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Ask many small charity CEOs what one of their New Year wishes would be – and a significant proportion would answer: “Make sure all our grants are unrestricted.”

Last year research indicated that at 5 selected charities, restricted funding made up 90% of their earned income. This trend seems to be the norm, although there have […]

One of the questions I’m most frequently asked is: should Trustees become involved in fundraising?

Many Trustees have said that they exist to give wise advice to their charity’s executive team, attend meetings and events – but they consider doing anything active like fundraising, or in some cases even giving to their charity (“I give my […]

Research carried out by both the University of Bath and Brevio – a group founded by Marcelle Speller OBE – has found that 63% of grant applications by charities result in failure.

On average a charity applies for 22 grants a year, spending 18 hours completing each application.

Grant applications forms contain between 21 and 193 […]

This month sees the long-awaited new Code of Fundraising Practice, which has been produced by the Fundraising Regulator after much discussion and debate, finally becoming effective.

Incidents in recent years involving governance and other shortcomings by a number of medium size and large charities including Kids’ Company, 4U and Oxfam have confirmed in everybody’s minds the […]

Minerva has been providing a wide range of consultancy services to charities in the UK and overseas for over 20 years. Whilst we have majored in our work with small charities, we’ve also worked with some very large players in the Third Sector.
What is it that makes a charity retain our services?
Many of the charities […]

I’ve just been reading Baroness Stowell’s report on the Charity Commission’s statutory inquiry into Oxfam GB.

It certainly makes very sobering reading – and Lady Stowell does not pull any punches. In particular, she highlights the fact that although Trustees of Oxfam GB were made aware of events involving their staff in Haiti in 2011, the […]

I’m following on from the Minerva June blog to look at the relationship between trusts and small charities.

A recent article by Peter Curbishley (11 July 2019), Trustee of Wessex Community Action and of South West Advocacy Network, highlighted the lack of feedback provided by trusts and foundations when they decline applications from charities (not just […]

Many of the charities I talk to and work with were set up in the last 2 decades of the 20th Century or the first decade of this one.

Their finances were based on grants, or sometimes Service Level Agreements (SLAs), from national or local government. Many of these charities existed happily for many years on […]

There have been complaints over many years that too many charity trustees are white, 60+ males.

In my experience, that’s true. Most of the trustee boards Minerva works with fall into that category, though truthfully the majority are making a major effort to recruit more women, and younger people generally. Equally importantly, the small charities we […]

At Minerva we work almost exclusively with small charities, many of which UK-wide are suffering from the reduction in statutory funding in recent years. Nowhere is this more noticeable than our Northamptonshire base, where we live in the only (as yet!) bankrupt county council in England.

Small charities have long found it difficult to raise corporate […]