Want versus need: a challenge for small charities

A small charity I’ve given pro bono fundraising help to over a number of years has just announced that they intend to pause their fundraising efforts.

The reason for this? Thanks to some effective initiatives, they have been able to raise more than they expected and now find themselves with more than they need for the moment. This success is largely the result of their volunteer team’s hard work and persistence!

I’ve advised them that they need to keep up their fundraising efforts, even if they do not particularly want to do so; and I have suggested they might create an endowment fund, appropriately invested, against future challenges. Part of this advice is made on principle: fundraising is much harder to re-start after a pause than it is to maintain without one. But part is also made on a practical level: the charity has a listed building – and listed buildings are expensive to look after and frequently the subject of nasty maintenance surprises!

Continuous fundraising is supported by creating collaborative relationships between charities and funders. The Quilter Foundation’s roundtable discussions have identified that charities increasingly seek a wide range of support from funders beyond grants and donations – strategic planning; promoting the charities’ work; and helping them with their public profiles. This support underpins and complements the charities’ fundraising campaigns.

Crucial to the success of charity-funder partnerships is a mutual understanding of the needs of both organisations. This will almost inevitably mean some degree of compromise: what the charity wants is not necessarily what it needs; and what it needs now is likely to change in the future. Likewise, the charities’ wants may not dovetail in with the funders’ aims and the range of their support. Ensuring that charity/funder partnerships meet future needs as well as present ones is a challenge that charities – especially small ones – and their funding partners may find it increasingly difficult to meet.