LEADING UK CHARITY FUNDRAISING EXPERT TELLS REGIONAL CHARITIES THEY NEED TO DIVERSIFY THEIR SOURCES OF INCOME

Charities need to diversify their fundraising streams to cope with a rapidly changing funding environment, with many traditional sources of income drying up – that was the advice given by one of the UK’s foremost charity fundraising specialists at a special webinar for the region’s charity trustees and managers.

Richard Felton, who has helped raise over £60 million for the UK’s charitable sector from charitable trusts, foundations and the Big Lottery across a 30 year career, was speaking at the latest in a series of online masterclasses run the specialist Charities team at chartered accountants Lovewell Blake.

Mr Felton outlined a ‘perfect storm’ of worrying trends in the funding world, including Trusts spending out their remaining funds and closing or pausing grant giving, and a significant tightening up of funding criteria from the National Lottery Community Fund.

“Charities need to be applying for an even mix of smaller and larger grants to create less dependency on any one source,” said Mr Felton at the webinar.  “It is important not to leave it until the last minute to replace grant funding, but rather to start within 12 months of grants finishing.

“Charities need to be diversifying their income sources and spreading risk, seeking to raise funds from at least two different income streams such as government and local authority grants and contracts, charitable trusts, foundations and the Lottery, corporate giving, legacies, individual giving and charitable events.”

Mr Felton said that charities should create a work plan for each income stream, and allocate sufficient resources and staff and/or volunteer time towards fundraising within each of them.

“Trustees and managers need to be thinking about their current income streams, and looking where new sources of funds can be added.  It is important to plan an exit strategy for each source of funding, as it is by no means certain that any funding will be renewed in the future.”

Also speaking at the webinar was charity finance expert Stef Smith from Lovewell Blake, who outlined the importance of the details contained with financial statements, reminding charities of their legal duties around ensuring submissions are being made to the Charity Commission on time, and the impact of late submissions.

Lovewell Blake’s specialist Charities team run a series of masterclasses across the year.  Charity trustees and managers wanting to receive details of future masterclasses can add their name to the mailing list by emailing t.cox@lovewell-blake.co.uk.