Why funders look for evidence of planning in grant applications
Howard Lake | 4 November 2014 | Blogs
When deciding which charity to give money to, you might expect a funder to be most interested in aspects such as the evidence of need, the difference made, the charity’s history and track record.
Those are all important, but actually when assessing charities, one of the fundamental things a funder is looking for is evidence of planning. Planning comes out in all sorts of places: How do different stakeholders input into a business plan? Does the charity have a succession plan if it is reliant on one key leader? Is there a marketing plan for the new enterprise project?
Which charity would you fund?
Planning sounds dull. It is rarely mentioned in anyone’s three minute elevator pitch. But if you were tasked with assessing the financial sustainability of a charity, which of these would you fund?
• “We have no income once the contract ends in March 2015 but we are confident we will be successful when the council retenders the contract.”
• “We rely on annual grants from regular trusts and foundations and are sure that this pattern will continue. “
• “We have had a drop in income this year as our Lottery funding and two other large grants all ended at the same time. “
Possibly none of them? They certainly do not seem to have robust fundraising strategies or financial management in place. And how about this other example commonly seen in application forms:
• “We need to raise £X to make up the cut in local authority funding and will be increasing our fundraising income from corporates.”
Perhaps this would convince you? But even with this last one, unless the charity has identified likely corporates and has the skills needed to approach them successfully, it may well be a case of more hope than planning.
How can you demonstrate your planning?
So what does a funder need to see?
• A fundraising plan linked to a business plan;
• a diversity of income streams;
• contingency planning for a number of ‘what if’ scenarios;
• Trustees aware of the risks such as dependence on any one funder;
• Trustees taking responsibility for the key decision points such as possible redundancies;
• realistic assessments of the potential income from new areas rather than pinning hope on a magic new source of money.
In short, we want to see evidence that not only do you have a strong charity today, but that your charity has a real understanding of its future as well.
Emma Beeston has worked in the charity sector for over twenty years with experience in youth work, advice and service user involvement. For the past twelve years I have worked in grant making. I am co-chair of a network of regional funders, Funding South West and a Trustee of a national cancer care charity, Penny Brohn Cancer Care. She is on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Photo: planning notes by Alexander Biznover on Shutterstock.com
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.