As you are painfully aware, 2020 has affected the Third Sector catastrophically. According to the Institute of Fundraising, charities report that they are expecting a 24% reduction in total income for the year, which equates to a £12.4 billion loss in total.
The collapse of face-to-face and live fundraising events has meant a huge number of organisations have been driven to rapidly adapt and evolve their services and income streams. At Third Sector we wanted to provide a space for fundraisers and charitable organisations alike to access the insights and support that will help them transform their current offerings to thrive in this new world.
The Third Sector Digital Fundraising Forum will take place across the mornings of the 15 & 16 December. Apply to attend as a delegate to book meetings with leading suppliers* and participate in a packed programme of educational and inspiring content sessions. If you have any questions or queries about the forum, feel free to contact the Event Manager sam.mcintyre@haymarket.com.
*Please be aware that as places are limited to 40 delegates for the forum, our delegates are required to attend their booked meetings with suppliers as well as benefiting from the content sessions
A discussion paper from the think tank Rogare says common ground can be found between different approaches to fundraising
Fundraising needs to be prepared to reinvent itself and work with critics to avoid perpetuating injustices, according to a paper from fundraising think tank Rogare.
The report argues that donor-centred fundraising, which prioritises the donor’s needs and making them feel good about their giving, to ensure they continue to donate for as long as possible, is the dominant philosophy of fundraising and many fundraisers consider it “heresy” to criticise it.
But a newer model, community-centred fundraising, argues that putting the donor at the centre perpetuates white saviourism, marginalises the voices of the communities charities claim to serve, gets in the way of having honest conversations with donors and building true partnerships, and fuels systematic injustice.
Instead, community-centred fundraisers believe beneficiaries should be treated as equal partners, and that both fundraising and philanthropy as a whole should be grounded in racial and economic justice.
Ian MacQuillin, director of Rogare, says in his foreword to the report:
“Donor-centred fundraising is more than just professional best practice. It goes to the heart of how many fundraisers identify themselves professionally: they are not just fundraisers who do donor-centred fundraising; they are donor-centred fundraisers.
“That’s why criticism of how they do fundraising is perceived as more than this; it is criticism of who they are and the choices they have made.”
However, the report says, “there is plenty of common ground between the two philosophies”.
For example, it says, community-centred fundraising believes donors make an important contribution and wants to build meaningful relationships with them, but rejects the idea that donors’ needs should come first.
The paper suggests fundraising models that create a shared identity between donors and the communities they want to support, or integrate donors more into the mission of the organisation, would allow the two philosophies to co-exist.
“The question is whether donor-centred fundraisers are prepared to genuinely think about the different types of relationships they could have with donors,” it says.
The report also calls for donor-centric fundraisers to “bite the bullet” and engage in the conversation about white saviourism.
It says there may have to be compromises from the proponents of community-centred fundraising too.
“Community-centred fundraisers may need to accept that they may not succeed in replacing the paradigm but can succeed in changing and adapting it,” the report says.
If a compromise could be reached, the report says: “Rather than being an existential challenge to donor-centred fundraising that is sounding its death-knell, community-centric fundraising may actually provide the impetus and incentive for donor-centred fundraising to reinvent itself.”
Danny Kruger says more private philanthropy is needed to help charities through the pandemic
The MP in charge of reviewing the sector’s role in the UK’s recovery from the coronavirus pandemic has said that business has a big role to play, and that more must be done to encourage giving among the super-rich who “give peanuts”.
Danny Kruger, the Conservative MP for Devizes and former charity leader, was being interviewed on Times Radio about the role of business, and how to encourage more giving.
Kruger said the sector was facing a huge crisis in charity fundraising as a result of the coronavirus pandemic and more needed to be done to encourage giving.
“The answer is encourage more private philanthropy, I think the wealthy could give a lot more,” he said. “The super-rich, I’m afraid to say, give peanuts if you spread it out.”
On whether the wealthy should be just taxed more to fund public services, Kruger said:
“By all means but that’s not my responsibility.
“I’m interested in how we can get people directly supporting their own neighbourhoods, and projects close to their heart… and I don’t think it’s appropriate to say the only resource for communities must come through the Treasury.”
Kruger said he thought it was appropriate for people to give directly to their communities and people who wanted to, super rich or not, should be helped to do so.
“Increasingly we are looking at more innovative models, crowdfunding for civic projects, getting people to buy community shares in a local asset that is then owned by the community, match funding or match trading, where if you support your social enterprise there is a scheme where the government will back it with money as well.
“So there are ways public policy can support both philanthropy, and a more entrepreneurial social enterprise approach to supporting the sector.”
The role of business will also be crucial in the post Covid-19 recovery, said Kruger, who called for a much greater emphasis in corporate life on how companies could support local communities, and in a way that was more than just lip service.
“[Businesses should] become proper parts of their community, both through giving in their philanthropy budgets but also by procuring and getting their supplies from small business and charities, and making sure their employees can play a proper role in local communities.”
Kruger spoke of a new theme of purpose that is running through the business world and of the need to back that up with financial action.
“Businesses are recognising they don’t just exist to pass profits up to shareholders, or remote investors, but they should be embedded in their communities, and the prosperity and future success of the company depends on being responsible for their environmental and social impact”.
Almost 60,000 voluntary sector jobs could be lost by the end of the year because of the Covid-19 crisis, new figures show.
Latest results from Pro Bono Economics’ Charity Sector Tracker, which involves research with more than 450 voluntary sector organisations, found that 19 per cent of respondents had already made job cuts and that 23 per cent expected to make further redundancies when the government’s furlough scheme was withdrawn at the end of October.
Pro Bono Economics said 5,400 job losses had already been announced in the charity sector since the start of the pandemic, but it believed the true figure was closer to 25,600 and that a further 34,100 charity sector employees might lose their jobs by the end of the year.
The research, which was conducted in partnership with the Charity Finance Group and the Institute of Fundraising earlier this month, found that while slightly more than two-thirds of charities expected demand for their support to increase over the next six months, 58 per cent said they would be forced to reduce the services they offered over the same period.
More than 70 per cent of respondents think it will take more than a year for income to return to pre-crisis levels and about a quarter said it would take more than two years.
Matt Whittaker, chief executive of Pro Bono Economics, said:
“With the recession biting and unemployment rising, the social sector has never been more needed.
“But an alarming proportion of jobs in the sector are now at risk. That means many of the charity workers who have provided vital support to millions across the country since the start of the Covid-19 crisis are facing a very uncertain future.
“Navigating this period rests in part on getting more resources into the sector, from government, from existing funders and from members of the public.
“But it also rests on reversing the public policy neglect the sector has suffered from over many years.”
As a member of The Essex Alliance, you are invited to add our logo to your website and show that you are working with us to ensure that the residents of Essex are well cared for. We’re aiming to strengthen our brand across the county and encourage more organisations to join us in the coming months as we begin some exciting opportunities for joint working.
Please download our logo below and add them to your website, linking the image back to this site. If you need help linking the image, please contact us, using communications@essexalliance.org.uk
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Promoting The Essex Map
As you know; in 2019 we created The Essex Map to help residents discover the groups, services, and activities in their area which focus on community instead of profit. During the coronavirus outbreak we have widened our listings to include organisations which are offering home deliveries of goods and services to people self-isolating in Essex.
We’re asking you to share posts similar to the below to help us increase awareness of The Essex Map – if you’ve not yet added/claimed your listing, perhaps do that before sharing!
Have you heard of The Essex Map? It’s a free tool designed to help you to find the services, groups, and activities in your area that focus on benefiting the community rather than on making profit. www.EssexMap.co.uk
We are aware of an issue with our email address where we are currently unable to send or receive emails to communications@essexalliance.org.uk – we are working to correct this issue. In the meantime, if you have any comments or queries, please contact one of our steering group members or our Project Lead, Emma Wardall, at ewardall@mindinwestessex.org.uk.
More than 5,000 charity workers have already been made redundant due to Covid-19, with arts and health charities taking the biggest hit, new research shows.
The New Philanthropy Capital redundancy monitor collates publicly announced national charity redundancies as a result of the crisis.
The charity think tank hopes to identify which areas are finding it toughest to maintain a fully staffed team as pandemic-related pressures mount up.
The launch of the online tool follows a recent NPC analysis that Britain’s largest charities still face a daunting financial black hole, even with the government help they’ve received, and despite the difficult cost-cutting decisions already made.
The tool shows that more than 3,800 redundancies were made in July alone, with health charities and the arts facing the biggest challenges to keep serving their beneficiaries.
NPC hopes that philanthropists will be able to use the redundancy monitor to target their giving, and allow policy makers to better understand where the sector is really struggling.
Tom Collinge, policy manager at NPC, said the findings were particularly worrying for cancer research and theatres:
“We designed this redundancy monitor to track where the sector is hurting the most. So far, it looks like health charities and the arts are taking the biggest hit, especially cancer research and theatres,”
“We will continue to monitor as new information becomes available, but if this trend continues it will mean less pioneering research which could undermine the fight against cancer, and a major hit to the cultural life of the nation.”
The charity’s three-year strategy also revealed it would have to reduce its spending on research by £150m over the next four to five years.
A number of other major charities have announced in recent weeks that they are anticipating having to make significant redundancies because of the pandemic, including the National Trust, which is cutting up to 1,200 jobs, Oxfam, the British Heart Foundation and the RSPCA.
A third of charities believe they will need to make redundancies over the next year but the figure could be far higher, new research indicates.
Research carried out by the charity leaders body Acevo and the Centre for Mental Health shows 33 per cent of the 85 charities surveyed said they expected to have to make job cuts in the next 12 months.
But a further 36 per cent of respondents said they were unsure if they would have to make redundancies, meaning at worst almost seven in 10 charities could be cutting jobs over the next year.
The results come from polling that the two organisations have been carrying out each month with 85 charities in England and Wales since the coronavirus pandemic began to affect the voluntary sector.
Charities were asked about potential redundancies for the first time in the latest poll.
Kristiana Wrixon, head of policy at Acevo, said:
“It appears that the huge number of redundancy announcements we have seen over the last few weeks are just the tip of the iceberg.
“The Chancellor has said he wants to protect as many jobs as possible, but with only three in 10 respondents saying they do not think they will make redundancies over the next 12 months, it is clear a lot more support is required to protect jobs so that charities can be there for all of us as we feel the impact of what is predicted to be the biggest global economic crisis for almost 100 years.”
The data was collected between 28 July and 3 August.
As organizations like yours race to adapt activities in response to an increased need for your services, we wanted to share a few ways Facebook may be useful in your efforts. In this webinar you will learn: – Ways to fundraise on Facebook and Instagram – How to access Facebook and Instagram Fundraising Tools – Recommended Best Practices We look forward to having you join our session. The Facebook Social Good Team
