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

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

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

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

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

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between “we don’t have a business plan” and “because of the funding issues we faced last year our business plan became out of date.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

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

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

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

Reflections on Year One

I am celebrating making it through my first year of working as a consultant philanthropy advisor and felt it made a good point in time to share my reflections on the experience so far. The key things I have learned about working independently are: 

1. I have been pleasantly surprised at how collaborative the world of consultancy is. I thought it would be and feel much more competitive. People have been generous with their time, help and advice and there is a great exchange of opportunities and information amongst fellow consultants.
2. After years as an employee it is liberating – and at times daunting - to voice my own opinions in conversations and blogs. Not that I’ve worked anywhere where I didn’t have a voice, but I have always been a representative of a wider consensus or company policy. It probably won’t shock anyone who knows me, but I wasn’t expecting just how much I enjoy sharing and writing what I think.
3. What I have been told about the ‘feast and famine’ of being a consultant is true. As an employee and a manager I have dealt with busy periods and quieter periods, but the peaks and troughs are less steep. In effect, consultants have no ongoing core funds. They are paid for projects, and those projects can come along like buses. However, the upside of downtime is the ability to network, read and plan ahead.
4. How you get feedback is very different. Employees get regular feedback on performance from managers. With clients it is much more about whether they hire you or not and whether they work with you again. But as there are other factors involved in the process of being hired, such as budget changes, it is not always easy to tell what clients think. Having said that, it is a good feeling when you get paid for what you have produced. It’s a very straightforward message of your value that it is hard for an employer to do.
5. Because I don’t have a wider team around me who know the issues and personalities I am dealing with, I don’t have people to air those with or bounce ideas around. Talking out loud is often how I solve problems. Having a supportive partner at home and some fabulous mentors to share some of those issues with becomes invaluable. My dog gets to hear the rest. But lovely though he is, his views on philanthropy are very limited.

So a big thank you to everyone who has helped and encouraged (and paid!) me along the way. I am looking forward to the year ahead.

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

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

You get what you pay for

As consumers, we all want to know what we get for our money, and funders are no different. The heart of a funding decision is often the competitive comparisons of ‘what will the money pay for and what difference will that make, to who and how?’ So that the value or return can be measured and considered in a tangible way.

Philanthropists too are attracted to tangibles whether a capital appeal towards a building or to restore an important painting or just to know what benefit individuals will get from a donation. One example, from Spear London, shows how this, now common, fundraising technique is used to communicate how amounts of money are matched to what it will pay for:

HOW YOUR MONEY CAN BE SPENT

• £20 pays for a thermal sleeping bag
• £50 pays for an outreach shift to ensure that we don’t miss a rough sleeper
• £100 pays for food for all our hostel residents
• £250 pays for a new home starter kit for someone moving to permanent accommodation

The reality is that charities need all their costs covered and not just those listed. All charities find it easier to raise money for projects than they do their core costs. Therefore the admin time, insurances, planning days, staff recruitment and management time gets built into an attractive project with tangible outcomes. However, adding too many core costs may make it look like the project is expensive. Adding too little of the core costs runs the risk that the project is under-resourced and so cannot be maintained.

If philanthropists just fund projects, the risk is that they are weakening the very organisation they want to support. To avoid joining in with this dance, philanthropists can give unrestricted donations for a charity to use on whatever costs they wish. But the desire for a tangible result runs deep, so if you still want to know exactly how your money will be spent, I have a suggestion for you.

In these straightened times, charities are having to cut their cloth. One item increasingly being trimmed is staff and volunteer training and development. With people being the biggest asset of any charity this is a short-term fix. So if you want to specify how your donation is used, how about asking for it to be used to cover the costs of training and development?

There are a number of foundations already doing this:

• Clore Duffield Foundation – individual training budgets for leaders with a social purpose
• Wolfson Foundation – covers palliative care course fees for doctors and nurses
•  Paul Hamyln Foundation – has a new Teacher Development Fund coming in September 2016
• Foundation for PSA – covers the costs of conferences and courses for those delivering acute mental health services to adolescents

Given the size of the charity sector and the number of staff and volunteers involved, there is scope to do more in this area. Your donation will be greatly appreciated by your recipient charity now and represents an investment in their future. And you will still know exactly how your money is spent and the impact that it will have.

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

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