Investment in funding support yields 31x ROI
Grants fundraising - Faith in Later Life
“Working with Clare has been hugely beneficial for Faith in Later Life. Her expertise, can-do approach, strategic thinking and ability to identify the right funders have helped us not only secure our ongoing work but also create opportunities for growth. Thanks to Clare’s support, we’ve been able to strengthen our financial foundation, enabling us to reach even more older people with the hope of Jesus. Her dedication and insight have been invaluable and we are so grateful for the impact she has made.”
Alexandra Huggins, CEO, Faith in Later Life
Background
Faith in Later Life is a charity dedicated to inspiring and equipping Christians to reach, serve and empower older people everywhere, through the local church. We have had a longstanding relationship with the charity and with some of its funders, such as Pilgrims’ Friend Society. This latest piece of work came about because Faith in Later Life needed more funding to secure their situation for the here and now, and also to be able to appoint an Executive assistant to help grow the ministry.
Brief
Faith in Later Life asked us to identify and write proposals for potential funders. Action Planning associate consultant Clare McIntosh took the brief.
Process
Clare brings financial acumen, strategic thinking and inspirational leadership to her role, and all these attributes were to bear fruit.
She began by identifying potential funders, developing a case for support and working with Faith in Later Life on a three-year plan. With Clare’s help they sent out about 20 grant applications.
Outcome
Four funders agreed to give support, two of them on a multi-year basis. The committed funding amounted to £122,000, representing a return on investment of 3,100% and enabling an Executive assistant to be hired.
This led on to another piece of funding work for DailyHOPE, a free phone line of Christian encouragement for older people who are unable to go to church and who are offline. The service has approximately 1,000 regular users but is expensive to provide. Therefore, it had not been proactively promoted for some time and, in fact, was temporarily turned off when funding looked bleak.
Clare identified 10 potential funders and sent out applications for about £250,000 in total, which will hopefully enable Faith in Later Life to continue to run the service for free.
As a contingency, though, Clare used her tech contacts to find a cheaper solution for running the line, reducing the cost from £40,000 a year to about £1,500, with an initial investment of £10,000. She also explored the option of it not being a freephone number, on the basis that 90% of the market are on packages that include landline calls.
This gives Faith in Later Life three options for making DailyHOPE sustainable again: if the funding bids are unsuccessful, they can continue to run the line for free; if not, they have a great plan B.
Consultant’s insight
The Catch-22 with funding challenges is that solving them nearly always means spending money. Whether that is on extra personnel or new systems, the need for investment can feel hard to swallow.
However, this case shows just how important it is to be brave and invest in solutions that will give a healthy return. In this case the ROI was staggering, largely because of the very streamlined way in which we delivered our service. By investing in short contracts with Action Planning rather than hiring a full-time fundraiser, Faith in Later Life achieved outstanding returns for their bravery to grasp the nettle. In addition, they are set to benefit from additional strategic thinking, which has put a new option on the table for them.