1. A systematic approach to
identifying funding opportunities
for AONB’s
Simon Lees & Fiona Hesselden
2nd November 2010
2.
3. Introduction
• Where are we now?
• Private sector/not-for-profit income: myths
and realities
• What are the opportunities and challenges for
AONB’s?
4. Where are we now?
Macro operating environment
• Comprehensive • Devolving services
spending review
• Disconnect between • Biodiversity & climate
rhetoric and reality.. change
• Funding opportunities
away from grants
6. Where are we now?
AONB Funding Sources ~ snapshot from annual
reviews
Partnership Income
2.4% Cash generation and accounting…
78.8% Miscellaneous
5.8%
Lottery
European Union
Trusts and Foundations
Other Partners
5.8% Statutory Agencies
Private Sector
3.3% Landfill
1.3%
1.2%
1.0%
0.4%
0.2%
7. Where are we now?
Partnership Income £12,125,734
Natural England/CCW £7,415,433
Local Authorities £3,183,493
Defra (SDF) £1,526,808 Other Partners £180,324
Cash generation and accounting… £371,627 National Parks £5,046
Misc income £141,651 Forestry Commission £17,800
Host Authority/in kind/reserves £229,976 Environment Agency £116,600
Miscellaneous £885,630 English Heritage £30,078
External Funding ~ unspecified £885,630 National Trust £10,800
Lottery £886,037 Statutory Agencies £161,417
HLF £886,037 Regional Development Agency £144,046
European Union £503,392 Business Link/Sponsorship £13,371
European Union ~ INTERREG £338,950 Arts Council £4,000
LEADER + £164,442 Private Sector £55,313
Trusts and Foundations £192,903 Unspecified business £6,483
Esmee Fairburn £66,000 Natural Tourism £5,000
CDENT £25,151 United Utilities £6,900
Tubney £36,170 Northumbrian Water £10,000
Duchy of Cornwall £7,000 Harbour Authorities £26,930
Cumbria Adventure Capital £20,000 Landfill £30,844
Waterloo Foundation £5,000 Various operators £20,844
Petroleum Exploration Society £4,500 ALSF £10,000
Hanson £2,000 Total £15,393,221
YDMT £6,332
Charitable bodies (unspecified) £15,750
Millichope Foundation £5,000
8. Where are we now?
What your ratios look like…
Northumberlnd
Howardian
Suffolk
Blackdowns
East Devon
Arnside
Solway Bowland
Norfolk Nidderdale
Dedham Shropshire
Cannock Wye
Malverns Cornwall
Cranborne Quantocks
Mendips S Devon Lincolnshire
N Devon Cotswolds Chilterns Surrey Tamar
Wessex IoW Chichester Kent Downs High Weald Dorset N Pennines
Partnership 95 or > 90 80 75 66 50 <50
External 5 or < 10 20 25 33 50 >50
What is realistic and sustainable?…
9. Where are we now?
• An (over) reliance on NE/LA funding
• Identified need to diversify income base
10. Where are we now?
• An (over) reliance on NE/LA funding
• Identified need to diversify income base
National Grid Environmental Education
Centre Network
£ 1,600,000
£ 1,600,000
£ 1,400,000
£ 1,400,000
£ 1,200,000
£ 1,200,000 External funding
External funding
£ 1,000,000
£ 1,000,000 Chargeable Activity and
Chargeable Activity and
£ 800,000 partners
partners
£ 800,000
Site Maintenance
Site Maintenance
£ 600,000
£ 600,000
National Grid
National Grid
£ 400,000
£ 400,000
£ 200,000
£ 200,000
£0
£0
2005/06
2005/06 2006/07
2006/07 2007/08
2007/08 2008/09
2008/09 2009/10
2009/10
11. Private sector/not-for-profit income:
myths and realities
Where’s the loot?
Potential funding sources:
• Companies
• Trusts and Foundations
• Private individuals
• Major donors
• Community fundraising
• Legacies
12. Private sector/not-for-profit income:
myths and realities
Size of the Marketplace: private giving
Giving Type Amount £bn
Individuals 8.9
Trusts and Foundations 3.3
Legacies 1.6
Companies 1.1
Total Giving 14.9
Charity Trends 2007 www.philanthropyuk.org/Resources/UKcharitablesector
13. Private sector/not-for-profit income:
myths and realities
Myth:
The corporate sector is
the major source of
funding for not for profit
Organisations.....
14. Private sector/not-for-profit income:
myths and realities
Reality: But... a health warning
Trusts and Foundations Top 300 grant makers in
are set up with the the UK give approx 3% of
express aim of giving funds to conservation and
funds away - £1.9bn of it the environment –
around £54million/annum
They provide a key target to
help diversify AONB income You’re not flavour of the
month.....
16. Opportunities and Challenges
Unattractive Attractive
Opportunities: Influencing & Representation Woods for Wildlife
egCAP3,4 Partnership working FAP5 traditional Field Banks
High FWAP1&3 Woodland
Priority Planning Management;
• Revisit DAP1,2,3,4,5,6,7 &8 (Planning)
History on the Heath
management Evidence base
EAP 7 Monitoring and research
HAP1 Protect archaeological and
Historic features
plan to identify CEAP4 Acid flushes baseline
survey
HAP 4 Assess parkland and
associated heritage trees
priorities and Education and Information SDF CAP1 Community Projects
EAP 1,2 &3
potential Inclusion and Diversity
ARRAP6 &7 Access
project implementation with URG’s
packages Assessments & identification
WAP1 Common plan
Reactive: (if opportunities arise)
CAP2 Local Produce
Low CAP5 Local Shop agreement
Priority Access FWAP 2 Woodland Products
ARAP3,4 &5 Access
Planning
CAP6 delivering parish plans
17. Opportunities and Challenges
Opportunities: Trusts and Comments
Foundations
Wildlife for History on Inclusion &
• Who in the Woods the Heath Diversity
fundraising Arcadia Trust
√
Environmental
programme
universe ‘fits’? looking at
biodiversity.
• Who do you CHK Charities
√ √?
Gives to
Registered
know who Ltd Charities only.
Would need to
knows them? be part of a
wider AONB
family bid.
• Build De Haan Focuses on
relationships (Peter)
projects that
combat and
and map out Charitable
Trust
√? √? mitigate
climate
approaches Ernest Cook
change.
Possible link
Trust √ with woodland
products.
18. Opportunities and Challenges
RSPB donor list:
Challenges: • H B Allen Charitable Trust
• Competition • A J H Ashby Will Trust
• The Baxters Foundation
- RSPB • BBC Wildlife Fund
- WWF • Mohamed bin Zayed Species
Conservation Fund
- Wildlife Trusts • Lost Species Fund
- BTCV • Cambridge Conservation
Initiative
- National Trust • Care-for-Nature Trust
- Natural England.... • The Charities Advisory Trust
(Good Gifts)
• City Bridge Trust
• Peter Cruddas Foundation....
CSR ~ -30% largely trailed, double whammy with Defra and DCLG so no-one is going to make up the difference?… Disconnect between rhetoric and reality ~ SWPLF May paper, messages from government ministers not being translated, national parks are getting the message of doing less with less… Devolving services, volunteering and community action
We’re small fish in a small pond….
The size of the current AONB income pie for illustrative purposes only to get you thinking A snap shot in time with some huge caveats… Based on annual review latest available ~ these varied from 2005/06 to 09/10!…Most information came from 08/09 financial years It does have everyone, except Scilly Isles. Wales don’t seem to do annual reviews and NI?… Only has the Tamar income for administration (and not capital spend of nearly an additional £4 million in 08/09) If being done as a more comprehensive exercise it would be done over a 3 or 5 year period to reflect the cyclical nature of external funding…e.g Arnside HLF limestone project Key messages Approximate 80:20 ratio Presentation of information in annual reports re misc funding
Approximate £15 million cake £12.5 million by partners £2.5 million through other sources 3 AONBs raise £ 1.5 million so it can be done …
Juggling the P’s Policy, Programmes, Promotion Now have to add in the pounds?… And it can be done National Grid strategic decision to maintain core support @£120K per year, whilst providing buildings and site… Manage site maintenance downwards Increase chargeable activity in the short term before external funded projects came on stream in 08/09 Was about £500K: £500K Now £600K: £900K Focus on evidence, not just quantitative but also qualitative, outcomes and impacts, business benefits and society benefits
Myths and realities with regard to private sector and not for profit funding. I want to look at three things: firstly, what are the potential funding sources in this area? Secondly what is the size of the market place Thirdly which of the funding sources should you be targeting?
Table shows who gives what in the UK. Private individauls – that’s people like you and me giving £3 a month to our favourite cause – give by far the most money to charity. Next is trusts and foundations – more about them later, legacies – gifts made by individuals in their wills and finally the corporate sector. NB check – wellcome trust, largest of trusts and amount they give away???
The corporate sector is not set up to give money away. The reason they’re fat cats – or in this case greedy pigs – is that they keep it for themselves. The corporate sector contributes a relatively small % of income to the not for profit sector (around 7%) and in the vast majority of ihnstances is looking to get something back. If this all fits with where you are and what you’re doing and you’re comfortable with that particular corporate association, fine. But there are easier ponds to fish in.
NEED TO RECONCILE FIGURE BELOW £3.3BN WITH THE £1.9BN – IS LATTER JUST THE TOP 300??? Charitable giving by trusts and foundations There are around 8,800 independent trusts and foundations in the UK The majority are involved in grant-making; few are engaged in operational activities The top 500 trusts and grant-making charities (by grant-making expenditure) gave funds of around £3.3 billion in 2006, a 17% increase on 2005 This represents around three-quarters of the value of all charitable grantmaking and around 10% of the UK voluntary sector’s income. It is broadly comparable with central government spending of £2.5 billion (2005 figure) Top 10 charitable grant-makers, 2005/06 The top ten grant-makers account for over half of the top 500’s grantmaking expenditure, which indicates that in the UK there are a small number of very large trusts and other charitable grant-makers. The table includes trusts and grantmaking charities that offer services. Charity name Grantmaking expenditure (£ million) Big Lottery Fund (The)/ Community Fund 336.4 Wellcome Trust (The) 324.7 Big Lottery Fund (The)/ New Opportunities Fund 243.4 Cancer Research UK 128.1 British Heart Foundation 85.4 Football Foundation (The) 58.9 Christian Aid 55.2 Action Aid 53 Macmillan Cancer Support 50.7 St Bartholemew's 47.5 Top 10 total 1,383.3 Top 500 total 3,267 Source: Charity Trends 2007
But there are opportunuites. For a start, given that for the majority of you you are starting from a very small or non existing base of not for profit or private sector funding, the only way forward is up. Secondly, you do already possess a lot of the skills and knowledge that you need to work with not for profit funders. - To a certain extent most of you have already particiapated in some of the toughest application processes – those of the Heritage Lottery Fund. - You all have a lot of knowledge and experience about your specific environments and the issues and challenges you face. The key is applying that to a different breed of funder. BUT the first step before doing that is to re-visit your management plan.
You need to prioritise the plan. We’ve just worked with Iain and the Quantock Hills team to sort out the essential from the desirable and develop a matrix that sorts high and low priority work and begins to identify some of the activities that are more sexy – or attractive – to potential not for profit funders. On the slide here you have a snapshot of the work we did on this – apologies for the acronyms, but its the principle rather than the detail that’s important. We then looked at the sexier activities to see if we could begin to package them in a way that would give them stand-out with funders, and in some cases enable potentially less attractive work to be wrapped up with the more attractive. We developed a ‘woods for wildlife’ and ‘history on the heath’ packages that Iain and the team can begin to work up into a proposal. Having sketched out a proposal and identified the key elements, you are then in a position to research potential not for profit funders.
You need to work out who in the fundraising universe ‘fits’ what you want to do. This is an example of some of the trusts and foundations that we identified fit some of Iain’s project packages. The next steps for Iain will be to take this research further – who are the trustees of these organisations, who does he know who knows them or has received funding from them in the past? Can they give any tips and advice on how best to approach them? Need to begin to build relationships with potential funders – do they know who you are and what you do? The world of trust fundraising is an idiosyncratic one; they range from the big institutional trusts many of you are familiar with – such as the HLF to the family run, small and very personal trusts where the key decision maker can be the founder and /or their family. You then need to map out your approaches – what’s their timetable and process, who are you asking for what – and crucially in some cases, what is the wider movement doing? Which leads me onto some of your challenges.
All these other organisations are out there who: Like you, are facing cuts in government funding they may receive BUT are ahead of the game with regard to diversifying their income and building relationships with key potential funders.
Firstly, with those trusts and foundations that are not geographically explicit about where they fund, and the bigger grant makers, you need to co-ordinate approaches across the movement. The left hand needs to know what the right is doing. You don’t want to damage AONB’s reputation or relationship with a potential funder by them receiving 40 applications at once.
Secondly, you are not currently registered charities. Many not for profit organisations will only fund registered charities. When approaching these you will need to do so through partner organisations. The lack of registration need not stop you from accessing not for profit funds, but as a movement I think the next presentation looking at the pros and cons of setting up as a charitable trust is very timely. Its a debate you need to have.
The third challange is one of resources. You will have some of the skills and knowledge needed, but if you are serious about income diversification and securing not for profit and other funds, you need some form of dedicated resource. And time to spend on making it happen. Fundraising IS time consuming. A lot of it is about building relationships and that can’t happen overnight.
Finally, you need to think about how you present yourselves. The exercise that Simon has just undertaken is a good example. for some of you the most up to date information on-line was going back to 2005 For others, the way that accounts are presented has a huge impact on perceptions of effectiveness; do you allocate staff costs proportionately to programme work? If you don’t, it will look like what people consider as ‘expenses’ or ‘admin’ is a significant proportion of your budget. As a rule of thumb the expectations (admitadly for charities, but if you are fishing in this pond you need to take account of it) is that between 70-80% of expenditure is on programme delivery.
In summary, there are three key messages to come out of our presentation today. Firstly – the importance of collaboration and partnership working, both amongst yourselves and with existing partners. Secondly, the issue of charitable status for you as a movement. Thirdly, the importance of co-ordination when making approaches And I’ve added a fourth ‘C’ in case you were wondering – beware Corporate! They don’t exist to give money away, focus on them opportunistically but don’t otherwise spend time on them from a fundraising perspective.
The unashamed sales pitch… We’ll be sending you an e-mail with an outline of what we can offer Have a look on the website… Do get in touch