This presentation was delivered at KCSC funding Fare and gives a brief oversight of how to get started by identifying what you need, building a business case to meet a funder’s criteria, and finding funders.

Context:

• coalition Government
• Labour controls 17/32 London boroughs
• No certainty about future economic growth
• Expectations of big funding cuts
• Concept of the ‘Big Society’
• Comprehensive Spending Review 2010 to leave ‘unprotected’ services with reduced resources

Office for Budget Responsibility Report (14 June 2010)

• Departmental expenditure limits for 2010/11 are close to 0% growth
• For unprotected services this could means cuts of 2-5% per year or 15-20% budget reduction over 5 years
• Having protected services means greater cuts to unprotected services
• Download OBR Report from here

Services in order of protection:

• NHS
• Schools
• childrens services
• Police
• Elderly people services

Less protected services:

• Housing
• social benefits
• Adult education
• Highways
• Capital investment (already to be cut by 50%)

What London local authorities might do:

• Likely to have -1 to 0% growth in cash support for each of next 5 years
• May see some ‘salami slicing’ of budgets or a more strategic approach
• Unlikely that funding for London authorities will be protected

Can we do anything about it?  It’s unlikely, but we can register suggestions here.

• 18 May @ I-Trust, Ely, Cambs - How to Cost and Fund ICT projects – In this 90 minute workshop I’ll be showing the essentials of how to put together a winning technology bid to a funder.  More details to be confirmed.

• 24 May @ NCYVS, London N1 – in this one day workshop for SKILD I’ll be showing development workers why technology is important for small organisations, and where they can for help and support.

• Understanding why technology is important for small organisations
• Feeling more confident in responding to their technology questions
• Being able to advise frontline groups on planning and costing for efficient use of technology
• Being able to signpost frontline groups to free and low cost resources which make their aims more effective.

This event is organised by NAVCA and the price is £49 per person (including VAT) for all organisations.  To book on this course please download and complete the booking and initial assessment form (Word, 1.43MB) and return it to events@navca.org.uk You can also contact NAVCA’s events team on 0114 278 6636.

• 21 June @  Kensington & Chelsea Social Council Funding Fair @ Kensington Town Hall, London W8 – I’ll be presenting a one hour workshop on “How to Cost and Fund ICT projects” – a primer on the essentials of writing a winning technology bid to a funder.

The policy paper outlines the case for funders to invest in supporting the cost of ICT as a legitimate cost of providing a grant funded service, as  benefit to funders will be that properly resourced ICT could enable organisations they fund  to increase the impact of their programmes.

London ICT Champion, Miles Maier said,

Whilst funders do not have to be technical experts, many feel they lack the expertise to identify ICT projects in which to invest their limited grant resources. This policy can help funders understand how ICT can be embedded in their grantees’ organisation to improve service delivery and programme outputs.”

VCOs also need support on the ground, and Circuit Riders – or mobile ICT support workers – offer funders a proven, low cost, model of ICT capacity building a caseload of organisations.

Funders are also called on to keep online resources – like Lasa’s ICT Knowledgebase – freely available as an impartial and trusted ICT resource for the sector.

Download Lasa’s ICT Funding Policy paper. (PDF 0.7MB)

Launched in February 2009, the Targeted Support Fund is part of the Government’s recession action plan.  The programme is funded by the Office of the Third Sector and delivered at a national level by Community Development Foundation.  Grants of between £10,000 and £40,000 were awarded under three themes to help organisations meet increased demand for their services during the recession.

• employment and employability;
• information advice and guidance, and;
• health and wellbeing.

In London, some £325,000 was awarded to 15  VCOs.  The North East region did well with 98 grants awarded totalling £ 2.2m.  However, the narrow winners were the North West region with with 143 winners collecting a cool £3.4m.  Yorkshire & Humberside followed close behind with 138 grants totalling £3.3M.

We’d like to know why there was such a regional disparitybetween London and other regions, but until more detailed descriptions appear we can’t tell you anything more about the projects taxpayer money is supporting.  The complete  list of projects and case studies can be downloaded from NAVCA.

The ACF survey revealed these figures from grantmaking foundations:

• 80% of investments decreased since June 2008;
• 47% of grants budgets for 2010 will remain at the same level;
• 42% of grants budgets would decrease, but not very significantly;
• 27% of respondents said they might change their grants policy;
• Some said they would not take very much risk and rather than front-loading grants at the beginning of the year they would instead release them in smaller tranches over the course of the year.

More positively…

• 9% reported an increase in current grant levels;
• 15% anticipated higher grant-making in 2010;
• 38% planned to increase grant-making over the longer term.

The findings come in a major new survey by the Association of Charitable Foundations, whose members manage well over £30 billion in investments and provide about 10% of the annual income for the voluntary sector.

Details are beginning to emerge from Office of the Third Sector about how to access the recently announced £42.5m. Schemes included are the Real Help for Communities: Modernisation Fund, Real Help for Communities: Targeted Support Fund and Communitybuilders programme. The free regional events will involve a combination of presentations, workshops, networking opportunities, a Q&A session and signposting to further support.

LONDON: Central London, Abbey Community Centre, Thursday 7th May

Register for the roadshows at: www.coievents.co.uk/realhelpforcommunities/

Tracking where the money went is one thing, but where does it come from and does it join-up, if at all?  My colleague Andrew Samuel coined ‘joined-up-ness’ – it should be in the Urban Dictionary, but isn’t  – to describe how statutory funds

The NCVO Almanac does an admirable job of ploughing through the Charity Commission’s Guidestar database to come up with some interesting stats:

• for the first time more than half of charities income is derived from earned income – this highlights the importance of income generating activities;
• Over half of all charities receive no income from statutory sources;
• Over half of the largest charities receive little or no statutory income;
• One third of charities are heavily reliant on statutory funding;
• Local government provides about 50% of income from statutory funding – highlighting the importance of local partnerships and compacts;
• Grant income from government has remained static for 5 years – which suggests that funders are channeling funds through contracts rather than grants;

Bear in mind these figures are from 2005/06 – so the economic downturn and significant funding cuts delivered by the Arts Council, Sport England, and the £700m budget hit the Big Lottery is taking on behalf of the 2012 Olympics is yet to show up in the almanac.

The Office for the Third Sector (OTS), DCLG and other government departments are not slow in churning out news trumpeting the latest government funding initiatives, a favourite tactic being to re-announce funding and call it ‘new’.  There’s also the official parliamentary record, Hansard and They Work for You, as well as resources like the Directory of Social Change, FunderFinder, Government Funding and Grantfinder that enable charities to keep on top of funding streams.

But the real problem is trying to show how statutory funding joins up in a clear and concise way that fund-raisers can get to grips with.  For example, the OTS recently announced £42.5 million of funds to help the third sector tackle the economic downturn and unemployment.  Of the recently announced £42.5million the “new” (some of it is re-packaged) funding is split:

• £10million for jobseeker volunteering in the third sector delivered by Dept for Work and Pensions
• £15.5million community resilience scheme delivered through Grassroots Grants
• £16.5million modernisation fund to help organisations restructure and merge – some of this is through Capacitybuilders
• £0.5million investment in the School for Social Entrepreneurs
• £1m refocused spend by Capacity Builders to help charities with the economic downturn

But nowhere does it say how this £42.5M relates to other statutory funding. The best available grants map appears at Grants Online, but it doesn’t include some OTS, DCLG or Capacity Builders and you’ll have to subscribe to get the most recent version.

If anyone out there knows where to get hold of a map of Third Sector funding and how it relates to the rest of statutory funding, let us know, we’d love to know.

So far, the only details we have are those published by Capacity Builders, which shows a total of  10 grants totalling £2,374,550 (13.6% of the total) awarded to London.  Until we get further information from Capacity Builders, its not clear of any if the winning projects will feature elements of ICT.

Improving Reach awards 2008: London

• Evelyn Oldfield Unit £375,000 (supports refugee organisations)

• London Community Recycling Network £139,683

• Olmec £370,998 (community investment foundation working with disadvantaged communities)

• London wide organisation for disability £121,200 (new second tier organisation for the disability sector)

• Ealing Community and Voluntary Service £55,770 (support for local organisations)

• Islington Voluntary Action Council £297,268 (support for local organisations)

• Harrow Refugee Forum £200,000 (umbrella body for refugee organisations)

• Southwark Community Care Forum £249,000 (supports voluntary sector groups working in health and social care)

• Croydon BME Forum £415,953 (forum for black, minority, ethnic organisations)

• Refugees in Effective and Active Partnership £149,678 (directory of refugee organisations in West London)