Why I founded Fund Gloucestershire

Since 1981 my work has entailed either applying for funding, or shaping how its offered. My overriding observation, looking back over 45 years, is what a HUGE amount of money the process of asking for, and giving, funding requires and absorbs. Money that could surely be better spent on the delivery of whatever the purpose of the funding is for funders, and the activities and services of the applicants. 

"My overriding observation, looking back over 45 years, is what a HUGE amount of money the process of asking for, and giving, funding requires and absorbs."

In those 45 years on both sides of the funding divide I’ve had many experiences, good and bad.

Over the first 20 years I wrote applications to organisations – mostly UK Research Councils and some Foundations - for funding for the research I was part of, in the early days of Cognitive Neuropsychology. In my own research I wanted to focus on something new that hadn’t been done before, and it was gruelling to get it resourced: the new and experimental (looking back, probably also ineptly described by me) was hard to get investment for.

Learning about the social model of disability in 1992, overnight I changed my approach to my research for ethical reasons, and this took me to a more progressive world of funders, who identified work within an ethical framework that they wanted to see happen and supported us as applicants to be able both to deliver it well and maximise its outcomes and impact.  It was a revelation, a delight and a release to be funded in this way.

The projects we subsequently delivered had national and international impact. One of the books we wrote as an outcome was in print for 25 years and translated into five languages including Japanese, and a resource coming out of findings in the book also had international reach, including into the US. This new work led me to decide to leave academia in 1999 and found a not-for-profit, which required a different kind of fundraising – starting an organisation from scratch.

As is so often the case in the enterprise of fundraising, an unpredictable route to an angel investor (as I think they’d be called now), led to an unexpected and very significant investment that enabled us to get set up. The funder gave us a grant of £2.5m over 5 years (worth £6.3m in today’s money), plus premises to work from renovated to our specification, with the injunction to 'go forth and multiply'. We did, very successfully, doubling our income in a year to a £1m turnover in 2001. That was until changes at the funder led to a different approach, so our rapid growth became unexpectedly challenging to sustain, and my hair began to turn grey despite the awards and accolades we won.

Fast forward to 2008, and a move to Gloucestershire, where a neighbour told me about the job of CEO for a charitable trust being advertised. I’d never considered going over to ‘the other side’, but this piqued my interest. All those experiences of managing multiple different requirements of funders, juggling applications and reporting… well maybe I could put the learning about what would have been better to good effect.

So I became a ‘funder’ for the next 17 years, and over time used my learning as an applicant to shape the approach to funding of a long-established Trust. It meant a lot to me that in the year I left, Barnwood Trust was awarded an A grade for its funding practices by the Ofsted equivalent for the funding sector, the Foundation Practice Rating.

Together with the expertise of others, my combined learning from 45 years of applying for and offering funding, is coming together in Fund Gloucestershire. We are driven by a conviction that in order to ensure that Gloucestershire goes on having an effective and impactful civil society we have to -

  • free up more of the existing funds in the system by simplifying funding processes, as well as attract new money;
  • make the process simpler, easier and less repetitive for applicants;
  • make the process the same for both public sector and charitable funders (the rigours of applying to them both are much the same, so why are they treated so differently);
  • make it easier for people who want to give money for a purpose to be able to see the full range of people and organisations who could deliver on that for them;
  • make the time spent on both making and processing an application proportional to the value of the funding.

"Applicants cannot spend less on the process of making grant applications unless funders enable them to do so."

However, before we can make any real impact on simplifying the system we need to get a critical mass of funding organisations using the functionality of the platform to support their grant making. We are not naïve about the scale of the challenge and the time it is going to take to make progress. Funders are used to setting up their own processes and managing their own applications. Applicants cannot spend less on the process of making grant applications unless funders enable them to do so. But we have to start somewhere, and we intend to be here for the long haul.