10 years of Lime Green Consulting - and 10 top fundraising and strategy lessons that we've learned

10 years ago this month, I launched Lime Green Consulting - with a simple, on-a-shoestring website and a half-formed aspiration to help smaller charities navigate their way through a challenging landscape.

I’d been freelancing for a few months, having previously been Fundraising Manager at a small international development charity. I wanted to help people wrestling with some recurring challenges: the pressure to sustain income in a tough funding climate, the need for a really focused strategy, and the challenge of delivering results with a limited budget, risk-averse Board and small supporter base.

To be honest, we spent most of the first two years figuring out what type of support we wanted to provide, how to explain it, who we wanted to work with, and how to reach them. There were times when I wasn’t sure I could find enough work to keep me busy, let alone the team we’ve become. In a classic freelancing tale, those worries quickly flipped to trying to figure out how to keep on top of multiple projects without the need to still have my laptop open at 9pm. It truly is a rollercoaster ride.

10 years later, we've provided consultancy support to over 350 charities and social enterprises, trained well over 2,000 people, and raised millions of pounds of vital grant funding.

All against a backdrop of the greatest turbulence the sector has ever known – we've worked through six Prime Ministers, the worst of austerity, Brexit, a global pandemic and now the cost-of-living crisis.

This has been bittersweet - on the one hand, it’s been a privilege to help people navigate their way through the uncertainty. On the other hand, it’s frustrating knowing that if only other people (Government, commissioners, funders) could get their sh*t together, maybe we - and many of the charities we’ve supported - wouldn’t be needed at all.

I wanted to mark our 10th anniversary in some way, but I had the words of a very wise fundraiser ringing in my ears – anniversaries very rarely mean much to people outside your organisation, so don’t go overboard, and have a clear purpose in mind.

So we've kept things simple and just taken the opportunity to re-share 10 of our biggest lessons from a decade of running Lime Green. These are all things that we’ve written about before, but keep coming back to in our training courses and consultancy work.

​Enjoy the recap...

1. Don’t invest time in creating a strategy that ends up in a dusty drawer

​A good strategy takes lots of time, lots of people, lots of planning. Done right, this can bring about much-needed clarity and confidence in the future. But there’s nothing more dispiriting that all that energy ending up in a lengthy document that nobody ever reads or refers to, and doesn’t change or guide people’s day-to-day work.
 
You can partly avoid this by designing a collaborative and inclusive strategic planning process, but there are also plenty of things you can do after writing up your strategy to ensure that all the hard work is worth it.
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2. You’ll never get anywhere without a fundraising-friendly culture

You may have talented fundraisers, money to invest, and a good case for support. But if you don’t have a fundraising-friendly culture, you’ll still fall way short of your potential.

For me, a fundraising-friendly culture is when everyone in your organisation - whether that’s five, 50 or 500 people - recognises the importance of good fundraising to the bigger picture of your work, understands all the little things they can do to support your fundraising efforts, and feels motivated to play a part. Here’s a list of the key things that all the best fundraising charities do and have in place.
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3. If you’re starting public fundraising from scratch, people knowing you’re a charity is half the battle

We work with a lot of organisations that are looking to become a true “fundraising charity” for the first time, often prompted by the loss of a key statutory contract, or dwindling grant funding.
 
Yes, they need to think about fundraising tactics - appeal themes, regular giving schemes, suggested donation amounts. But first and foremost, they need people to appreciate that they’re a charity in need to donations, in a world where few people have any real understanding of how many vital organisations are charities, and how they’re funded. We’ve previously shared these thoughts on how to ensure people know you're a charity, and why this is so important.
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4. When in doubt, fall back on some universal fundraising truths

When the pandemic first hit in early 2020, we scrambled to help smaller charities that had been thrown into crisis. We organised several free online Q&As, fielding a wide variety of questions on how to respond and how to adjust fundraising tactics.
 
Hopefully we provided some inventive advice - but you know what, we mainly realised that when the world gets turned upside down, it’s the same universal principles that will get you through. Careful prioritisation, building on your strengths, investing time in donor relationships, saying thank you well etc. This prompted us to write up seven universal fundraising truths that will never let you down – and four years on, we still swear by them.
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5. Invitation-only funders offer untapped potential, if you know how to engage them

Ever found a funder that seems like the perfect fit, only to learn they don’t accept unsolicited applications? It’s easy to write off these funders with a sinking feeling, but if your work is niche and/or you’ve approached all the ‘obvious’ household name funders already, then invitation-only funders may hold the key to broadening your funding base.
 
Over the years, we’ve sussed out some of the main reasons why funders go down the invitation-only route, and how you can build relationships with them. And it’s been encouraging to get feedback not only from charities that have successfully put these tips into action, but also from some funders saying this is how they like to engage with new organisations too.
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6. There’s no getting around it - trusts fundraisers need to pick up the phone

For many trusts fundraisers, getting on the phone to funders is one of the least enjoyable parts of the job - but it can really help. Sure, we’d all prefer to live in a world where funders’ online guidance is crystal clear, and their decision-making processes are completely transparent, meaning a quick phone call wouldn’t be needed or have any impact on our prospects. But we don’t.
 
Over the years, I’ve received so many nuggets of information from funders over the phone, in the form of helpful advice or telling throwaway comments. This prompted us to share some tips on good questions to ask as a reason to phone a funder in the first place, and further information to probe for once you’re connected to them.
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7. The best trusts fundraisers ask difficult questions, instead of papering over the cracks

One more underrated skill in the trusts fundraising toolbox before we move on: the ability to ask difficult questions internally. I’ve found that while most charity staff will be hoping you’ll write applications as quickly as possible, and use your own initiative to fill in the gaps, there’s often good reason for slowing things down.
 
Spotted a gap or contradiction in your organisation’s consultation data, project activity plan or budget? Struggling to explain a point that feels key to your application? Don’t plough on regardless - it's your job to anticipate and address any concerns a funder might have, not to work as quickly as possible and keep colleagues happy at all costs.
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8. Unless and until funders change, we can’t get anywhere as a sector

Despite all the tips above, good trusts fundraising tactics will only get us so far. Because it’s also the job of funders to make it easier to understand them and access their grants. They should see this as both a moral responsibility and one of the best ways of increasing their social impact.
 
More core funding. More straightforward and accessible application processes. Clearer guidelines and more flexible funding criteria. The best and most progressive funders are nudging in this direction, but many more need to follow. Because bad grantmaking does our sector no favours, and it has a human cost too.
 
As a fundraiser, you’re not totally powerless - take the opportunity to call out bad grantmaking practice, and support brilliant initiatives to change the sector for the better when you see them.
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9. Philanthropy is problematic, and you need an ethical fundraising policy to get through this minefield

Recent years have brought some clear-cut examples of “bad money”, including Edward Colston and the Sackler Trust. But dig a little deeper, and there are countless grey areas to contend with.
 
The fundamental problem is that philanthropy buys a seat at the table for a very specific demographic - wealthy, privileged, usually white and male. Through their decisions on what they do/don't fund, their roles on Boards and advisory groups, and their status as thought leaders, they gain disproportionate influence in implementing their own vision of social change and climate justice - and that vision may be very different from your own.
 
Navigating your way through this, and deciding when to accept or reject a donation, isn’t easy - especially at a time when funding is so precarious. You’ll need an ethical fundraising policy – and this means having challenging but empowering conversations with people at all levels of your organisation, rather than quickly downloading and filling in a template policy.
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10. The small charity sector needs consistent, quality, well-funded infrastructure support

In the past 10 years, we’ve worked with so many brilliant small charities run by people who haven’t had the luxury of professional training, have little money for skills development, and may not speak English as a first language. They do incredible work but they have so many hurdles to clear - for example bid writing, finance, and IT - all without the budget to recruit a specialist staff member or consultant.
 
They need prompt, dependable, consistent infrastructure support wherever they are in the country. And right now they're not getting it, following the closure of multiple national infrastructure organisations in recent years. This is partly down to a collective failure by grantmakers - resulting from short-sighted policy and excessive ego - and we’ll keep banging this drum until things change.

A heartfelt thanks to each and every one of you that we’ve had the pleasure and privilege of working with since 2014. And here's to the next 10 years, hopefully in a less turbulent landscape and under a more positive Government 🍾