Another Significant ROI Story
In 2019, rather than just renewing a grant a thoughtful funder came to us and asked us what we needed. As a small organisation with a strong reputation, we felt that there were opportunities for us to expand and develop but that we just didn’t have the capacity to take advantage of them. We discussed with the funder how the thing we most needed was time at the executive level. We wanted to develop a new long term strategy for both the organisation and our fundraising but the day to day operations of the organisations made this very challenging. In response to this the funder restructured the three year grant so that we would have more resources in year one, £8,500 of which could be used to bring in freelance cover of some of the day to day to responsibilities of the executive team and £1,500 could be used for travel to engage with potential new supporters.
We used that breathing room to develop a new ten-year vision for the organisation along with a three year business plan and then set about engaging with funders on delivering that plan. Within one year of the small grant being made we had secured five new funders with funding commitments of over £566,000. This allowed us to expand our staff team – removing the previous capacity constraints – and was the catalyst for five years of continued growth, development and increased impact. The impact of a small grant – combined with the thoughtfulness of the funder – has been transformational for our organisation and our charitable mission.