WHY WE EXIST

As a sector, and a society, we have a problem. People are out there, trying to do great things to improve the lives of people in their local community, but they’re up against enormous barriers. For some this means that incredible initiatives, no matter how meaningful they are, fail to lift off the ground. We just don’t think that’s right. 

Community leaders today must navigate all the complexities of setting up and running a charitable organisation. They have an overwhelmingly long list of tasks, like: develop plans, recruit volunteers, write policies, build partnerships, deliver activities, market themselves, manage finances, and the list goes on and on... They’re volunteers, juggling their jobs, families, personal challenges, personal lives, their wellbeing, their health, and everything else. It’s incredibly hard work, but they do it anyway, out of pure passion to help others, and often to prevent people from experiencing the same hardships that they did. 

However, over and over we get told the biggest barrier community leaders face is … FUNDING.  

We’ve spoken to the leaders of organisations, and they tell us the reasons they struggle to access funding is:

1. They don’t fully understand the funding world. They say it’s confusing, that ‘they have no idea where to start’, that ‘It’s demotivating once you’ve had knock backs’, nor do they know what steps to take to access funding for their projects. 

2. They don’t have the time or capacity at this stage in the organisations development to dedicate to writing grants, creating funding plans, creating surveys or research into the wider needs of their community.

3. Their team (most often volunteers), who are fully capable of fundraising, don’t have the knowledge, skills, experience, tools or resources to access funding opportunities … yet. 

This is why we exist.