Help & Advice:

1. Getting started in fundraising
2. Planning your fundraising
3. Sources of money
4. Applications

 
Help for Community Groups - 4. Applications

Most funders (including members of the public) receive thousands of fundraising letters each year, way more than they can support. Many letters aren't actually that good! But in any case, you need to try to make sure that your fundraising letter stands out from the crowd. The best way to do this is to try to make sure that you are writing personally to someone you know. Personal contacts are as important when it comes to getting support from a grant-making trust or company as much as when asking for money from individuals. However, it is not always possible to develop these contacts, especially when you are writing to a grant-making trust that has never funded you before.

Basically, in any fundraising letter you need to try to:

• make a number of key points which will catch the reader's attention;
• arouse their interest in your work, and
• 'sell' your proposal.

This section aims to help you to write a good letter, particularly to grant-making trusts and local companies. To start off with, here are some basic rules.

Key points to consider

Most funders prefer to fund new work. This gives them the opportunity to support innovation – does your application do this?

Concentrate on the things, which will be of most interest to the particular person/supporter you are writing to.

Don't ask funders to support you organisation. Instead, ask them to support the people you help, the work you do, and preferably, a specific piece of work (often called a project).

Believe in what you are doing. Be upbeat. Demonstrate why you are the ideal group to carry out the project. If you do not believe in what you are doing why should potential supporters?

Don't go on for too long. Aim for not more than two A4 pages to a grant-making trust (less if possible), and one side of A4 to a company.

Content

Obviously, you want to write a letter that interests the reader, tell them what they want to know. Therefore, you need to be flexible and tailor any letter according to what you know about the donor. However, here is a nine-stage plan that suits most funders most of the time.

1. Project title

These can be really effective, especially if they are catchy and describe what you want to do simply and easily. But they're not essential.

2. Summary sentence

This is the first bit of the application to be read. Assume that it may be the last and tell the reader what the application is about and why it is relevant to them. 'I am writing to you to ask for a donation towards the cost of ...' is a reasonable start. Keep it short and to the point.

3. The introduction: who you are

The funder wants to know what kind of organisation they are dealing with. How long have you been going? What are your key activities? What are your major successes? You need to show you are good, reliable, well-used and well-liked – in three or four sentences. Remember at this point that you are not trying to give a complete history of the organisation. Rather, you are simply trying to establish your credentials with the funder.

4. The problem: why something needs to be done now

At this point you move on to the problem you want to solve. All voluntary organisations exist to meet a particular need, to make society better in some way. This can be by giving people a new or better chance in life, by cleaning the local community up, by putting on a concert etc.

You need a brief explanation of the need or the problem that you exist to deal with and why it is important to do something now. So, try to do the following:

• describe the problem or the need (e.g. 'More and more older people in our area live isolated and frightened lives').
• support this by evidence (e.g. '80 of the 100 people we asked last month said their single greatest fear was being burgled or injured at home and nomaintable knowing until it was too late');
• say why this is important (e.g. 'Not only does this constant fear reduce the quality of life of our elderly residents, it also greatly increases levels of ill-health').

5. Your proposals: what you intend to do about the problem

Having laid out the problem that you want to tackle you now need to show what you intend to do to make things better, and how you intend to go about doing it. For example: 'We aim to set up a Granny get a Granny scheme. We currently have 40 members in our lunch club. Each is committed to visiting three other elderly members in our community to offer:

• free transport to the lunch club;
• home visits twice a week on a friendship basis.'

Try to give a picture of what you will achieve. For example, outline how many people will be involved or will benefit (e.g. how many new members of the lunch club will you recruit, how many home visits a week?) The donor can then see what their money will achieve. Make sure that what you want to do sounds workable. So, how would you cover transport costs of the above scheme; how will you ensure you have enough willing volunteers? In short, the donor should now be saying : 'I can see here is a real problem and the project would certainly make things better'.

6. Why you should do it

By now you have stated who you are, the need you want to meet and how you are going to do it. Now you need to show why you are the best people to do it. Assume your reader is saying: 'This is all very well but how can I trust this group to be able to do this?' This question will partly be answered by how good and clear your solutions are. However, you also need to show that you are a good, reliable organisation capable of doing the work you have described. For example:

• have you done similar work successfully in the past?
• can you show your books balance?
• have you got good local press coverage for anything?
• can you get different people to say how wonderful you are?

This is not a complete list. Imagine you were a sceptical outsider reading your fundraising letter. Obviously, the organisation would say it is marvellous. But who would you, as an outsider, want to see supporting the organisation? Which independent voice would you trust? Having decided this, try to show that you have that support in your letter.

Also, if you are writing to a company you will need to show that you can offer real business benefits in return for their donation (excellent publicity, good employee relations, opportunity to meet someone famous etc).

7. What you need in order to do the work

You need to make it clear – if you have not done so already – what you need the money for and what you will spend it on. In the above example, you may need tables and crockery for the club, and transport costs for the volunteers.

8. Budget: how much you need and where you are getting it from

Some applications tail off badly and apologetically when it comes to asking for money. There is no need. By now you have made a good case for someone to support you, and shown that you can be trusted with their money. This is a fundraising letter after all, and the funder will expect you to ask. And remember, fundraising is more about change than money. If you can show that you are meeting an important need, you can show that you will meet it in a really effective way and that you are a good organisation to do the work – which is what the letter has been about so far – then if it costs £5,000 state it. Be straight and factual about money, not hesitant or apologetic. So, be very clear about how much all the work you have outlined will cost. You also need to be clear about how much you want the funder to give. So:

1. tell the funder how much you intend to spend on the project;
2. explain where you intend to get the money from. It may be that you are asking this funder for the whole amount, or you may be getting it from a variety of sources. If the latter, you need to say something like: 'The total cost of this project is £5,000. Our local authority agreed to give us £500. We aim to raise £1,500 from the local community, £500 from local companies and £2,500 from grant-making trusts.'
3. show the funder how much you expect them to contribute. You can do this in one of three ways:
   1. Ask for a specific amount (i.e. 'I am therefore writing to ask you for £1,000').
   2. Show how much other trusts have given (e.g. 'BBC Children-in-Need have already given us £1,000') to indicate that you expect a similar amount from the trust you are currently writing to.

Show how many trusts you are writing to (e.g. 'I am therefore writing to you and four other major trusts to ask for a total of £2,500'). This gives the trust a pretty good idea of how much you expect them to give (i.e. around £500 – £1,000), but gives them flexibility to give more or less than this.

Where you are asking a funder for a small amount, or where you think they would like to see some obvious benefit from their donation, you can produce a 'shopping list' of the different things you need (e.g. £250 for tables, £20 a week for transport and £400 for crockery). This can be very effective when raising money from companies. You can suggest an item from the list that you think the supporter would like to pay for.

9. Sign off

Anymaintable can sign the letter, such as a volunteer, the project leader, the chief executive, the fundraiser, the chair of the management committee, an appeal patron. Whoever signs it must:

• Appear sufficiently senior. This shows you are treating the application seriously.
• Be knowledgeable. The funder may ask for more information. Whoever signs the letter should be able to tell them what they need to know, including the financial position of the organisation. If you have a patron who signs letters but does not know about the day-to-day running of the project, include contact details of someone who can answer more detailed questions.
• Be available. If the funder wants more information they don't want to have to leave a whole series of messages before they get the details they need to make a decision.
• Be open. Leave your potential supporter with plenty of opportunity to talk to you, find out more, or visit. Many will decline these invitations, but still like to be asked.

Keep your letter simple

You are writing a fundraising letter, not a novel. It needs to be easy to read and to understand. So, in terms of style:

• keep sentences short and to the point
• keep paragraphs short – generally three or four sentences
• avoid jargon – you may understand what you are talking about; outsiders generally will not
• be direct; do not waffle
• avoid generalised statements such as 'desperate need', 'urgent problem'; rather, provide evidence, give facts and figures
• check, re-check and rewrite.

You might also like to give the letter to a friend who knows about the voluntary sector, but does not know in detail what your organisation does. Ask your friend to read it through and then, in his or her own words, tell you what the application is about. If your friend can do this well, you know the letter will be understood by the funder; if not, go back and change it to make it clearer.

What to include with an application

If the trust has an application form you must fill it out following its instructions. However, most do not, so you will need:

1. An application letter stating:

• Who you are
• What you want to do
• Why this is important
• Why you should do it
• How much it will cost
• Where the money will come from

This letter should be two sides of A4 at the most, preferably less.

2. You should always enclose:

(a) A set of your most recent accounts, or a budget for the year if you are a new organisation.
(b) A budget for the particular project you want support for, including estimated income and expenditure.
(c) An annual report (if you have one).

3. You can also enclose anything else that will support the application

These can include newsletters, press cuttings, quotes sheets, photos, drawings, letters of support from famous people. However, don't rely on these extra bits to get you the money. Assume that the funder will only read your letter and the financial information (budget and accounts). They should be able to get the complete picture from these.

If in doubt, ask yourself:

(a) Is this relevant to my application?
(b) Will it help the funder make a decision in my favour?
(c) Can I afford to send all this?

Remember everything you attach should be for a fundraising purpose. It is not a question of 'never mind the quality feel the width', rather if it doesn't help the application don't put it in. The letter and financial information are the most important parts. Other bits are often never read

Funders ask themselves various questions as they consider applications. These can be summarised as follows:

1. Who are this lot and can I trust them?
Your good track record, major achievements.

2. Who are their users and what is their (the users') problem?
The needs you are trying to meet.

3. Why is this important?
Don't assume the funder knows this.

4. What do they want to do, to make life better for their users?
Your solution to the problem you have described.

5. How do I know that it will work?
How are you going to bring about these results.

6. How much is it going to cost?
Be clear!

7. Where are they getting the money from?
What is your fundraising strategy for the project?

8. How much do they want from us?
An amount they can give.

9. So why does this apply to us?
Particularly important for companies.

10. If the project is there for the long term, how will they pay for it?
If you are only asking funding for three years, you need to address the year 4 problem.

Page 3 - ...Sources of Money

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