The funding freeze: What is going on?
Podcast transcript
The funding freeze: What is going on?
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Podcast description
The funding environment is in dire straits. With chronic underfunding for years, the sector is turning to the grants and trusts world only to be faced with record numbers of grant funders pausing, closing early or even spending out. What’s going on, why is this happening and how are we going to survive it?
In this episode, we speak to Jo Jeffery, the independent fundraising consultant who started a list to keep track of what funders were doing and in doing so demonstrated the severity of the crisis; Anand Shukla, CEO of The Henry Smith Charity, a major grant-giver for the sector; and Helen Gray, Trust Director of Benefact Trust.
“I set up the List because I wanted it to be a reference document that all fundraisers could use, it was timely, it was up to date, it was accessible, it wasn’t behind a paywall, it wasn’t monetised, I wanted it as a reference point. I felt very passionately that fundraisers should have access to good information so that they can inform their boards, inform their senior management, pivot their strategy and manage their workflow on a daily basis.”
Jo Jeffery, Freelance Trust and Foundations Specialist, Full Circle Consultancy.
“It’s as challenging a time as I have known in working 20-odd years in the charity sector. We have a duty in my view to maintain funding flows to the sector at any time, let alone at a time that is difficult like this.“
Anand Shukla, CEO of Henry Smith Charity.
“A huge demand is being placed on charities at the moment. They’re facing huge financial pressures; they’re also seeing a spike in demand for their services, all at a time when their income is dropping. And that income isn’t just from trusts and foundations, it’s from private philanthropists. Government and local authority cuts in particular are having a huge ripple effect on the charity sector. We term the phrase the ‘perfect storm’, but it really is a perfect storm, it’s all coming at once.”
Helen Gray, Trust Director, The Benefact Trust.
Our hosts
Felicia Willow, aka the Mary Poppins of the Charity Sector, is a seasoned interim CEO and consultant in the Charity Sector, working primarily on strategy, governance, crisis and effectiveness. Her leadership roles include the Fawcett Society and the Shannon Trust. A lawyer by training, Felicia’s career has spanned government, UN and the UK charity sector (the ‘For Impact’ sector) and she finds herself increasingly focussed on discussing and challenging the systemic issues that are holding the sector back.
Chris Pitt is responsible for positive social and environmental impact at Benefact Group, a family of specialist financial services businesses owned by a charitable Trust. The Group is the 3rd largest corporate giver to charity1 and Chris oversees over £2m of giving, namely through the Movement for Good awards which give small donations to a huge diversity of causes and large grants to charities close to the customers and communities of the Group.
1 DSC – The guide to UK Company Giving 2023-24
Our guests
Jo Jeffery is a Freelance Trust and Foundations Specialist with her own business, Full Circle Consultancy.
Having spent her early career in local government strategy and policy, Jo moved to the charitable sector after her eldest child was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. Jo has nearly a decade of trust and foundation fundraising experience in the UK with special interest in children, families and health. Jo is also keenly interested in trust and fundraising trends and works hard to keep abreast of the latest research so as best inform her clients.
Anand Shukla is the CEO of The Henry Smith Charity one of the UK’s largest grant giving foundations. He is a governor at Coventry University and a Clore Social Leadership Fellow.
Anand’s extensive leadership experience at executive and non-executive level spans the civil society, public and higher education sectors. He was the Chief Executive of Brightside between 2015 and 2020 – a mentoring charity that works with 10,000 young people from disadvantaged backgrounds every year. Previously, he led Daycare Trust and Family and Childcare Trust which advocate for high-quality universal childcare and support for families across the UK.
Anand grew up in Walsall in the West Midlands. In his early career, he worked in private sector publishing for Reed Elsevier, Butterworths and Lexis- Nexis and has also worked for the children’s charity Barnardo’s.
Helen Gray is the Trust Director of the Benefact Trust. Helen has over 15 years’ experience in the charity sector having worked at both St Albans Cathedral as Head of Operations and more recently at Hertfordshire Community Foundation as Foundation Director. Helen’s earlier career included roles at both CMS Cameron McKenna (a top ten city law firm) and Baker Tilly (a national accountancy firm) where she was a Regional Business Development Manager. Helen is a Lay Member of St Albans Cathedral’s Chapter where she volunteers regularly. Helen is passionate about addressing inequalities and ensuring grant funding effects positive social change.
Resources:
Association of Charitable Foundations (ACF) research is available here: https://acf.org.uk/acf/ACF/Research-and-resources/Research%20content/Research.aspx
The List: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rjfOU1NzBdOw_rNsDH0KLANpaWHuYtX3KB46qZAkes/edit?usp=sharing
The List is supported by Fair Collective The List – Changes to Trust and Foundations in the UK © 2024 by Joanna Jeffery (joanna@fullcircleconsultancy.org) is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial 4.0 International. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Jo Jeffery’s Substack: https://joannajeffery.substack.com/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=substack_profile
The State of the Sector by NPC – https://www.thinknpc.org/resource-hub/state-sector-2024/
The Henry Smith Charity – https://www.henrysmithcharity.org.uk/
The Benefact Trust – https://benefacttrust.co.uk/