Building Funder Relationships That Last

If you are not securing the amount of grant income you think you should be, it is probably not due to a lack of capacity. It might be for a number of more complex reasons, such as organisational issues which require better collaboration with colleagues in other teams such as services, finance, policy and so on; or performance issues, such as ineffective practices within the trust fundraising programme. Or you may have a temporary reduction in capacity due to a trust fundraiser leaving or being on maternity or sick leave.

We have found that charities with small fundraising teams are often failing to maximise grant funding opportunities for one of three reasons:

1. If grant funding has not been a focus in your charity, then you and your team are not likely to be experienced in this area of fundraising and already have a full workload
   managing other income streams. In this case, you are not well placed to identify the best funding opportunities and develop compelling applications.
2. You do have the experience and expertise in securing grant funding but this is only one part of your role so you don’t have enough time to grow grant income to its full potential.
3. You have a dedicated trust fundraiser but they are not maximising opportunities to grow grant income to its potential. This could be due to issues with strategy, performance or organisational issues outside of their control.

We find that small charities usually have a history of raising most of their income from either grant funding or community fundraising.

If you lead a small, grant funded charity, you will probably be skilled in bid writing by necessity. You might be a great bid writer. However, we know that this is only one aspect of your role, alongside overseeing your services, managing the team and often everything else from accounting to fixing the printer! If you are stretched thinly, you will be missing out on funding opportunities that could help to grow your charity.

If you lead a small charity that relies on other forms of fundraising, you and your team may have very little experience of identifying and securing grant funding. You might not know where to start in terms of identifying the right funders to apply to, writing a compelling case for support or how to even make time for this amongst everything else.