{"id":2391,"date":"2015-09-16T10:17:24","date_gmt":"2015-09-16T10:17:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/socialchangeschool.org\/2015\/09\/rant-of-the-week-from-fundraising-planet-bear-with-me-2\/"},"modified":"2024-03-18T14:22:09","modified_gmt":"2024-03-18T14:22:09","slug":"rant-of-the-week-from-fundraising-planet-bear-with-me-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.socialchangeschool.org\/en\/16\/09\/2015\/rant-of-the-week-from-fundraising-planet-bear-with-me-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Rant of the week from fundraising planet – Bear with me!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Isabel White\u00a0|\u00a06th July 2013<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

Twice a year I share my 25 years\u2019 experience with ASVI students in London. When you have worked in a sector for that long, based on your years of experience, you inevitably take a different view to those who may be new to fundraising. It is easy to be cynical about how tough fundraising can be but that does not help those who are just starting out on their fundraising careers. Much better surely, to impart a bit of wisdom and try to show them how to play the system to their advantage<\/strong>. Despite our statements to the contrary, the not for profit sector is every bit as competitive as the private sector<\/strong>!<\/p>\n

With these occasional blogs I hope to impart some knowledge that we don\u2019t always have time to explore in the training sessions.\u00a0 My specialism is in writing bids to institutions (grant funders), so that not only entails reading the guidelines but also looking behind them to try to second guess what motivates<\/strong> the funders to behave the way they do, and how that translates into cash<\/strong> for your causes!<\/p>\n

My first thoughts involve workload<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

In the UK at least (and to some extent elsewhere), the process starts with the not for profit organisation (let\u2019s call it a charity) needing to secure some funding for its cause. In small organisations the job of finding funding usually falls to the staff that also have to deliver the project. This is not always a good use of their time<\/strong> and, as fundraising can be very difficult and time consuming, it tends to be put off until it\u2019s too late. So the usual solution is to hire a fundraiser<\/strong> and that is where the fun starts.<\/p>\n

The charity staff do not know how many funders are out there, but they want to make sure that no stone is left unturned in the search for money.<\/p>\n

The applicant wants to impress their new employer by saying they will go the extra mile to find as many funders as possible.<\/p>\n

Myth number one \u2013 there really aren\u2019t as many funders out there as you think there are.<\/p>\n

There is a limit to how much they will ever engage with you – they simply do not have the time.\u00a0 Therefore very few small charities would ever need to employ anyone full time to do their grant fundraising.<\/p>\n

I have been into organisations where the bid writer has got hold of a copy of the directory of grant funders, started at the letter \u2018A\u2019 in the index and is doggedly working their way through to \u2018Z\u2019. Given that there are more than 4000 foundations in the UK alone that is an awful lot of work.\u00a0 90% of them will reject the application because it does not meet the criteria, and 90% of those who reject it won\u2019t even bother to tell you that you will not get funding.<\/p>\n

They don\u2019t have the time to do that. It costs your charity money to submit an application, just as it costs money to assess it, so why are charities\u00a0 sending untargeted bids to funders, adding to their workload as well as the funders\u2019 who have to assess poorly targeted bids they are almost certain to reject?<\/p>\n

So how do you find out how many funders it is worth applying to?<\/p>\n

First, you should only search for funders who fund your work<\/strong>. It sounds obvious but you would be amazed how many do not bother to do this. Suffice to say that once you really search the 4000 plus funders for just those that support your work, then the list quickly shrinks to a few hundred.<\/p>\n

If we consider how many organisations are applying for funding, how many will actually get funding and of those, what the likely grant size must be, then you have to\u00a0 decide how big the funder needs to be<\/strong> in order to give you a meaningful amount of money. I use a total annual grant of \u00a31million as my cut off point in order to assess if it is worth the effort. Given that the funder may be getting hundreds if not thousands of applications each year,\u00a0 then on a \u00a31million total, the average grant would be quite small, maybe as little as \u00a35,000 to \u00a310,000.<\/p>\n

Our few hundred funders identified in our initial search can now be whittled down to a few dozen at most. Next, consider which of these provide the\u00a0closest<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>fit to our cause<\/strong> and we may be looking at less than ten. Finally, if you consider how quickly you are likely to get a response and therefore the deadline<\/strong> by when you need to submit your bid, you may be looking at only three or four funders.<\/p>\n

So if you do not get the grant you want from your ten best prospects<\/strong>, are you really likely to do better with your 3990 worst prospects?<\/p>\n

Ah, but don\u2019t forget that your boss was expecting you to be diligent and not leave any avenue unexplored and you are anxious to justify your full time job so the temptation to apply to many more funders is great indeed. The result is that everybody adds to their workload without necessarily improving the outcomes.<\/p>\n

How much is this costing the sector?<\/p>\n

When recruitment consultants are involved in the process, they will want to get the maximum fee from recruiting the right person into the role so they will encourage the charity to over staff their grants department with full time posts when maybe only one part time person is needed.\u00a0 I routinely come across medium sized charities in the UK who have whole teams of bid writers making work for each other and for the charity sector as a whole.<\/p>\n

What we need is less people doing more targeted bids<\/strong>, and only the targeted bids<\/strong>, and not talking up their jobs and adding needlessly to everyone\u2019s workload. We also need to educate those people who employ us as to the realties of good bid writing so that their expectations are more realistic.<\/p>\n

More pearls of wisdom will follow soon !<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Isabel White\u00a0|\u00a06th July 2013 Twice a year I share my 25 years\u2019 experience with ASVI students in London. When you have worked in a sector for that long, based on your years of experience, you inevitably take a different view to those who may be new to fundraising. It is easy to be cynical about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[273],"class_list":["post-2391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fundraising","tag-blog"],"yoast_head":"\nRant of the week from fundraising planet - Bear with me! - SocialChangeSchool<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.socialchangeschool.org\/en\/16\/09\/2015\/rant-of-the-week-from-fundraising-planet-bear-with-me-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Rant of the week from fundraising planet - Bear with me!\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Isabel White\u00a0|\u00a06th July 2013 Twice a year I share my 25 years\u2019 experience with ASVI students in London. 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