The F word – Funding: more offensive in some circles than the actual F word

With thanks to NCPS Ambassador, Jocelyn Anderson, CEO West Mercia Rape & Sexual Abuse Support Centre for this article.

Having read the theme for this month’s newsletter, I spent some time wondering if I could write a coherent blog or whether it would deteriorate into a rant about one of the banes of my life. Funding for sexual violence services is notoriously difficult, and funding for our specialist therapy and counselling services is even harder to come by. Sexual violence (SV) is not a popular cause, it is not something that people want to think about, and, unlike domestic abuse, there are no obligations on statutory agencies to commission services.

I have been working in the specialist SV sector for over 20 years now and fundraising has never been an easy task. Fundraising in this sector is hard graft with lots of setbacks and disappointment. Every now and then there is a little ray of sunshine (aka cash), a small celebration and then on to the next application/tender. A cost-of-living crisis and government funding cuts only makes a hard job harder; this year has already seen the closure of another two Rape Crisis centres. Not all charities are funded or impacted in the same way, the reduction in donations and personal giving does not really impact on us – very few people donate directly but some hospices and air ambulances, for example, are reporting huge decreases. It is not the same for all Charities, some like the Donkey Sanctuary have huge amounts of reserves (estimated around £38m) to draw upon whilst others like our local Age Concern are facing imminent closure. I often wonder whether a survey of giving to charity could be used as a reflective piece on society’s priorities.

Over the years, I have compared and contrasted funding activities with other services – trying to find something that will work for SV. Collection boxes seemed like a positive move, as they have proved very lucrative for Hospices and children’s charities. Their boxes are proudly displayed on counters whilst ours, unfortunately, tend to be relegated to being behind the till so as not to cause offence.

The question of what works, I think, is rooted in how popular your cause is and/or if you can find a funder that agrees with you. Most fundraising seminars will focus on the personal connection and to some extent this can be an excellent source of funding but again, the people that you are connecting with need to be invested in and comfortable with your cause. It is very different for a sponsor to stand up and say why they are supporting a cancer charity than why they are supporting an SV one.

Grant making organisations have priorities and often very strict criteria of what they will and wont fund. Some will have a focus on supporting smaller charities and it is certainly the case that as you get bigger, less options are available – Lloyds Bank foundation for example, caps at an income of 1 million. Some you can only apply to by invitation, and some have very long-drawn-out processes – it does not necessarily correlate that the size of the application increases with the size of the funding available. I once completed a 48-page application for a local authority grant only to find that the maximum grant was £10k (don’t judge me, I was young, naïve and we needed the money), we were awarded £2k (I was young, less naïve, disappointed and still needed the money).

Some funders operate a two (or three) stage process, you submit an initial idea and then submit more information as you progress through – this is my favourite one. This process lets you know early on if the fund is oversubscribed, if it is not what they are looking for, or if you are in with a chance. I am also very fond of funders who want to fund what you are doing, what you know and can prove works – so many are only interested in the new ‘shiny bright’ project – innovation over stability.

I have a particular soft spot for those funders who fund core costs and the entirety of a project. Small to medium sized charities generally cost projects on a full-cost recovery model, meaning that costs such as mileage, IT, training, insurances, and premises are budgeted within the role which can, unfortunately make our bids look higher than the bigger players who have so many more staff to apportion costs to.

Whilst we welcome all discussion/challenges around our budgeting, a funder saying that they do not want to cover back-office costs or only a proportion of the post is less than helpful. How do you get the rest of the money?

Some doors however will remain closed even if a commissioner or funder is whole heartedly on board and supportive, unless your project fully meets the criteria or has a KPI attached, there is little room for manoeuvre – we used to say that there was a ‘should, could, would’ process for commissioning. The ‘should’ is what they must fund, the ‘could’ is the discretionary area and the ‘would’ is often the category that we fall into – I would fund you if I had the money. I have lost count of the times I have been told at the start, middle and end of a meeting that ‘there is no money’ – mention the F word and the meeting is practically over.

Data collection – also known as the search for the mythical data set that will satisfy all funders from one report. If I sound a little frustrated within this section, it is because I am. I am in favour of data, I want people to know what we are doing, what we are achieving but I also want to know that if it has taken over a fortnight to prepare a report, that the report has been useful, that the information is being used to inform strategy, process and decision making. Sometimes I fantasise about funders just handing over the cash and leaving us to get on with delivering service but then if they are handing over money, they need to know how and where it is being spent – they quite rightly need to know that it is making a difference.

I like quantitative data, it is the numbers bit – how many referrals in, how many out etc – it is relatively easy but can also be relatively useless. It lacks the ‘so what?’ element – in 23/24 we had over 3700 new referrals – so what? All it shows is that we are busy, it may show how many people are on the waiting list, but it lacks the context to explain why, it does not show the quality of the work. It is also frustrating when different funders require the same information in, for example, different age bands and you end up running the same report several times.

Outcomes are another area where the data could be utilised so much better – many progressive outcomes (monitoring change over time) are subjective and reliant either on professional opinion or how the client is feeling at that time. The timing and context are important – many services ask for feedback from clients at pre-planned times for example a client who has just received a ‘not guilty’ verdict in court will be feeling very different to one who has seen a sentence handed down.

Often outcomes are set by funders and meaningless for the actual survivor, for me, real outcomes are one that survivors want to achieve, ones that are important for them. Co-creation is a real bonus here but sadly does not often translate back into monitoring reports. Sometimes, saying goodbye and ending therapy is too much for some people and final sessions are not completed. With a therapist head on, I think it is sad, but respected, when clients do not want to have a last goodbye – the organisational head considers that it can play havoc with the outcomes monitoring.

Surveys are currently all the rage with funders – do you do an anonymous end of service questionnaire? We do and have tried many formats, online, paper, follow up calls but I would suggest that success is dependent upon the client group. Our feedback from clients is excellent – should the need arise 100% of counselling clients (who responded) would recommend our services to a family member or friend. And at the risk of sounding like a well-known cat food advert, what if only eight out of ten replies? For me, it is all about the context and the conversation – the relationship with the funder. Sometimes you can be lucky enough to find funders who will meet with you, who want to understand the services you are providing and if you are really lucky, they will do it for more than one year at a time.

However, the fact remains that we provide a first-class mental health service that should be funded properly, constantly scratting around for money is wearing and does a huge disservice to the quality of the therapy that our team provide. The SV sector, much like many others lacks stability of funding – it is often short term – maybe one or two years which prevents forward planning and the constant search for new funding streams detracts from operational development. Demand for service constantly outstrips supply and so many services, my own included are making cutbacks, redundancies and fighting to survive. I do genuinely believe that the wheel will turn, priorities will change, and more funding will become available in the near future. Perhaps then, we can try and put some fun into fundraising.