Good Intentions are Not Enough! Making Better Grant Applications, 2002

Despite what they tell you, successful fundraising is very little to do with your good intentions or how you fill in that application form. A successful grant request is the result of the considerable thought and care that has gone into the design of your project. After years of experience as a grant maker, Julia Kaufmann, former Director of BBC Children in Need and the Charity's Advisor on the voluntary sector, explains what grant makers are looking for and what they understood by 'value for money'.

Press Notice
At a seminar on better grant seeking sponsored by John Lyon's Charity, one of London's largest grant-making charities, representatives from local voluntary organisations were warned that sustainability and impact are two of the biggest issues to challenge the voluntary sector.

The seminar was led by Julia Kaufmann, who ran the BBC Children in Need Appeal for 13 years and as the Charity's principal advisor, provides management support to beneficiary organisations. She explained that in the last 10 years local voluntary social welfare organisations have benefited greatly from cash grants from the lottery, grant making trusts and government initiatives. This is especially, and quite rightly, true of the black and ethnic minority voluntary sector, which used to miss out. However, increased resources have given rise to two big issues: the first troubling the voluntary sector, the second largely troubling the grant-maker. These two issues are sustainability and impact.

Sustainability becomes a problem from the moment the rejoicing is over after an organisation receives its first significant grant: the big challenge being how to sustain that income after the grant runs out, and it is often easier to obtain a first grant than a second one to replace it. Often organisations think about this too late and find themselves in a last minute panic to find an ongoing salary for their key worker. She urged voluntary organisations to plan ahead and to start at the beginning of a grant, not as it is running out.

While voluntary organisations worry about sustainability, grant-makers worry about impact and want to know whether the millions they disburse have made a difference to problems and needs on the ground. This concern has made them much more outcome focussed: much more interested in what difference the grant will make to the people it is supposed to benefit, than in the activities that organisations are involved in running. The voluntary sector is still focussed on activities i.e. what it does, rather than outcomes which are the results of what it does.

Because making a difference is important to them, enlightened grant-makers have been active in attempting to strengthen the capacity of the voluntary sector by providing management support.