We are calling for funders to adopt more open and trusting practices that make life easier for those they fund.
Our Open and Trusting Steering Group meets twice a year, to:
Our thanks go to the membership:
Our strategic aims, size, and governance are very different. But we all believe that how we do it matters: who we reach, how we judge applications, the kind of funding we give and the relationships we make.
Prior to Northern Rock Foundation’s closure in 2015, we published Being There, focusing on the Foundation’s distinctive approach to grant-making. Many of the practices now being championed through the Open and Trusting grant-making campaign were prominent in the Northern Rock model, including:
Getting the best out of relationships
The Foundation’s interaction with applicants and grantees was based on grant-making principles which were established early on, including:
Taking a lead and learning from experience
The Foundation was willing to take hard decisions and risks to achieve change, and encouraged others to take risks by both expecting and tolerating failure on occasions, so long as lessons were learned and shared: ‘Trustees are used to risk. They don’t worry if things go wrong. A fundamental principle with grantees is that we are not here to apportion blame’.
We identified key learning points for other trusts and foundations, including:
Flexible funding
The Foundation’s practice of ‘focusing on the problem’ and, linked to that, their commitment to ‘managing risk through relationships not systems’ meant that Programme Managers were not constrained by an arbitrary set of rules around, for example, duration of funding or reporting requirements. Differentiated arrangements were put in place according to what seemed most appropriate in relation to the problem being tackled or task being undertaken, with the emphasis on letting organisations set their own objectives, not imposing them.
Other funders might want to consider the possible benefits of being less encumbered by unnecessary and restrictive rules and, linked to this, how they can create the space for more engaged relationships with grantees and a more flexible approach to funding. Approaches which frame relationships primarily within terms of administrative process and “outcomes promised and delivered” may be inherently riskier and less productive than relationships based on knowledge and trust in a progressively more unstable climate.
Keeping a strong core
Although Programme Managers were given a great deal of licence and freedom, their work was shaped and held by a strong sense of the “whole”. This was, in effect, a set of values and principles that became a common lens through which decisions were made. Without this, grant-making can become disparate and incoherent. Such values and principles need to be shaped, shared and understood at all levels and reviewed and renewed as circumstances and people change.
Exercising judgements
Finally, we were struck by this quote from one of the Programme Managers: ‘We never sought or pretended to be fair’. For the Foundation, the challenge was different: how can judgements about who, what and where to invest in be as grounded, informed and legitimate as possible? That commitment to a deep integrity of grant-making required engagement, relationship-building (recognising the importance of face-to-face contact for both grant holders and grants staff) and patience. For the many trusts and foundations that try to manage the inherent unfairness of grant-making by adopting processes (such as scoring) that have the veneer of fairness, there is an important lesson here.
Read moreWe are proud to join with our friends at IVAR and across the funding community to call for the achievements of 2020 to strengthen our work for the future. Over 400 organisations signed our ‘We stand with the sector’ statement at the start of the crisis, and we believe that the eight funder commitments are the natural next step to take for funders who have already pledged to adapt activities, be financially flexible, and to listen. We encourage all of our members to sign up to the commitments, and to make practical changes where necessary, so that together we can enable our communities to thrive.
James Banks, CEO at London Funders
This period has begun to open up some honest conversations about the pre-Covid-19 state of foundation and charitable trust support (or lack of it) for the BAME sector – which were really difficult to have beforehand. There appears to be much more of a willingness to listen and to find ways to respond. The impact has been that literally thousands of BAME-led organisations have now applied for funding and/or capacity building support, which has brought to the fore a real richness and diversity within the sector, as well as huge swathes of imagination and creativity. The flexibility and simplicity that has been seen during this period has enabled Ubele to create an infrastructure which has helped us extend our reach from local to national. However, it is mainly short-term funding and we are left with a deep sense of uncertainty, even as levels of demand for our services grow.
Yvonne Field, CEO and Founder at Ubele Initiative
Charities are vital, and they have, and will continue to, face challenges around generating funding to deliver their activities. For this reason, it is important that, as grant-making organisations, we take more risks. The pandemic has brought an opportunity for us to adapt and better support the sector. We have streamlined our processes and procedures to enable funding to reach communities efficiently, and at pace. This has supported the emergency efforts being driven in local communities by local charitable organisations. It has enabled communities to respond, and enabled funders to take a more trusting approach to grant-making; accepting that those organisations delivering much needed support for communities, are the people that know what the issues are, and how best to address them.
Orla Black, Grants Director at The Community Foundation for Northern Ireland
The Allen Lane Foundation has always striven to consider the stress and time involved in the funding process for groups and organisations. We like to think we have a light-touch process which recognises the size of grants we award. We remain committed to taking some of the risk with those we fund and giving honest feedback both to successful and unsuccessful applicants. We can always do better and this initiative commits us to that, do it better and always have at the forefront of our work those at the front line.
Tim Cutts, Executive Secretary at Allen Lane Foundation
Covid-19 has shown funders what can be achieved when we break our own rules and work together. Let’s take this opportunity to face up to the cost of our individual requirements on the organisations we fund, and make a change.
Gina Crane, Director of Communications and Learning at Esmée Fairbairn Foundation
It’s important for charities to feel trusted and respected by funders to make well-informed decisions about how they can best respond to the needs of the people they exist to help. In a context of where challenges and issues are developing at pace, enabling charities to respond quickly with simple funding processes which lead to flexible, core funding is crucial.
With emergency being the ‘the normal’ for the foreseeable future, I would encourage funders to look at how they move their adaptations into their business-as-usual ways of working for supporting work that isn’t directly related to the current emergency. Charities that are tackling deep-rooted problems need to be supported.
Christopher Stacey, Former Co-Director of Unlock for people with convictions
Over the past year we have further explored what it really means to put trust at the heart of our grant-making and grant support. As we have changed our approach in response to the pandemic, it has become ever clearer that being transparent and flexible in the way we operate is a key part of working in a trusting and trustworthy way.
Nicky Lappin, Head of Research at The Tudor Trust
Our funded organisations are operating in a shifting, uncertain landscape which presents challenges for service delivery, planning and supporting staff and volunteers. We have committed to providing funding for up to five years, using proportionate and flexible approaches, with greater scope for unrestricted support. These changes enable us to take a more transparent and relational approach to grant-making and reduce the administrative burden upon applicants and grantholders. The enormous challenges faced by the third sector require us to act with ambition, taking risks to achieve lasting change.
Acting on feedback from those we support, we will continue to adapt our approach in response to the last year. We will consult openly on the design of a new Strategic Fund to support larger organisations to change how they work and to better serve people and places affected by poverty and trauma in Scotland. We are building our knowledge and capacity on equality, diversity, participation and rights to improve our work as a funder and partner.
Jim McCormick, CEO at The Robertson Trust
Openness and trust are core values at Paul Hamlyn Foundation and we are always thinking about how to live up to these commitments in our behaviours and our processes. Our past work to become a more flexible and responsive funder informed the approach we used in going into the pandemic and we have learnt a lot more about what this means in practice as we have all lived through the last year. We want to make sure we continue to embed this into our ways of working, which is why we are pleased to be part of this movement of funders working towards better grant-making.
Moira Sinclair OBE, CEO at Paul Hamlyn Foundation
For us at Counselling All Nations Services (CANS) it means an acceptance of the important role we play in the wider community as glue and the vital services to the public. The benefits are that different Funding Trusts are in the position now to align with CANS and provide necessary support to do our work with ease. Hopefully, they will listen to us with the seriousness it deserves.
It is very important to adapt and standardise the simpler application process and continue with the relational process as part of the assessment. We also need a better person-to-person relationship as a way to maintain continuity. As a Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) support charity, it is important that funding trusts also set aside separate funds to target BAME support organisations apart from just general funds.
Lekan Ojo-Okiji Abasi, Clinical Co-ordinator at Counselling All Nations Services
The past year has focused our thinking as funders. How we operate is critical: our processes must be straightforward, purposeful, and we must be prepared to take risks. As funding partners, we must listen as much as we speak. Establishing the London Community Response Fund and adapting our funding processes showed us that we can make changes quickly and effectively. We are committed to learning from this experience to ensure we don’t return to business as usual but continue to challenge ourselves to be equitable, trust-based and transparent throughout our grant-making. We hope other funders will join us on this journey.
David Farnsworth, Chief Grants Officer at City Bridge Trust
The Call to Action must remind all of us to push ourselves to ensure we are aware of and able to respond to the needs and hopes of people and communities we are here to support.
Corra aspires to be the best it can be – particularly in relation to grant-making, participation, diversity, inclusion, transparency and climate impact – and this must guide all our actions.
Fiona Duncan, CEO at Corra Foundation
We have been able to work more collaboratively with current funders in response to Covid-19. Funders have gained a better understanding of our work and the importance of being focused on emerging themes and it has encouraged more open dialogues with funders, especially on processes that work/don’t work and the importance of core funding. It has also brought the refugee sector, wider sector and funders closer together. In doing this, funders gain a better understanding of the challenges facing charities and what it entails to design and fundraise for a project. It makes the process easier for both sides, and more focused, enabling us to create long term impact and change.
Whether in an emergency context or not – funders need to use learning from 2020 to assess their own priorities, criteria and systems to make the funding process more equitable, fair and easily accessible. For instance, looking at core funding, not just restricted; connecting charities with other funders; taking the lead on equality, diversity and inclusion; reducing the amount of information (docs needed), e.g. accounts, policies that have remained unchanged and have been provided in a previous/recent grant.
Rawan Nuseibeh, Development Manager at Refugee Action
Practical ideas from open and trusting grantmakers
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