Tag Archives: voluntary organisations

MyFundingCentral: helping thousands of charities address financial pressures

Posted on by

The effects of the current cost of living and inflation rises are spiralling through society, and the voluntary and charitable sector is on the frontline when it comes to supporting struggling individuals and communities. However, the organisations delivering this support are anticipating significant financial pressures themselves this winter.

Rising demand and rising costs are combining with falling charitable income to create a crisis within the sector. At the start of September, 46 sector organisations issued a joint statement calling on the Government to provide targeted financial support for charities, voluntary and community organisations and to include these organisations in any plans to support businesses.

Funders are already starting to respond to the pressures – and an anticipated increase in demand for food, debt advice and mental health support – by closing or pausing regular funding schemes in order to launch new emergency funding opportunities, just as they did during the pandemic. It is expected that funders will also provide more support for core costs, in order to help organisations struggling with energy costs or retaining staff.

The importance of grants for the sector

Even in normal times, the voluntary and charitable sector relies heavily on grants from trusts, foundations and government in order to carry out its crucial work.

Recent research from the Law Family Commission on Civil Society has shown, though, that small and medium charities face particularly high costs in accessing funding. On average, they devote more than a third of their total annual grant income to applying for charitable grants. The report suggested that a key cause of this is making applications for funding for which they are actually ineligible.

Smaller charities are unlikely to have dedicated funding officers to search for funding and submit applications. With thousands of funders awarding grants to charities for a wide range of causes and beneficiaries, it can be hugely difficult to keep track of potential funding opportunities and decide which are most relevant.

An affordable, essential solution

It’s for this reason that more and more small charities are turning to MyFundingCentral to help them. Now in its second year of operation, the MyFundingCentral database (produced by software specialists Idox) provides easy access to thousands of grants and social investment opportunities from local, national and international funding sources – all in one place.

The service is available to organisations with an annual income below £1m and is free for organisations whose income is under £30k. Larger charity and voluntary organisations can access Idox’s GrantFinder service, which works with organisations with an income over £1 million.

MyFundingCentral is designed for easy use and around 3000 small charities use the service every month to find funding to keep existing projects going or to expand their work. It is updated every day with new funding opportunities from charitable trusts, foundations, councils, national government and corporate sponsors.

Success stories

Charities regularly share their success stories with us.

Paula Baker who is Director of HeadsUp Mental Health Awareness CIC was pleased to report that they secured £14,500 from four grants identified through MyFundingCentral. “It’s an easy-to-use service, which has benefitted us greatly.” HeadsUp is a charity that works with children and young people, promoting understanding, raising awareness, and breaking down the stigma that surrounds mental health issues. Even small amounts of grant funding can have a big impact on the number of children and young people that they are able to help.

Lucy Whitehouse, Founder and CEO of Fumble.org.uk said that “MyFundingCentral’s portal is totally invaluable to us as a tiny, fledgling charity with really limited staff capacity. The service has helped us find and apply for relevant funding opportunities that we otherwise wouldn’t know about or be able to access.”

Easy to use

Subscribers to MyFundingCentral have immediate access to a database tailored to meet the needs of the charities and voluntary sector. Users of the service can:

  • search the database to identify opportunities that match their project;
  • find niche funding opportunities that free funding tools typically miss;
  • narrow searches to funding available in specific geographic areas;
  • receive alerts about new funding opportunities tailored to their needs direct to their inbox; and
  • get the latest news on funding.

The database is easy to use, with key eligibility criteria highlighted, and information on how to apply fully explained. There’s no jargon, and because all of the funding opportunities have been handpicked by MyFundingCentral researchers to be right for the sector, users can be sure that they are current and relevant to their needs.

For further information and to subscribe, visit the MyFundingCentral website.

Further reading: more about the charities and voluntary sector on The Knowledge Exchange Blog

MyFundingCentral: a funding lifeline for the UK’s vital charities sector

Posted on by

It should go without saying that the charities and voluntary sector makes a valuable contribution to society. In economic terms, NCVO has estimated that the sector accounts for over 950,000 jobs and over £20bn in GDP. The social value of the sector is harder to measure, but there’s no doubt that the thousands of charities and millions of volunteers across the UK deliver vital support in areas such as homelessness, healthcare and education.

The impacts of the pandemic

During the past two years, the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the charities and voluntary sector have been profound. The Charities Commission has reported that over 90% of charities have experienced some negative impact from Covid-19, while 60% lost income. At the same time, the voluntary sector has experienced a surge in demand for its services.

The importance of grants

While charities rely heavily on donations from the public for their funding, contracts and grants from trusts, foundations and government generate almost as much of the sector’s income. There are thousands of funders awarding grants to charities for a wide range of causes, from poverty relief and housing to educational and community arts projects. Keeping track of all these funding opportunities is challenging, particularly for smaller charities.

An affordable, essential solution

One solution to ensure that charities are up-to-date with information on grant funding opportunities is MyFundingCentral from software specialists the Idox Group.

Now in its second year of operation, the MyFundingCentral database provides easy access to thousands of grants and social investment opportunities from local, national and international funding sources – all in one place.

The service is available to organisations with an annual income below £1m and is free for organisations whose income is under £30k. Larger charity and voluntary organisations can still access Idox Group’s GrantFinder service which works with organisations with an income over £1 million.

MyFundingCentral is designed for easy use, recognising that smaller charities generally do not have specialist staff focused on finding and applying for funding. Around 3000 small charities use the service every month to find funding to keep existing projects going or to expand their work.

A dedicated team of expert researchers monitor, verify and report daily on thousands of funding sources, including charitable trusts, foundations, councils, national government and corporate sponsors. And because the service comes from the same reliable source as GrantFinder – the leading funding database in the UK and Europe – MyFundingCentral has ready-made relationships with funding administrators and fund managers across a wide range of organisations.

All part of the service

Subscribers to MyFundingCentral have immediate access to a suite of services tailored to meet the needs of the charities and voluntary sector. This means that users of the service can:

  • search the database to identify opportunities that match their project;
  • find niche funding opportunities that other funding searches typically miss;
  • narrow searches to funding available in specific geographic areas;
  • receive alerts about new funding opportunities tailored to their needs direct to their inbox;
  • get the latest news on funding.

The database is easy to use, with key eligibility criteria highlighted, and information on how to apply fully explained. There’s no jargon, and because all of the funding opportunities have been handpicked by MyFundingCentral researchers to be right for the sector, users can be sure that they are current and relevant to their needs.

A lifeline for the future

Over the past two years, the charities and voluntary sector has proved its resilience. Many charities and voluntary organisations have found ways of adapting to the restrictions caused by the pandemic, despite the challenges of increasing demands and falling incomes.

Now, as it emerges from the worst of the restrictions, the sector is facing a still uncertain future. The voluntary sector is a huge, diverse and vital part of our society, and now more than ever it needs funding to continue its work with and for communities.

For many charities, MyFundingCentral is already a lifeline for connecting to funding streams. It offers the sector a reliable and up-to-date resource that can point charities towards the funding they need.

For further information, and to subscribe, visit the MyFundingCentral website.

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

Further reading: more about the charities and voluntary sector on The Knowledge Exchange Blog

Rethinking and rebuilding the voluntary sector post-pandemic

Posted on by

By Andrew Hogg

From crisis comes opportunity. COVID-19 has had an unprecedented effect on the voluntary sector, but it has also given us an opportunity to rebuild for the better.

With this in mind, the speakers attending the recent ‘Rethink Rebuild’ webinar (organised by NPC) gave their thoughts on how the voluntary sector can move forward to face the challenges and inequalities laid bare by COVID-19 and to create a more equitable society.

COVID-19 has highlighted key systemic inequalities at the heart of our economic system. A recent report from Imperial College London has shown that ethnic minority groups have been disproportionally affected by the pandemic. When age and sociodemographic factors are accounted for, people from these communities are almost twice as likely to die of COVID-19 than their white peers.

Kaneez Shaid, Head of Community Engagement at Rethink Mental Illness, highlighted the direct impact the pandemic has had on people with mental health issues, such as the erosion of support frameworks and statutory services, loss of communal spaces and increased demands for accommodation. NPC have linked COVID-19 with a rise in domestic violence cases, with increased demand for services and donations from voluntary sector organisations, alongside a reduction of charity fundraising efforts:

In many communities it has been the not-for-dividends sector that has provided cohesion, that has provided people with food, with economic viability, access to vaccines, and social infrastructure stopping people falling through the net…the question for me becomes how we make this more visible politically. – Lord Victor Adebowale, current Chair of the NHS Confederation

Seth Reynolds, Principal Consultant for Systems Change at NPC, argued that the pandemic has created a ‘liminal space’ wherein we can pause and reflect on the systemic drivers and fundamental patterns of behaviour that created the inequalities the pandemic has laid bare.

This is a chance to fundamentally and systemically change the way our economy works for the better. There is no going back to normal, so how can the sector provide leadership to face the new challenges going forward?

Collaborative and system leadership

A recurring theme during the webinar was the need for a collaborative leadership approach to accommodate systemic change. Lord Adebowale talked about the need for system leadership, the adoption of which would enable voluntary sector organisations to align their missions and operations towards a common goal. This would set sector-wide objectives and generate a cooperative atmosphere whilst facilitating conditions within which others can make progress toward social change. This means leading beyond the boundaries of one’s own organisational needs to achieve aggregate, cross-sector outcomes.

This would involve understanding the interdependence of the voluntary sector, and decision-making that may go against the immediate concerns of the organisation to achieve collective outcomes. It also entails the acceptance of diversity as not only a good in and of itself, but as Lord Adebowale observed, as an “essential, economical, and operational good”, to include a broad remit of local, grassroots organisations.

A collaborative approach to leadership would also make best use of resources and help align funding to where it is needed. Juliet Mountain, the Director of Shaw Trust, argued that a competitive funding environment means that charities tend towards mission drift and invariably must follow the funding, rather than the needs of those who use their services. She argued that shared intelligence, not just of hard data but of expertise, resources, tools, and decision making, would enable lower capacity groups to easily access and understand generated data. This would enable the triangulation of funding and a coordinated decision-making process – what Lord Adebowale called “process matching intention”.

Power with, not power over

Collaborative and system leadership would also entail a shift towards localism – services either co-produced or fully produced by the communities who receive them – and relationships based on trust, power sharing and diversity. Kaneez Shaid talked of devolving hierarchical relationships between charities and local communities and creating new structures of shared power and co-production, such as integrated care systems and place-based activities embedded into local communities. Leah Davies and Seth Reynolds of NPC similarly argued for local partners and grassroots organisations to be embedded into social recovery plans to co-create structures that are built and maintained by the people using them.

Power sharing can go further than this. Even small, day-to-day changes can help to address power imbalances, such as adapting a more inclusive vocabulary when it comes to working partnerships. Both Kaneez Shaid and Juliet Mountain argued that a shift in language can facilitate a more cooperative mindset and be more inclusive of smaller, grassroots organisations. For instance, using ‘participant’ instead of ‘client’ or ‘colleague’ instead of ‘co-worker’ would create a more inclusive taxonomy and equitable relational partnerships. This in turn would engender collective decision-making and create added value for participants.   

Grant-making

One of the few things to directly result from COVID-19 that has been openly welcomed across the voluntary sector is the increased access to unrestricted funding. In November 2020 over 150 funders made a pledge towards flexible grant-making and trust-based relationships with charities.

Many participants in the webinar who shared their opinions in breakout rooms after the talks also agreed that the temporary suspension of funding restrictions and flexible approaches to grant-making during the pandemic had been hugely beneficial and at times necessary to keep smaller charities open.

Flexible grant making could also involve simplifying and standardising application processes, such as what is asked for from the grantee or the technical vocabulary used in the application. This would mean charities would not have to spend more time than necessary filling out forms and could use templates to increase their application output.

However, as Leah Davies and Seth Reynolds noted, to continue to understand the value of flexible funding and to know where future funding should be allocated, proportionate impact measurement is needed. It is important for funders to be able to keep demand light and proportional whilst having access to a funding feedback loop.

Concluding thoughts

This webinar revealed some key sticking points: cross-sector collaboration, system leadership, and the adoption of new models of power sharing that encourage localism, co-production, shared system analysis, and collective decision-making are needed to dynamically respond to funding needs. Similarly, the collective utilization of resources would allow for greater triangulation of funding and level the playing field for smaller, grassroots groups.

Organisations must come back from the pandemic with a renewed emphasis on community engagement, decentralised and devolved forms of organisation, and embrace the mentality of ‘power with, not power over’. Organisational models and processes, such as affiliate frameworks and decentralised partnerships, should be adopted to encourage power-sharing and to create structures with genuine value to the people using them.

Grant-making has trended towards flexible funding and trust-based arrangements, which is undoubtedly a good thing and grant-makers should continue to provide flexible and unrestricted funds. However, suitable impact measurement is needed to properly determine allocation and value, and that those who need funding the most will get it.

Simply put, we cannot go back to normal. The pandemic has exposed the deep systemic vulnerabilities at the heart of our economic model, and the voluntary sector must adapt to address these vulnerabilities and create a more equitable society.

Further reading: more on the voluntary sector on The Knowledge Exchange blog

Big challenges – and rewards – for Big Data in the third sector

Posted on by

Image from Flickr user JustGrimes, licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons License

Image from Flickr user JustGrimes, licensed for reuse under a Creative Commons License

By Stephen Lochore

‘Big data’ is big news! Along with its close relative ‘open data’, it’s part of the latest thinking about how managing information can help bring about better services. The rough idea is to use new technology and approaches to understand, analyse, link and where possible share large complex datasets to generate new insights and improve decisions.

In 2012, the UK government identified big data as one of eight ‘great technologies’ that support science and business, and since then has invested in a range of big data initiatives through the UK Research Councils. This includes the ESRC’s Big Data Network, whose current phase involves establishing four academic research centres to make data from local government and business more accessible.

In Scotland, an industry-led data lab, backed by public funding, is due to open late in 2014 to develop new data science capabilities.

Most of the focus has been on private sector innovation, higher education research capabilities and public sector datasets. Little has been said about the third or voluntary sector, which is surprising:

  • Third sector organisations provide a wide range of services – policymakers need to understand the sector’s structure and capabilities;
  • Many third sector organisations gather information that could help improve the design and delivery of services – they work directly with local communities including vulnerable groups who can be reluctant to engage in formal consultations.

Fortunately, there are a few initiatives which are looking at these issues.

On Monday 13 October I went to the first of a series of workshops organised by Scottish Universities Insight Institute into the opportunities and challenges of using data for Scotland’s third sector organisations.

Continue reading →

Housing associations – great places to work?

Posted on by

protect houseIn our second blog on housing associations we look at why they are consistently cited as great places to work and what the future might hold for them.

by Brelda Baum

Housing associations (HAs) are perceived to be great places to work according to The Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For 2014 survey (not for profit results) which is dominated by HAs and social housing employers. This seems to demonstrate that, despite the availability of other more lucrative options, people still want to work in the housing sector, perhaps because HAs and social housing organisations are at the forefront of a very rapidly changing environment, often at the cutting edge of a lot of social issues, so that by working for them, people see themselves in a position to do some good and see evidence of it. Continue reading →