Writing winning funding applications

Transcription

1 Writing winning funding applications This guide is a summary of a workshop delivered at the NACCC AGM in November 2013 by Richard Neville. The focus is on applying to grant-making trusts and foundations, the biggest group of organisations who make themselves available for funding applications on an ongoing basis. Most of the messages, however, are applicable to other types of funding applications for which there is no prescribed format (such as private companies, for example). Contents 1 About grant-making trusts 2 Understanding the donor s mindset 3 Building your evidence base 4 Planning/costing your bid 5 Researching funding prospects 6 Writing your proposal All too often, organisations seeking funds focus on the writing aspect as the be all and end all. This is just one part of the process - good preparation is crucial. This guide takes you through five essential stages for presenting a compelling application to potential funders. About grant-making trusts and foundations According to the fit4funding website ( there are about 7,500 grant-making trusts and foundations in the UK, giving a total of approx 2 billion in grants each year to charities. About 70% of trusts and foundations give in the health and social welfare fields; 30% give to the arts and recreation; 9% give to causes related to religion; and about 7% of their funds are given internationally (figures total more than 100% because some trusts fund more than one of these categories). The advantages of applying to trusts are that they: tend to have simple application procedures, often in the form of a request letter often have broad and flexible remits collectively represent a huge range of interests - you are almost guaranteed to find a trust whose remit overlaps with your needs are often prepared to fund something new and untried are often prepared to fund less popular causes. The disadvantages of applying to grant-making trusts are that: few trusts give large grants (they tend to be in the hundreds or low thousands of pounds). they are heavily over-subscribed the decision-making process tends to be very slow 1

2 it is rare to get feedback on unsuccessful applications. Stage 1 understanding the donor s mindset Perhaps this is better described as a reality check rather than a separate stage. It is vital that you understand grant-making trusts motivations for giving. Funders (of all types, not just grant-making trusts) are looking at outcomes as the basis for their decisions on whether to fund or not. Key message Fundraising is about selling a solution to a significant problem. It is not about pleading to keep your service running! There are two main reasons for this: it is an unappealing prospect to potentially waste funds on an organisation that is teetering on the brink of extinction they are not interested in supporting your organisation they want to make a difference to people who need help. It is very important to understand the distinction between outputs and outcomes. Outputs are what and how much gets delivered e.g. the services you provide and the number of families who receive them.. Outcomes are the difference you make to the people you deliver services to. With this in mind, child contact centres need to very clear what their outcomebased selling points are to funders. This might include: children building or maintaining good relationships with a parent parents using the contact as a valuable stepping stone towards more sustainable care arrangements the benefits to children in the long-term of having both parents involved in their lives. Remember who will be reading your application. Trustees of grant-making trusts are usually made up of bankers, accountants, lawyers and senior business figures people who will scrutinise applications to find those that deliver the most impact in the most cost-effective way. Stage 2 building evidence All too often charities decide to apply somewhere for funding, and only at that point do they start searching around for evidence to prove how effective they are. This is too late! If seeking funds is going to be a medium or long-term issue for your organisation, then you need a long-term plan to collect evidence. 2

3 Types of evidence outcome data Ideally you will collect evidence about the long-term difference that you make to families lives. Measuring long-term outcomes is difficult for child contact centres given the interim nature of their services. But if a long-term tracking survey is going to be beyond the resources of the sector, think about the difference you make while a family is using your services. This could be based on your own observations about a family s collaborative status at the start and end of the period that they use the centre for, or on direct feedback from parents. Qualitative evidence Always be on the look-out for opportunities for qualitative evidence. This could be in the form of case studies, or quotes from parents or children about their experiences at a contact centre and the difference it has made to them. It could also be supportive comments from other sources such as voluntary sector partners, family solicitors or Cafcass officers. Information about your client group It is common to see grant-making trusts expressing an interest in funding work with particular groups, for example, low income families or ethnic minorities. Can your client group be segmented in this way? If so, is it possible to quantify this? It will be more convincing to say in 25% of the families using our centre neither parent is working, rather than we work with lots of families where neither parent is working. Research data Research data about separating families can be useful as contextual information for your application. Government publications on private family law are a good source for these (for example documents related to the Family Justice Review, or the Government s 2013/14 private law legislation). Examples include: around 250,000 couples with children separate each year, affecting 350,000 children between a fifth and a third of children of separated parents lose touch with one parent the likelihood of poorer long-term social emotional and cognitive outcomes increases if there are high levels of destructive conflict that damage children s relationships with parents and wider family members separation impacts on relationships across the whole family; it is estimated that 42% grandparents lose contact with their grandchildren after parental separation, for example. 3

4 Incorporating families views into your funding application Grant-making trusts usually want to know how service users have been involved in the planning of the activity you are seeking funding for. This doesn t have to be on a formal basis but if you are hoping to expand your services, refurbish your premises or even just buy some new toys, your case will be strengthened if you have talked to parents and children and can explain how your plans reflect their views. Stage 3 - planning and costing your bid The planning stage is about being crystal clear on what you intend to do, how and when you will do it, and what the outcomes will be. Part of this process involves understanding the type of applications that grant-making trusts are more likely to fund. In general it is easier to raise money for some specific activity or capital item than for the organisation as a whole. If your running costs are very low then it may be that your only sensible option is to apply for funding to cover all of these costs. If your work does have several aspects to it, however, the alternative is to think of it in project terms and seek funding for these projects but with a proportion of overheads attached to each. In the ideal world, therefore, as an organisation applies for and gets funding for the different elements of their work, the less glamorous overhead costs that are not appealing to funders are covered. This method of building all your costs in to a project bid is called full cost recovery. This approach has been endorsed by the Government for some time now, and many grant-making trusts accept the need to work on this basis. ACEVO, the professional body for third sector chief executives, has developed a full cost recovery tool kit to help organisations understand and calculate the costs of each activity. It can be accessed at: Stage 4 researching grant-making trusts The most common complaint from grant-funding trusts concerns the number of application they receive that have no relevance to their stated remit. There is no excuse for this there are plenty of resources available to help you target your applications properly. A good starting point is a directory of grant making trusts. A number of directories exist that enable you to search for grant making trusts against criteria that match your needs. FundingCentral ( run by the Cabinet Office, is a free service. There are other directories that require a subscription after a free trial period. It is always worth contacting your local co-ordination body for voluntary organisations such as Community Action or Council for Voluntary Service. They may have access to one or more of these directories already, 4

5 and may also be able to advise you on fundraising opportunities in your local area. You can find your local contact at the National Association for Voluntary and Community Action website Some trusts give out comprehensive information to help applicants very often, however, the details are frustratingly vague. The remit might be a one liner such as to alleviate poverty and social distress, or to support various charitable causes as the trustees see fit. Telephoning the trust concerned is the most obvious solution, but if no contact number is given, the Charity Commission website can be a useful source of information. If you search for details of individual charities you can view a page called view charity summary that sometimes gives more detail on the trust s priorities. The website also provides links to trusts annual reports and accounts, often a useful source of information about the size of a trust s donations, and the type of organisation funded. Stage 5 writing the application There are of course many different ways to structure a funding letter if no prescribed format is given by from the grant-making trust you are targeting. The format proposed here is an effective format that you can adapt as you see fit. The suggested structure is: title summary about your organisation the need you will meet with the funding your objectives and intended outcomes the method monitoring and evaluation budget conclusion Title Before you even get into your summary, it is a good idea to give your letter a title. Make sure that this encapsulates the key outcome you hope to achieve, rather than just being functional. So, for example, Helping children maintain vital family bonds is preferable to Refurbishment of family centre. Summary Too many funding applications take too long to get the key points across to the reader. A punchy 8-10 line summary should cover the key issues that are in the reader s mind who you are, what problem you are solving and how, and the money you are seeking. It is important to start off in a positive upbeat way, making it clear that something really good will happen as a result of their funding. 5

6 About your organisation This section is all about establishing your credibility as an organisation that can be trusted to deliver what you are promising. Key points to cover here might include: your organisation s goals and objectives (expressed, of course, in terms of outcomes for children and families) how long you have been operating a concise summary of the services you provide any key achievements your working links with other organisations (e.g. Cafcass) quotes from parents or other stakeholders that describe the impact you have. One of the most common mistakes in funding applications is for organisations to make unsubstantiated claims about their capabilities. Statements such as We deliver a high quality service are meaningless unless backed by evidence, for example by quoting the findings from a customer satisfaction survey. The need The next section is about the problem that the grant-making trust s money will help to solve. You must define the need you are addressing, supported by evidence. This should cover the immediate need, and the medium-long term impact of not having those needs met. For example, for child contact centres, the immediate need could be for a child to maintain or build a relationship with a parent, and for parents to have an interim support stage that provides a stepping stone while they move to more sustainable care arrangements. In the longer term, if children are unable to maintain these bonds the chances increase that they will lose touch with a parent. This also increases the potential for negative outcomes if high levels of conflict persist because workable care arrangements are not sustained. The two most common mistakes made by funding applicants in this section are thinking it is about them! Your primary focus must be on the needs of children and families, not on how over-worked /under-funded you are. not explaining all the different levels/implications of the need. Do not assume that the reader understands all the ramifications for family members being caught up in bitter conflict. This part of the letter should not be overly emotional, but should convey that there are real problems for real people that need addressing urgently. Your objectives and intended outcomes Before you launch into the mechanics of how you will use the trust s money to tackle the stated need, it works well to set out your objectives and the intended outcomes at this point. You can do this even for simple items of 6

7 expenditure. For example if you are seeking a donation to buy some new toys the objective might be: To make the contact sessions as appealing as possible for the children attending, and to give the non-resident parents a variety of activities that they feel confident playing with their children. The outcome could then be: Children will enjoy the sessions and feel encouraged to attend them in future, and the non-resident parent will feel more confident that the sessions can help them to maintain or establish a strong relationship with their children. This helps to build a platform which increases the chances of parents making longterm care arrangements work, and of maintaining the bonds that can have a lasting positive impact on children s lives. The method section You have stated the intended objectives and outcomes, now is the time to describe how you intend to bring about these results, by describing what action you will take with the trust s money. In addition to the method, you also need to persuade the funder that your plans will work. This is the section where, ideally, you describe how your service users have been involved in the planning of the activity or item you want to spend money on. Other ways of demonstrating that your plans will work could be to set out: your experience of working with this client group your accreditation status and implications for quality and safety evidence from a trial/test period (if it is a new service) why you are the best-placed organisation to be providing the service in your area (or that you are the only one) how you will work with other agencies to enhance the impact you make. Make sure too that you have covered any additional or secondary outcomes that arise. The use of volunteers is particularly relevant here for child contact centres, often an issue that trusts seem to appreciate. So flag this up, both in terms of the contribution to a cost-effective approach to helping separated families, and also the way that funding can enhance the role that volunteers play. Monitoring and evaluation This stage is often neglected by funding applicants, but is actually one of the most important concerns for funders. Key message Being busy is not enough! Funders want reassurance that you will be able to assess progress against your stated outcomes (monitoring); that you gather user feedback; and that you take this feedback seriously by using it to address any issues you identify. 7

8 Ideally you will be able to describe how you will measure progress with outcome indicators. These can be: quantitative - where you count the number of actual positive developments qualitative - where you assess people s views and experiences. Monitoring can take various forms, including through interviews, informal discussion, questionnaires or consultation meetings. This all needs to be in proportion of course. If you are applying for small sums of money no one is going to expect an elaborate monitoring process. If it is for a small capital purchase - new toys for example you are clearly not going to go into great detail about how you measure the difference this has made to families experiences. But you might say that you will talk to parents and children about the new equipment get a feel for whether it is enhancing their experience at the centre. The budget Fundraising is about selling a solution to a problem rather than asking for money. But no matter how effectively you sell the idea, you still need to show that you know what you are talking about when it comes to finances. Cost your needs accurately, and ask for a specific sum. A common mistake is for people to under-cost their budgets sometimes because they feel if they ask for smaller amounts they have more chance, or just because they don t think it through carefully enough. Make sure you have included all the items you will be spending money on. These might include training, travel and subsistence, office space, heating, telephone, postage, IT support, printing.and so on. Be confident in your request for money! Too many funding letters tail off with a whimper. If money has been given or committed from other sources, explain this. Funders like to see you have been successful at attracting money from elsewhere. When setting out the costs of whatever it is you are applying for, set out the all the costs, including those that are already funded from another source. Funders like to see the bigger picture just make sure you are clear what proportion you are asking the grant-making trust for. Put your costings information in a table. In the example below, the applicant plans to undertake a project that will cost 30,000, but has already secured 20,000 from two other sources. Project costs Salaries and NI 20,000 Premises costs (20% of occupancy costs) 2,000 Supervision (10% of management salaries) 3,000 Volunteer expenses 1,000 Admin support (20% of admin salaries) 4,000 TOTAL 30,000 Project funding secured 8

9 Local authority 10,000 Giving Trust 10,000 Project funding needed Funding requested from Helpful Foundation 10,000 The above example would also need some additional explanatory text on the assumptions behind these figures. The conclusion This just requires a couple of lines to reiterate what can be achieved with the donor s funding. Other questions How long should the application be? There are no hard and fast rules, but aim for 2 2½ sides of A4. If a grant making trust likes what they see they will come back and ask more questions. Should I send any supporting information? Be cautions with this. Funders do not want to be swamped with literature. The standard advice is to send a copy of you annual report and accounts if you have them. Other than that, restrict further information to supporting evidence that can be provided on a single page, for example case studies or quotes from parents or stakeholders. Final checklist Does your application fit with the trust s remit? Am I asking for an appropriate sum of money relative to the minimum/maximum amounts that I know they award? Does my letter heading grab the attention and explain the major difference I will make with their money? Does the summary give the reader the big picture that sets the context for what follows? Tone is the balance right between passionate and professional? You want to come across as caring deeply for the issue concerned, yet efficient and professional in your approach and confident you can make a difference. Have I observed the basic principles of good writing, including short sentences, simplicity of language and avoiding acronyms? Does it flow in the order the reader expects it to, e.g. the problem, objectives and outcomes, method and the resources needed to make it happen? Does it come across as a personal letter written individually for the donor? Have you really hammered home the outcome-based reasons why the donor should support your project? 9

10 Is there enough evidence in there to convince them you are a safe pair of hands? This guide was prepared by freelance bid writer Richard Neville, 10