Foundations and planning for funding
You’re a Director, Senior Manager or Trustee of a not-for-profit organisation (charity/CIO, CIC or social enterprises). You’ve identified why you want funding, what for and how this fits in with their strategic direction and purpose. You may have developed a funding plan. See my earlier blog: I need funding. Can you help me?
The next step is to work through the detail of what you want funding for. You will need to do this so you can explain to individuals, companies and funders what you are asking them to fund. If you want to run a specific project, you need to know:
Who do you want to help? e.g. local elderly people
- what are their barriers/issues? e.g. stuck at home, lonely as family live away
- what are the problems you are wanting to solve? e.g. social isolation/loneliness, poor health/nutrition
- how have you involved the people you are supporting in creating the solution/project? g. talking to them, coffee mornings, focus groups, survey
What do you plan to do to address this problem?
- how are you going to solve the problem? Involve the people you are going to help to tell you what they want to do and help to design the project/activities
- What are you going to do? When? Where? e.g. run weekly sessions to support local elderly people to attend activities at your community centre
How have you helped people in your community before?
- Track record: How have the activities you run helped people to date? What positive differences do you make to peoples’ lives? Collect evidence to show this e.g. statistics and figures, case studies and quotes, visuals, stories
- How will the planned activities for elderly people change/have a positive impact on their lives? Think about outcomes e.g. elderly people will reduce their loneliness by taking part in our activities and having contact with their peers
- How do you plan to measure this? e.g. through talking to the elderly people to find out their feedback on the activities; individual/group discussions on how you could improve the activities; videos of individuals talking about this;
Policies and documents
You need to make sure that you know where to access key policies and documents for your organisation that you need especially to apply for grant funding. These include:
- governance document e.g. certificate of incorporation, articles of association
- latest published financial accounts
- bank account details and a recent bank statement (dated within three months)
- relevant policies e.g. Safeguarding, Equality & Diversity, GDPR/Data Protection
If you want help with any of this please email josie@josiearmitageassociates.