Emma Frew reflects on the current landscape for charitable grants, particularly in one of the UK’s most deprived areas, the North East  

As a former director of ShARP (Shiney Advice and Resource Project), an advice centre in Sunderland, and now as 2015 Clore specialist social leadership fellow for the North East, I’ve noticed several key themes and developments with regard to the current funding landscape. 

Although warmly anticipated by many smaller charities in the North East, the recent combination of funding from ESF and Big Lottery when it eventually launched left many charities in dismay at the adoption of a 'commercialised' prime and supply chain model, with hefty risk implications to those lower down in the supply chain.

Added to this problem, many infrastructure organisations in the North East, particularly CVS’s have significantly reduced their size and scope of their services due to falling income levels. The once familiar role of the funding support worker is now a rarity and extinct in many areas, leaving many smaller community organisations without the support needed to develop good funding applications.

This is particularly poignant given the complexity and restrictiveness of some application processes. While a word count is a good way of focusing the brain, trying to describe a multi-faceted organisation in 200 words is a skill; trying to do the same in 50 becomes an impossibility.

‘Collaborate or die’?

Whatever noises we are making that the stability of small charities needs to be protected is not reaching the ears of the people that it needs to. Rhetoric like 'Collaborate or die!' is not helpful, and I feel should be challenged. Charities on the whole are very good at seeking, finding and working with genuine partners to meet the needs of their beneficiaries, and these partnerships are usually long-lasting and flexible.

A move towards 'partnership' funded models encourages the formation of new partnerships, which can be the beginning of something good, but in many cases can cause friction between organisations who would not usually work so closely together.

With trusts and foundations constantly under pressure to ensure that the money they distribute is being used in the most effective manner, perhaps greater collaboration among trusts is the answer. Pooling resources of grant managers across trusts may be a solution, or perhaps the development of community foundations as a local brokerage model. The better trusts reach into the communities they fund, the better understanding they will have of whether they are achieving best value for their money.

Buzz terms and bug bears

There are many buzz terms that have been used over the years, some are useful, some are not. A current example of this is being able to 'demonstrate social impact'. I can see the benefits of being able to do this, but for some organisations this can be extremely difficult to quantify with any degree of rigour. If demonstrating social impact is to become a common prerequisite of funding accountability then much more support (financial and educational) needs to be provided alongside the traditional grant funding.

Another bug bear of mine is ‘innovation’. if something is good and it’s working well, why the need to constantly innovate? I’m all for ‘improving’ services, and think that even good services need to be reviewed for where improvements can be made, but the need for the continuous reinvention of the wheel can be extremely frustrating when charities are looking to provide ongoing, successful, well-established services.

On a positive note, we are seeing a shift in focus from some of the traditional grant funders towards early interaction/preventative funding, with a longer-term focus on identifying achievements and benefits. The move towards longer-term funding is very welcomed, the habit in recent years in the UK for 1-3 year funding has many charities operating in choppy waters - and this is not good given the rough seas that we are all facing.

Emma Frew is 2015 Clore specialist social leadership fellow for the North East (sponsored by Garfield Weston)