We are a community interest company supporting leaders of small charitable organisations to understand, prepare for, and access funding.
Because, when the people leading organisations get the right support, their organisations do well and their communities can thrive!
We want to live in a world where no-one is ever held back from doing good things, because they’re worrying where the money comes from.
We’re here to support the leaders of small charitable organisations to understand, prepare for, and access funding.
We believe sharing knowledge and skills will help to build a better non-profit sector. We teach leaders everything we know about successful fundraising, so that they need us less and less.
We know small charitable organisations need funding AND we know funders want to fund small charitable organisations. But, as we’re consistently told by community leaders: funding is ‘confusing’ and ‘complicated’, and they don’t know how to access the opportunities available.
We are just good people trying to help other good people. We’re working to take the confusion and the complication out of funding - to give community leaders and their charitable organisations the best chance to make the make the biggest impact.
1. Helping 56 leaders of small charitable organisations to better understand the funding world.
We ensure they’re more knowledgeable about what they need to do to, and how make the most of it!
2. Working with small charitable organisations to help them access the funding they need.
To date, we’ve helped raise over £3.5 Million for these organisations, resulting in some truly inspiring and powerful projects across communities in Sussex.
3. Enabling organisations to become more efficient, capable, and sustainable in their own independent fundraising. We kit them out with the knowledge, tools and resources they need to raise funds by themselves.
We’ve helped over 70 community leaders to write grants, across 9+ training sessions, with hugely positive feedback.
We’re not the ones who deliver life changing projects for the people who need it in society – our clients do that.
We’re not the ones who give them the financial capability to get these going – funders do that.
With leaders leading, and funders funding, we’re here to connect the two, and get rid of barriers that stop them from working together.
"Funding people have been a great support for South Coast Skate Club and its ongoing development. Without their help I think we would still be stuck struggling to keep afloat. As well as their advice that they have given us is so valuable. We feel lucky to of found them."
Director of South Coast Skate Club - 2023
“Funding People have been supporting us as we grow our support for communities across Sussex. They have helped us develop our fundraising strategy, and apply for the funds needed, to develop new projects supporting more young people.
Although we have only recently started working with Funding People in March 22, their support has already helped us raise approximately £42k.
Funding People have consistently impressed us with their knowledge and expertise with fundraising which has ultimately resulted in some very quick success.
We plan to continue working with Funding People for the foreseeable future to both help us with fundraising but also to train and support our growing staff team. This will help us develop and grow to support more young people across Sussex.”
Director of Dancehub CIC - 2022
"Funding people have been an integral cog to our charity both in advice and support. They go above and beyond to help us and we would not be where we are without them. We have grown so much in the last 18 months and this is largely down to them. Quite simply, without Funding People we would not be supporting the amount of people we do. Before they started to support us we were opened 2 hours a week with minimal volunteers. By being awarded these grants we have been able to employ staff, open 25 hours a week and support 100's more people in financial hardship. These guys are the unsung heroes of the charity sector!"
CEO of FreeShop Crawley - 2022
Over 2022:
“I’m pretty new at this, so it was good to look at things in black and white, and get it down on paper. It’s so busy and you don’t get breathing space, so to sit here and hear all the technical words and how it works is very good for me.”
“Involving people who use the service [in fundraising] – I would never have thought of that!”
“when you take it all apart and look at the whole thing, it’s really useful!”
“It’s great to get a better oversight of what we need to concentrate on, who to use, and hopefully we’ll be successful when we pitch.”
“it’s quite easy to over complicate stuff when you’re learning something new. This made it clearer in my mind – starting with the basics and then going from there. It’s easy to understand.”
From 2023 to date:
“I particularly liked your recommendation about going back to your application and ‘what you said you’d achieve’, for your monitoring and evaluation so plan it throughout the process, rather than just panicking at the end!”
“I liked the emphasis on the quality of stories and case studies, as well as stats and data.”
“its helpful to highlight the language of how to phrase things and key things to emphasise”.
“Its really helpful to see a clear structure, to get your head around how to structure an application, and understand the project, particularly if you’re not directly involved with it.”
“I like the step by step approach. It’s really helpful to have the take home templates and information to have a think about after the session to digest it all.”
“I’m still so new to all this, so to be in a group with so many different people at different stages of their journey is very informative and helpful.”
“The step by step is good. It’s all a little overwhelming, but this feels positive. There’s a lot to do but it’s not as scary as you think, and it’s achievable.”
“I liked that you said when you’re filling out a form, you’re allowed to show your passion! Sometimes I feel like I have to be really corporate, so there’s another factor that feels like a limitation, but realising you can just be yourself is another positive thing I enjoyed.”