Voluntary Action Lewisham

Many organisations struggle to find funding for their project's work and often wait for a crisis before taking action. Have you thought about developing a plan for your fundraising work? This workshop will consider strategic planning and the funding mix necessary for effective fundraising.

This course is all about how to develop a fundraising strategy.

By the end of the training you will have had an opportunity to:

• Consider your organisation's needs
• Understand the planning process
• Create a draft strategy

A recent article on the Third Sector website - Why funders rarely give feedback - looks at some of the reasons why funding applications fail and why funders may not provide feedback.... read more.

Budget Updates

There were a number of announcements in last weeks budget that will affect Voluntary and Community Groups. Rather than listing each one we have provided links to the analysis provided by a number of organisations:

NCVO

• NCVO | Budget 2010: How will it affect you?
• Third Sector Foresight | Implications of the budget

ACEVO

• ACEVO | Policy: George osborne delivers emergency budget
• ACEVO | Spending cuts and the emergency budget analysed on new cutswatch.org.uk website
• ACEVO | Cutswatch

Directory of Social Change

• DSC | Emergency budget 2010

j4b

• j4b | Emergency Budget 2010 – What It Means For The Community Sector

News Shopper

• News Shopper | LEWISHAM: Council outlines £60m cuts over three years

Direct Gov

• Direct Gov | Budget 22 June 2010
• Direct Gov | VAT - Value Added Tax
• Direct Gov | Income Tax and National Insurance rates for 2010-11

Future funding applications

When making funding applications remember two changes:

• VAT will rise to 20% on 4th January 2011
  

  The standard rate of VAT (Value Added Tax) will rise to 20 per cent from 4 January 2011. The current rate is 17.5 per cent.

• Employee and employer NI rates will increase by 0.5% in April 2011
  

  The government has announced that the employee, employer and self-employed rates of National Insurance contributions (NICs) will increase by 0.5 per cent from April 2011 in addition to the 0.5 per cent increase announced in 2008.

  There are also changes to the starting point for paying National Insurance and increases to the personal allowances. These may mean that some low-paid or part-time workers do not pay tax and/or national insurance.

Charities working overseas

There are two changes that have been recently introduced that affect organisations spending money overseas. These could affect some of the organisations in Lewisham that include other countries in their area of operations.

Finance Act

Part of the Finance Act 2010 allows Her Majesties Customs and Revenue (HMRC) to judge whether money spent overseas is spent on charitable activities or not. If it decides that the money was spent on non-charitable activities HMRC may withdraw the tax relief on that money. To avoid this organisations spending money overseas should keep full records of the money spent.

Bribery Act

The Bribery Act 2010 also includes measures that while not aimed at charities could affect charities. The act creates four new offences, including bribing a foreign official and failing to prevent a bribe being paid.

Control of money sent overseas

Both of these measures could affect organisations that send money overseas, but do not control how the money is spent. This is something that the Charity Commission has already advised against. In at least one inquiry report they ruled that money raised for charitable purposes remained the responsibility of the charity that raised the money and that it could only be spent on charitable purposes. Passing money to another organisation, even if it was also charitable did not remove the obligation to ensure that the money could only be spent on charitable activities. See Charity Commission guidance for charities working overseas.

The Charity Finance Director's Group have published an online guide for finance professionals on relocation premises.

'Relocation: A Charity Finance Professional's Guide' compiles several fascinating case studies written by finance professionals in the charity sector. The guide also acts as a practical reference resource, with essential legal and financial information regarding relocation, as well as useful checklists that can be printed off and utilised.

For a copy of the guide go to http://www.cfdg.org.uk/cfdg/good_practice_publications.asp.

Students at the University of Westminster are offering voluntary and community groups the opportunity to have a free video made for help in fundraising or campaigning. According to a report in Third Sector:

The students, who specialise in TV production and have taken a course on how to make campaigning and fundraising films for charities and voluntary groups, will produce films lasting between 30 seconds and six minutes for small charities that could not otherwise afford to make promotional videos.

The charities will be allowed to use the films on their own websites and on social networking sites.

Ged Maguire, a senior lecturer in TV production at the University of Westminster, said students wanted to give their time free of charge in order to gain experience.

"Charities can approach us with their requirements and we will work with their marketing departments," he said. "The charities will be given full editorial approval."

He said the students would prefer to work with London-based charities, and were free between now and August.

Charities interested in taking up the offer should contact [Ged] Maguire at g.maguire@westminster.ac.uk.

Organisations looking to take advantage of this offer are recommended to approach Ged as soon as possible.

The Big Lottery will launch their new wildlife funding programme on tonight's BBC Springwatch programme (8 June 2010). The funding aims to "improve or protect the natural environment by raising awareness of threatened wildlife or places".

Grants of between £300 and £10,000 will be available.... read more.

The Department for Culture Media and Sports (DCMS) are currently carrying out a consultation into the proportion of money going to each of the lottery distributors.

Their proposal is to reduce the proportion of money going to the Big Lottery from 50% to 40% and increase the proportion going to arts, heritage and sports from 18% each to 20% each. This would be spread over two years.

They are interested in:

• What impact would the changes have on member organisations’ ability to deliver previously identified priorities or projects?
• In your view will the change have any adverse or positive impact on particular groups, taking into account race, gender, disability, age, faith/belief, sexual orientation, gender identity and socioeconomic equality? How could impacts be avoided or mitigated. Please provide evidence if possible.
• I will arrange for an initial draft Impact Assessment to be placed on the DCMS website (link below) and would be grateful for any evidence to inform that.
• Do you have any other observations?

Tamara Essex has listed the top eleven reasons why applications to the Lottery fail on her blog. Not surpringly the main reason is applicantants not sufficiently demonstrating that they meet the aims of the fund.

As she points out all of the reasons are clearly avoidable. Interestingly, not sufficient money to fund all the applications or too much good comppetition does not feature on the list!

More details from Tamara Essex. It is also worth having a look at some of the other listings on her blog as there is some very good advice there.

Missionfish, along with Help the Hospices have produced a guide to using ebay for charities to raise money. They report that some charities are now raising in excess of £100,000 per year by selling on ebay.

More details and a link to the report are available on the Fundraising UK website

The Directory of Social Change (DSC) have produced a report looking at some of the reasons for funding applications being rejected as ineligible. The report is based on research that DSC have carried out with 2,500 funders.

Findings

DSC found that 36% of applications to these funders were ineligible because applications didn't meet funder's criteria, information was missing, or the funder wasn't sufficiently clear in making their criteria known. 113 of the 2,500 found 90% of their applications to be ineligible.

The Report

The report - Ineligible Applications: the Wasted Work of the Voluntary Sector - can be downloaded from the DSC website.

DSC also have a page on their website looking at Top tips to reduce ineligible applications

Follow Up

One of the blogs on the NCVO website has picked up on some of the findings in the DSC report. See 'What can we do about so many wasted grant applications?' for details of the ongoing conversation.

The Russell Invests Charitable Fund has opened for applications to its 2010 programme. Funding of up to £5,000 (£3,000 is more likely) is potentially availabe to organisations working with young people not in education, employment or training or at risk of being so.

Priority Areas

The fund supports organisations that work with young people not in education, employment or training (NEET), or those at risk of becoming NEET.

Priority Areas:

1. Supporting individuals whose circumstances have changed as a result of the recession
2. Support NEET young people who are not currently being reached/engaged by other statutory/voluntary sector support programmes
3. Working with individuals who have been specifically identified as being at risk of becoming NEET.

Who is eligible?

Voluntary and Community Groups, and Social Enterprises with an income of under £150,000 pa. Priority will be given to organisations with an income of less that £100,000.

Funding Available

The maximum grant is £5,000, however, groups are advised to apply for around £3,000 as few maximum grants will be made.

Exclusions

The grant cannot be used to fund the following:

• conferences/seminars
• film production
• publicity/advertising in the media
• professional clubs/associations
• sports events/tournaments/team sponsorship
• political campaigns or concerns
• religious organisations where the activities benefit only those of a particular faith
• statutory organisations such as Local Authorities, schools and the Police force
• individuals
• spending that has already taken place

Futher information

Further information is available on the Capital Community Foundation website including full guidelines and an application form. The guidelines also include details of the application process and subsequent monitorng process.

Deadline for applications

The deadline for receiving completed applications with all supporting documentation is Friday 2nd July 2010.

The NHS have published a new commissioning guide entitled 'The NHS commissioning environment: A guide for organisations in the third sector'.

The guide looks at items such as the structure of the NHS, the commissioning cycle, working with commissioners, and becoming a service provider.

The guide can be downloaded from the Department of Health website.