Over a year ago I did some refresher training in fundraising on “writing a successful fundraising application”, “winning grants from trusts and foundations”, and “developing a fundraising strategy”. All very useful and highlighted particular areas we the organisations I work with need to improve and do more work to meet funders’ minimum expectations. Nothing we couldn’t do, but it would need a shift in focus and energy, and some new people with specific skills and experiences on (the) board.

There’s no lack of vision, but one of the difficulties with this sort of thing generally in the charity and voluntary sector (in my experience) is that everyone is very busy doing the good work that needs to be done every day and week and month, which leaves very little time or headspace, if any, to work on how to bring the bigger picture to life, to make it happen.

Another difficulty for us has been that one of our key organisations is going through a difficult leadership transition, which effectively means they are out of the strategic picture, at least until that is resolved. That’s likely to be months if not longer.

This year I started fundraising efforts for new youth work. But rather than work on what it would take to make it happen, developing a case for support, and making sure we have all the building blocks of good governance in place, we excitedly jumped straight into finding out what money is out there and shooting off a few half-baked applications.

One thing that seems to have changed since my previous fundraising efforts fifteen years ago is that then it was difficult to get grants for continuing existing work - everyone wanted new projects. Now, it seems that funders all expect you to have a track record delivering the very work you want new funding for. I guess that’s what fifteen years of neoliberal austerity politics does!

Thankfully, now, we have agreed to work on developing our fundraising (and organisational) strategy and getting our own house in order before we start applying in earnest again. This will delay any new fundraising income for us, but that is offset by our current sole funder happily allowing us to repurpose money that was originally earmarked for different work to fund the initial youth work set up instead.