Where have all the applications gone? Alan Eagle reflects on the marked decline in the number of funding applications

When the real extent of funding cuts became apparent, funders braced themselves for a flood of grant applications from charities. Sure enough, from January to March 2011 the number of applications increased dramatically as charities were unsure what funding, if any, they were going to get in the new financial year. At the Santander Foundation we reached a high-water mark of 127 in just one day.

However, by June 2011 the numbers had dropped back to a below-average 20 or 30 a day and haven’t recovered.

Other major funders I’ve spoken with have experienced the same issue, with the quantity of applications being well below what they would expected. Worse still, the quality of applications coming in is also showing a marked decline. What can be going on?

On hold

Speaking to charities at funding events across the country, as well as drawing on the insights of other funders, there appear to be a number of factors at work here.

As a result of the funding cuts, many charities have had to either convert their fundraisers into service delivery workers or have simply lost them altogether. This means that whatever staff time is available for putting together fundraising applications has to be prioritised. Obviously securing core funding has to be top of the list. As a result, project and small grants funding has to be put on hold and often ends up being squeezed into what is an already overcrowded working week or in extreme cases, done in people’s own time.

When cuts have to be made the short-term view may be to cut fundraising posts in order to keep frontline workers, but this has serious long-term implications for the viability of those charities. If fundraising positions have to go, the challenge is to ensure that the knowledge and connections that person has are retained, and not lost along with the post holder.

Tough call

More and more infrastructure charities have also suffered from the funding cuts and many have lost their funding development workers. As a result there are fewer funding events, workshops and funding alerts going out, and some organisations have had to introduce a modest fee for helping charities to prepare applications for funders. With their budgets reduced, charities can find paying even these small charges a tough call, and so they miss out on the opportunity to draw on this expertise.

Another reason charities aren’t applying for funding is that they think that foundations have less money to give out as result of the impact of the stock market on their endowment income. For many of the larger funders this really isn’t the case; they have in fact called upon their reserves, having decided that now is the time when funding is most needed. Although the Santander Foundation has a modest income from its endowments, most of our funding comes as a donation directly from Santander UK and this has increased, year on year.

Taking stock

So what can we do about this situation? Well, there are certainly no easy answers. However, common sense would seem to dictate that for funders it becomes even more important to review our application processes and ensure that they are not over-engineered; they must be accessible with only a proportionate level of information requested.

We must also investigate how we can promote our funding through different channels. As the sector landscape changes, funders must adapt and make use of the new communications tools that YouTube and Twitter present – but only if these are fit for purpose and effective at reaching possible applicants.

There are huge amounts of free resources to help charities with applications out there (I’ve put a few links on the Spotlight section of the Santander Foundation’s website). But rather than simply churn out more applications, it is vital that fundraisers have a strategy and spend time tailoring and targeting their applications. Easier said than done with the all the other competing demands of your charity needing to be met, but your applications must be properly prepared, not simply copy-and-paste jobs that are fired off to as many funders as possible.

The guidance we publish needs to drive up the quality of applications, rather than act as a barrier to success. Only by working with charities and inviting their feedback on the design and content of our published guidelines can we make sure that we are being clear and giving the right amount of advice.

Alan Eagle is foundation manager at Santander UK Foundation 

This article first appeared in The Fundraiser magazine, Issue 20, August 2012