take a step back, while others have naturally been evaluating their place in the world - and the changing circumstances and needs of their service users - during the uncharted territory of the pandemic.

This certainly mirrors our experience. We’ve been busier than ever with our strategic consultancy, with many organisations committing time and money now to reflecting and learning from the past 18 months. This has led to organisations identifying ways to do things better and more cost-effectively, wrestling with difficult issues such as digital exclusion and financial sustainability, and emerging from a turbulent period feeling clearer and more confident as a result. There’s no doubt that this strategic clarity will be a huge confidence boost to funders, donors, trustees, volunteers and service users alike.

If you haven’t sat down and formally discussed yet what you’ve learned from the pandemic, and how you can do things differently in future, it’s certainly worth trying to do this ASAP. If your team is trying to do this while still working remotely, check out our recent blog on how to run better online strategic planning workshops.

​Online training may have been born out of necessity, but we all better believe that it's here to stay. While current circumstances have allowed us to resume some face-to-face training, close to half of respondents still prefer online sessions:

​It’s clear that online training is simply a better long-term option for many, particularly those with limited time, care responsibilities or based outside of major cities:

We've heard this message loud and clear, and will ensure that online training remains a significant part of our future offer. However, we’ve also learned over the past 18 months that online training absolutely can’t just be a face-to-face training format moved online. We’ve now had loads of time to learn on the job and listen to feedback both after courses and in the survey, and will be trying to put this into practice in the coming months:

• Online courses broken down into multiple shorter sessions, and split across multiple days where it helps to avoid school pick-up times etc.
• More ‘bitesize’ sessions on diverse and unusual topics that often aren't covered in longer courses, but are perfect to dip into online (our talks on ethical fundraising and problematic philanthropy have proved particularly popular recently).
• Where possible, passing some of the savings for online sessions (no venue hire etc.) on to participants, so that the grassroots community organisations that benefit from them most are able to access training.

Have you ever found a funder that seems like the perfect fit, only to learn they don’t accept unsolicited applications?
 
If your work is niche or you’ve approached all the ‘obvious’ trusts and foundations already, then engaging a couple of these invitation-only funders can feel key to broadening your funding base. But there's an age-old question - how can we get on their radar, especially if they don’t even welcome initial enquiries?
 
Over time I’ve seen various organisations succeed in building thriving relationships with private, strategic funders. It isn’t quick or easy, but there are a few steps you can take.

Rightly or wrongly, there can be many reasons:

• They may feel it’s a better use of their limited resources to focus on supporting a select few grantees, rather than assessing applications from, and corresponding with, many prospective applicants.
• They may want to avoid being inundated by applications, particularly if they previously had a more open approach and received lots of poor quality or irrelevant applications.
• If they’re operating in a niche sector, they may feel they already have all the expertise and connections they need to proactively identify organisations themselves.
• They may want to be very discreet or private about their grantgiving, for example if the funds are coming from a high-profile individual or sensitive source. 
• They may be extremely restricted in what they can actually fund, for example if they’re following a very specific set of wishes or instructions from their settlor.
• They may want to help charities avoid wasting time and money, knowing this can often happen as a result of vague or poorly-designed application processes (well, I can hope!)

​If a funder relies on their expertise or networks to identify potential grantees, then a recommendation from the right person could make all the difference. For example, your existing funders or project partners will already be engaged and invested in your work – perhaps they know someone working for an invitation-only funder and would be willing to introduce you?
 
Do your research and don’t be afraid to ask nicely for an introduction, explaining why it’s strategically important to you – you might by how willing people are to help.