Multi year funding is so important for the sustainability of the sector, it provides security and enables charities to focus on what they do best. Making the same organisations submit so many applications for small amounts of short term funding is not going to achieve the impact or systemic social change required. I also would like to see funders push beyond 3 yr funding cycles and consider 5 or more as a norm.
Grant-making contacts - do take a look at this research from Institute For Voluntary Action Research on the value of multi-year funding. The findings (that multi-year funding builds trust, provides stability, aids forwards planning, and supports learning and improvements in practice) chime closely with our own experiences at Berkeley Foundation with longer term funding partnerships of 3 years+
Hansa Raja
6mo
As founder of a charity that is now 4 years old we are struggling to find long term funding to give us some stability and security. Everthing seems to be project related still!
Laurie Deans
5mo
This is why I’m proud we offer multi year partnerships- it also means as a funder, we can build, together with our partners, richer partnerships that also offer more than money in addition to our grants. I’m convinced that means we can make bigger impact together too!
Luke Wilkinson
6mo
Completely agree Clare Cannock. There is a huge inefficiency especially for small organisations raising money from trusts and foundations: filling out lots of applications (in lots of different formats) for different funders for small amounts of money. I'm exploring a tech solution to save time (and therefore donated £££) on some of the more repetitive aspects of grant fundraising. Very interested in gathering input/testing ideas with funders too
I agree 100%. Continuos applications for short term grants is not only hard work but often soul destroying and allows for no long term planning or sustainability for charities.
Vicki Cardwell
6mo
Agree Clare Cannock . Multi year grants enable us to plan, allocate resource, hire, take risks & innovate, most importantly deliver the best quality we can for young people! Funders cannot underestimate impact of multi-year funding on charity #confidence I unashamedly ask funders to consider multi year if offering us 1 year & layout the benefits to young people we work with. For me this issue is more crucial than unrestricted/restricted as a healthy mix of both enables great outcomes. 💫
Helen Williams
6mo
Hopefully more funders will consider multi-year applications, and hopefully more charities will (feel they can and be in a position to) request multi-year funding 🤞
Alison Upton
6mo
Hear hear. We need sustainable multi year grants. We need stability. Please can other funders follow suit.
Elisabeth Silver
6mo
If only!
Executive Director Strategy
6moMany txs for sharing Clare and Sally. Completely agreed. I’m pleased to say that moving to long term, multi year grants within an over-arching decade long fund is a central tenet in a proposed national funding framework for supporting social prescribing activities, which NASP has co-designed with partners and will soon be submitting to the NLCF.