At Environmental Funders Network (EFN), we work to increase the amount of funding coming into the environment sector from UK philanthropic sources, and the effectiveness of that funding. This involves working with established and new environmental funders as well as fundraisers. We offer support to all three parties, ultimately trying to maximise the impact of every pound spent.
Having facilitated our Green Fundraisers Forum (GFF) for the past year, I have heard the same challenges echoed repeatedly. There are so many incredible environmental groups around the world and inspiring funders working hard to support them, but there are many areas of ineffectiveness in the relationships between the two. This ineffectiveness is costly for everyone, and ultimately reduces the impact that we, as a sector, can have. This is why, in early 2024, we set out to understand these challenges better and begin exploring solutions.
Through an interactive session and survey, we asked the GFF:
- ‘What challenges have you experienced over the past 18 months?’
- ‘Can you provide examples of funders working to address these challenges?’
- ‘What other solutions can you envisage to these challenges?’
The answers to these questions (thank you again to all who provided them) formed the basis of our new report ‘Increasing the effectiveness of environmental funder-fundraiser relationships’. In it we detail twenty reported challenges and potential solutions, falling under four categories: funding availability, grant applications, grant management, and collaboration and coordination. We then go on to pull out six cross-cutting broad recommendations for funders which, if followed, would see many of the challenges addressed naturally:
1. Focus on people and outcomes rather than projects and outputs
2. Underpin all behaviour with trust and flexibility
3. Make decisions based on a combination of long-term thinking and urgency
4. Design application and reporting processes carefully & relax requirements where feasible
5. Collaborate as much as possible
6. Create and embrace opportunities to hear from grant holders
If I could ask funders to start with just one of these, it would be the fifth. From the perspective of fundraisers there is little coordination between funders, with huge variation among application and reporting criteria, processes and timelines. These all create administrative and financial stress for environmental groups and mean a large amount of time is wasted repeatedly reworking the same information for each funder. The inability of grant holders to adopt a consistent approach to monitoring and evaluation across separately funded projects can also limit overall learning. In addition, few funders provide any support to fundraisers in signposting or introducing them to other funders, even when they specify match funding as a requirement.
Funders would get more bang for their buck by joining forces to issue larger grants and we would get access to larger grants which were aligned in terms of timing and with a single reporting requirement. Win-win
There are many different ways in which funders could start to address these issues and increase their collaborative efforts. These include:
- Increasing contribution to flexible and accessible pooled grants (e.g. EFN’s Rapid Response Fund, the Farming the Future Fund, John Ellerman Foundation’s UK Overseas Territories Fund and opportunities through Synchronicity Earth and the Funders Collaborative Hub)
- Sharing applications with other funders (with permission from applicants) and facilitating introductions
- Collaborating on pooled grants specifically for providing match funding
- Joining centralised application or knowledge-sharing platforms (e.g. Conservation Connect, set up for biodiversity-focused funders)
- Adopting standardised application and reporting forms, with bespoke questions added when necessary (or agreeing to accept broad formats for both)
- Coordinating the timing of funding rounds and contributing to a collaborative calendar of application timelines (contact Sophia Cooke if you would like to access the one hosted by EFN)
- Using research such as EFN’s Where the Green Grants Went 9 to direct more funding to vitally important but underfunded areas
- Learning from other funders who are already exhibiting good practice in various areas (see our report for an initial list)
All of these would reduce the time spent by fundraisers in reworking information and juggling timelines for multiple funders. Why should funders care? Because fundraising is not free! It is highly-skilled work, and an area that all environmental groups have to put significant resource into. If their fundraisers are unable to be effective with their time, the group has to spend more money on fundraising than on implementation of their urgent work. Ultimately this means less value for money for funders, limited collective impact of the environmental funding sector, and a slower overall rate of action to address the biodiversity and climate change crises. So, to return to the title of this post, if funders want to get more bang for their buck, or punch for their pound, collaboration is key.
