Building relationships and programmes with funders
There remains a critical need to fund digital infrastructure for social sector organisations and in this blog we’ll share insights on how we have built relationships with relevant funders over time. We reflect on how we have supported funders to shape their funding opportunities for digital infrastructure and on how we have supported the funded organisations to strengthen their digital resilience.
OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH FUNDERS AND GRANTEES
We are relationship centric in our work with every stakeholder, including funders. Early on we were a risky choice for traditional funders, and yet our grassroots work made us uniquely positioned to bring forth the digital needs and voices of smaller organisations in the sector. We were actively engaging with the charity sector through our stewardship of the Tech4Good South West network but we knew we had to prove our ability to deliver and shape impact.
Over time Dot Project started to carve a role for ourselves. We ran technology audits, built digital roadmaps and so much more, offering a unique programme of support to drive digital capability, capacity and confidence in charities. And because our focus has always been on listening and building authentic connections, we were able to bring a deep understanding of the charities' needs and voices into funders and their programmes.
By 2019 we had established a steady stream of programme work from the National Lottery Community Fund, Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS), Comic Relief, Esmee Fairbairn, The West of England Combined Authority and the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Despite their initial uncertainty of working with smaller delivery partners, these more established funders were interested by Dot Project’s delivery experience with charities. As one of very few organisations working deeply with smaller organisations to uncover and support digital needs, they needed us to support their grantees through training, coaching and mentoring.
Since then, we have directly supported funders to design funding programmes, review funding applications, mentor grantees and contribute to end of project evaluations. We have held a unique role as both a grantee and advisory partner; helping funders to develop their confidence in funding digital infrastructure and technical aspects of projects, whilst simultaneously acting as a bridge and a translator between the funding strategy and the digital priorities of grantees.
Funder relationships take time to establish and regular, open communication is key to provide space for storytelling the journey, opportunities and challenges of their grantees. Funding teams are often working at capacity and ensuring they are able to prioritise regular engagement with us can prove challenging. Equally, we encourage grantees to share honestly and openly, but at times, this can feel challenging given their contractual relationship with funders. We hold a responsibility to bridge the divide between funders and their grantees through transparent communication in both directions, and that trust in us from both sides can take time to build.
We know that confidence and meaningful change takes time and can only happen across the whole organisation where there is shared ownership and responsibility. The funding mechanisms set up by the National Lottery Digital Fund and Comic Relief are great for this, enabling us to bring teams together around a challenge, finding collaborative solutions and ways of working. But holistic funding of this nature isn’t readily available and at times we’ve had to decline work where the focus is on individuals, rather than charity teams.
COLLABORATION WITH PARTNERS VIA NATIONAL LOTTERY DIGITAL FUND
In 2018, the National Lottery Community Fund set aside £15m to be distributed through the UK Portfolio’s new Digital Fund. The Fund was incredibly important, and a pioneer in prioritising digital approaches and objectives. 29 organisations were awarded 2-year grants, and we were brought onboard to support 15 of these grantees with coaching, mentoring, technical expertise, research and design. More detail about our work on this project can be found in this blog.
We acted as support partners alongside CAST and Shift and we learned that our relationships with these delivery partners were just as important as those we held with the fund and grantees themselves. As we shared learnings across our different Digital Fund cohorts we noticed key patterns. In particular, the breadth of how the term “digital” was being used and how differently digital was being prioritised, resourced and approached by different charities.
FUNDING AND LEARNINGS DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC
The Covid-19 pandemic forced organisations to bring their work and services online. Suddenly technology foundations were essential to support remote working and to enable the continued delivery of critical services. According to an NVCO article “81% of charities changed how they use digital technology during the pandemic” and funding became readily available to the charity sector as a result.
It was critical that our support partners adopted a collaborative, shared learning approach through this time. So, each month, under the expert leadership of Cassie Robinson and Phoebe Tickell, we would meet to discuss the emerging needs of the organisations we were supporting.
Phoebe guided us with a series of questions each month, creating a trusted space for support partners and grantees to share rich insights and openly explore themes as they emerged. These conversations helped organisations to self-navigate the changing world around them and the outputs can be found here on Medium. Particularly insightful are the narratives from organisations - for example Janine Woodward-Grant from The Carers Centre reflecting on their experience of applying user centred design and how the Law Centre’s Network coped with managing increased demand through evolving their use of digital.
Observing and working alongside organisations as they pivoted through the pandemic really highlighted the importance of resilience and responsiveness. The Digital Fund provided the space for qualitative insights and honest reflections of digital journeys, enabling us to document the factors which seemed to be enabling organisations as they navigated change, including:
Confidence
Culture
Scenario planning
Connection to service users
Identification of urgent priorities
Infrastructure
Kindness
Unfortunately, our support to these grantees ended abruptly when the National Lottery contract came to end after 12 months. We were left without space to disseminate our learnings and unable to follow up with each organisation. For digital funding to enable lasting impact we believe careful closures are vital, ensuring charities know how they can maintain their progress beyond the life of their grant.
FUNDING DIGITAL CAPABILITY AND INFRASTRUCTURE WITH COMIC RELIEF
Comic Relief’s Ministry of Justice Specialist Fund provided £2.3 million to 23 specialist domestic abuse and sexual violence organisations across England and Wales, all of whom are led ‘by/with and for’ disabled people, LGBTQ+ communities or those facing racial inequality.
The organisations we supported were facing an almost unilateral challenge of meeting significantly increased demand for services (as much as 300% increases) with limited long term budget availability. Many of these organisations needed to radically shift their digital capability and infrastructure, so, after helping them to prioritise and plan their funding, we looked to the initial implementation steps.
Due to the diversity of needs, the speed of delivery and the type of relationships we needed to nurture, this project needed a large ecosystem of expertise - so we spent significant time coordinating and matching mentor capabilities with grantee needs. From cloud hosting organisations to web development partners, we helped organisations to navigate existing relationships with digital partners and to identify what they needed in new partners. Here’s how it looked:
Shortly after completion, the project was evaluated by Making Impact Matter, a great opportunity to present our insights for external, objective review. The full insights and recommendations from the project can be found here, however we’re conscious that the organisations were unable to fully assess and make sense of the impact in time for the evaluation. As Comic Relief highlight in this short summary there is real potential to:
Continue investing into specialist domestic abuse and sexual violence organisations that reach people who are often excluded from more mainstream services.
Integrate digital capability and infrastructure into future funding opportunities, with digital acting as a strengthening tool that enables organisations to operate more effectively and to improve the long-term quality / reach of their services.
The question now, is how? The uniquely experienced team at Comic Relief has been disbanded and the Ministry of Justice’s priorities now look very different. Meaningful change will only come with a coordinated and sustained effort to prioritise how digital capability and infrastructure is funded and how we can measure the impact of digital change for organisations.
THE CHANGING NATURE OF DIGITAL FUNDING
Following the pandemic, funder and governmental priorities have changed. In some cases we have seen digital funding shift from the forefront of an agenda one year, to being completely removed from a funder's priorities the next. At a time where digital infrastructure has been vitally needed in the charity sector, knowingly, we have become overly dependent on funders’ support and the lack of continuity has led to a stop start approach in digital for many charities as a result.
In turn, we have experienced the need to swiftly scale and evolve how we work in response to specific funding opportunities. When larger projects come to an end it is then necessary for us to either scale down our team or pursue other funding sources. It’s a delicate balance to navigate - should your organisation’s strategic goals be shaping your direction, or should your direction be shaped by the funding available? Both are so closely interlinked but when one is more dominant it’s easy to lose sight of your values, mission and vision.
SOCIAL SECTOR FUNDING TODAY
In 2021, after 7 years spent working in the sector, we evolved our strategy to include advocacy; with a focus on influencing and increasing the investment in digital resilience across the social sector.
The term ‘digital’ and its associations within the social sector have evolved over time and the pandemic brought an opportunity for organisations to embrace digital change and access a surge in funding. Now, it’s fair to say that digital is solidly on the agenda of most organisations we engage with, even if they feel unprepared about how to start and maintain the necessary changes.
However funding for digital is piecemeal at best. Organisations weave a patchwork from available funding pots to invest in digital and maintenance budgets are often overlooked making longer term transformation tricky. A robust and well-maintained digital infrastructure that supports teams to operate and deliver their services everyday is a core, yet overlooked cost.
We see an opportunity to evolve the way digital is viewed and funded by grant-making organisations, seeking:
Coordination and clarity on how funders intend to prioritise digital
Direct input from organisations on how to achieve sustainable funding streams that allow them to invest more flexibly in digital
Participatory grant making processes with the potential to create a more inclusive approach to how funding decisions are made
During the pandemic CAST delivered a £5 million National Lottery programme which included the delivery of digital skills training and support through the Beyond initiative (delivered by Dot Project and Shift). However, critically, there was no direct funding to charities for the time and resources spent building their digital skills and confidence.
Catalyst is a critical part of the infrastructure for digital funding and support. As Catalyst’s network continues to evolve and their wealth of digital experience scales through the Agencies for Good initiative we are keen to understand what the strategic funding opportunities will look like in the future.
The Disrupt Foundation are focusing on technology as an enabler, supporting their grantees to achieve digital change in a way most suited to them. “We seek to disrupt the status quo of social injustice by supporting people, local communities and organisations working for positive change, and by amplifying their impact through technology” (Disrupt Foundation)
The evolution of the Funders Collaborative Hub is another promising sign that funders themselves are making time and space to develop aligned approaches and stimulate connection to share ideas and knowledge, not only in the field of digital.
New funding streams are needed for digital and we are heartened to see new funders appearing in the sector.
What are your experiences of working with funders? Let us know how you think funders could embed funding for digital into their approaches.
