A beginner’s guide to grant fundraising

A question we are frequently asked at Chell Perkins is ‘How should newly registered charities best prepare to begin applying for grants?’

Are you just starting out with grant fundraising? Or maybe you’ve already had a go, but were not as successful as you might have liked? Here are our recommendations for how you can improve your charity’s chances with grant fundraising.

Manage your Charity Commission record

• Complete your charity overview with your first charity annual return.

• Upload your first 12 months of audited accounts with your annual return.

• Your accounts need to show that your organisation is being well managed financially. Best practice looks like a) having income from at least two sources, and b) your expenditure being below your income for the year, with the surplus going into reserves.

• Submit your accounts and annual return on time (within ten months of the end of your financial year) – this way you will avoid a red flag on your Charity Commission record.

Hone your case for support

• Identify your target beneficiary group. The more specific the better, so specify e.g. your target age range, gender, health concern, risk factor, etc. Grantmakers don't like vague or overly general plans, because they know that no single programme can meet everyone's needs. Being specific also allows a funder to assess whether they think your proposed intervention is right for the context you are working with.

• Next, identify a specific need within your chosen beneficiary group. Again, the more specific the better. What is it that is preventing the individuals you are working with from e.g. feeding their family, battling addiction, finding employment, escaping modern slavery, or turning away from crime? 

• Provide evidence that the identified need exists. Applications are stronger when they are backed up with evidence. You might find relevant government or think tank data, or you might have evidence you have collected yourself from interviewing service users or staff at your own organisation. 

• Offer a well-defined solution that clearly addresses the need you have identified.

• Lastly, provide evidence that your solution works.

3. Don’t forget to cover monitoring and evaluation

Expanding on the previous point, in this first year it is crucial that you collect as much evidence as you can to prove your method works. Grantmakers are going to want to dig into your:

• Outputs: what are you currently delivering and what do you plan to deliver in the future, e.g. number of sessions, number of attendees, number of repeat attendances, referrals to other services, waiting lists for support, etc.?

• Outcomes: what immediate improvements do beneficiaries gain from your work?

• Impact: what long-term differences do you hope your work will achieve in your beneficiaries’ lives?

Crucially, you need to be able to point to evidence for all of this, which could include:

• Numerical counts of attendees, sessions, etc.

• Feedback forms

• Surveys

• Testimonies

• Case studies

• Endorsements.

Finally, you need to have a system in place to review this data at medium-term intervals (normally every 6–12 months), learn from the data you collect and make changes to your work based on this learning to improve your delivery. Funders love when you can describe how you’ve incorporated this process of review and improvement in your monitoring and evaluation section.

4. Prove your financial sustainability

The biggest concern funders have about start-up charities is that they will quickly become grant-dependent, which makes them risky financially. You need to plan to bring in funding from a diverse portfolio of sources, and ideally you should be able to evidence some success at doing so in this first year.

5. Build up your digital presence

Giving a grant to a new organisation is hugely risky for grantmakers, who generally tend to be quite risk averse. In fairness, you are still strangers to each other and sending you tens of thousands of pounds based solely on one application would be an enormous act of trust. Therefore, grantmakers will do their due diligence and look your organisation up online. It is essential that you have an active website, linked to social media, filled with evidence that you are doing the things you claim to do in your funding application.

Once you’ve got all these foundations in place, and your charity’s first set of accounts are up on the Charity Commission Register, you will be in a strong position to begin applying for grants from trusts and foundations.