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Our community activities have been well funded for several years, but we now face the challenge of continuation funding. How do we start?
ONE of the great benefits of the Church Urban Fund (CUF) is that after an initial three-year funding of church community projects it will consider continuing the funding for a couple more years. Often that funding is matched by another, church-friendly funder, and the project is comfortable for its first few years.
Unfortunately, in the current voluntary-sector-funding scenario, this gives something of a false sense of security.
A stable community project would be well advised to establish an annual cycle of revenue fund-raising that would anticipate the replacement of funding streams nearing their end, and continue those where funding would continue. In addition to the CUF, the Big Lottery will occasionally give a follow-on grant. But I find that continuation funding, as presented by a few funders, means that groups have no incentive to improve their ongoing fund-raising strategies.
In addition, the support given by the CUF when an application is made to them is not matched by other funders. Someone on the committee or staff of the project will need to develop the skills to make a series of funding applications each year.
Join one of the online funding research agencies — for example, the Directory of Social Change, or Funderfinder — and each year do a new trawl through all possible sources of funding. Look also at landfill tax sources, and review government funding websites. This should produce a new and extended list of possible sources.
Previous successful applications may be updated, but remember to refresh them; make activities sound new and exciting, and include the successes of the past year. This is a good reason for the project committee to require the workers to monitor and evaluate the project. If you have not done this before, the Big Lottery website has guidelines for monitoring how you achieve your outcomes.
If, for the first time, you are going to fund-raise outside the circle of church funders such as the CUF or the diocese, contact your local Council for the Voluntary Sector (CVS): either it or your local council will offer training in fund-raising, offer advice on how to get going, and may even be able to recommend some sources.
Many church projects, although funded by church-friendly funders who are prepared to trust that all is well, find that when they go outside the church sector their project-management is relatively amateur, and this is a disadvantage when trying to raise funds. The same CVS may have training programmes for charity trustees and managers: use them.
If your project has several staff, or is a complete community centre with many activities, the professionalism — or lack of it — with which you run the organisation will have a significant impact on your ability to raise funds. All those seemingly unnecessary PC elements, such as health-and-safety reviews, risk analysis, annual appraisals of staff, and the staff handbook, will need to be put in place.
Continuation funding? Go for a wider view, establish a solid annual fund-raising strategy, and ensure good management practice in your project.
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