Our first blog was on the theme of advocacy, and today we move on to funding.
Funding and the wider issue of financial sustainability crop up repeatedly in the State of the VCSE Sector 2023 report.
Here are some key points:
- Reduced income was one of the top three challenges that organisations expect to face within the next two years.
- The cost of living crisis has had an impact on most (although by no means all) organisations’ financial sustainability. This is primarily due to the increasing cost of utilities bills and the need to increase staff wages.
- Following on from this, some respondents reported finding it harder to secure grant funding and suggested that grant schemes have been diverted to address the most urgent cost of living issues (supporting projects like food banks).
The report made two funding-related recommendations to the Hampshire CVS Network of charities that support VCSE organisations across our county:
- Continue to support VCSE organisations with funding and income generation by providing specific information on the criteria of funding opportunities, so VCSE organisations can quickly determine if an opportunity is relevant to them.
- Raise awareness of platforms and services that enable VCSE organisations to filter funding opportunities, to reduce the amount of time resource required by organisations to identify relevant funding.
We’d love to hear your thoughts and opinions on these recommendations – follow this link to email us or send us a tweet via @ActionHants. Here are some questions to prompt you, but feel free to share anything that comes to mind!…
- Do the findings from the report reflect your experiences?
- What are the current challenges / barriers associated with the cost of living crisis that you think funders should be aware of?
- How do you think non-VCSE organisations (like businesses and public sector bodies) can engage with you and the VCSE sector generally, with funding-related support?
- What can we, Action Hampshire and our partner organisations in the Hampshire CVS Network, do to get more engagement from non-VCSE bodies?
- What other information and support do you need, either in general or around specific funding approaches or issues?
At Action Hampshire, we’ve worked hard over the last decade or more to increase the range of sources from which we get funding. There are at least five different types of funding source that might be relevant for VCSE organisations:
- Grants – from charitable foundations, public bodies, companies etc.
- Contracts – usually to deliver services on behalf of a public body
- Fundraising – events, appeals, online crowdfunding
- Sponsorship – from businesses, in the form of cash, goods / materials, or services
- Social investment – borrowing money or (only for certain types of organisation) offering shares
Would you like to know more about some of these categories? Do you need help with increasing the range of sources for your organisation’s funding? Or tell us your thoughts on the State of the Sector 2023 report’s recommendations and – crucially – how we can turn them into reality!
Whatever your ideas or thoughts are, we’d love to hear them – follow this link to email us or tweet us via @ActionHants
Why are we sharing this with you?
Recently, we launched our State of the VCSE Sector 2023 report, which details the current successes and challenges faced by Hampshire’s voluntary, community, and social enterprise (VCSE) sector. If you haven’t seen the report, you can find it here: view this link for a copy of ‘Hampshire’s State of the VCSE Sector 2023’ report
At the end of the report are a series of recommendations, based on four consistent themes identified throughout. These are: advocacy, funding, networking, volunteering. We’d love to work with you – VCSE organisations in Hampshire, to create actions that will address these recommendations, which is why we are running this blog series – “State of the Sector: What’s Next?”. Every day this week, we are posting a blog on one of the recommendation themes, to kickstart discussion between VCSE organisations in the comments or social media – wherever you’re reading this! We want this to generate ideas for how we will collectively tackle the report recommendations, including issues related to the cost of living crisis.
You might also be interested in the below blogs:
- Follow this link to the blog – State of the Sector: what’s next? – Advocacy
- Follow this link to the blog -State of the Sector: what’s next? – Networking
- Follow this link to the blog -State of the Sector: what’s next? – Volunteering – coming soon
