Let’s talk about where the money comes from…

There are a large number of organisations involved in delivering place-based grant-making and philanthropy in the UK - ranging from small family trusts and local foundations through to large public bodies like the various National Lottery funders.

All of those funders play a vital role in supporting civil society to do good things, from alleviating poverty, providing mental health support, tackling climate change, through to providing footballs for the local juniors team. Almost every charity and voluntary organisation, and by extension every town, city, or community,? is dependent on grant funding in one way or another.

Sometimes it’s clear where those funders get their money from - whether it's an endowment from a historical benefactor, a proportion of proceeds from commercial activity, or a pot of government money. But in many cases the source of philanthropic funding isn’t readily apparent.

Why does this matter??

Well, firstly I’m not suggesting any kind of conspiratorial concealment of murky funding sources, far from it. What I’m getting at is the importance of understanding the sometimes precarious footings that support all those essential community services and activities. If we don’t know where the money is coming from we can’t, as individuals, organisations or communities, make sure we safeguard those funding sources. An unrecognised, under-valued funding stream can dry up overnight if no one is ready to fight for it.

When I worked at The National Lottery Community Fund I led a ￡14 million funding programme called LifeSkills, which was successful in getting thousands of people in the most deprived parts of Wales back into work, training, or further education. Towards the end of the programme an external evaluation told us that beneficiaries valued the support that they had received, but they had little or no conception of how the programme had been funded. Part of the programme was lottery funded, but the majority of the money came from the EU’s European Social Fund.

At the time of that external evaluation I shrugged my shoulders and said it didn’t matter that people didn’t know where the funding had come from, all that mattered was that we’d done something positive for them. Fast forward a couple of years to the EU referendum and I watched with more than a little shame as people in places like Merthyr Tydfil resoundingly voted Leave because ‘the EU’s never done anything for us’.?

Today I’m the Executive Director of The Veolia Environmental Trust , a grant-making charity delivering funding from the Landfill Communities Fund (or LCF), a UK government tax credit scheme that allows landfill operators to give some of the landfill tax they collect to charitable causes. I’m acutely aware that barely anyone has ever heard of the LCF, and even those community groups that have had a grant through the LCF often think they’ve simply had a ‘donation from a landfill company’.

The LCF has awarded over ￡1.7 billion pounds to thousands of community centres, parks, sports clubs, playgrounds, and nature reserves across the country. I guarantee that, wherever you live, you’ll almost certainly have a community facility that wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for the LCF. But like many other grant-funding streams, the longevity of the LCF is dependent on continued Government support, and that support is contingent upon communities understanding and valuing the LCF .

Prior to working in philanthropy, I worked in small charities in England and Wales, and I have experienced the acute pressure to find new funding just to keep things going. I never once saw anyone really question where the grant funding was coming from. Sure, we knew what the grant-maker was called, but we never pondered where they got their funding from. We were just relieved to get the money through the door so that we could continue delivering our mission.?

My argument here is that we all need to play a part in changing this.

Civil Society is more cash-strapped than I’ve ever known, and the Government is facing a black hole in the public finances. There is a lot of hope that the new government's commitment to valuing and collaborating with civil society will see a step-change in support for the sector, but there is little money to go around and intense competition for every penny. Now is the time for us all to speak up about what we value in our communities and to show support for funding streams that made it happen.

So, grant-makers need to make more effort to tell their grantees where the money comes from. And we all, if we want to make sure that those vital grant funding streams keep flowing, have got to stand up for them. Find out who funded that new playground in your village, that new roof on the community centre, that mental-health support group, that food bank. Talk about it, tell people about it, demand that it’s protected.

Place-based giving is the life blood of local communities, but to stay healthy it needs our ongoing attention and support.