Why we focus on supporting charities to develop

Our focus on supporting charities to develop is one of our strengths as a funder and enables charities to thrive beyond their relationship with us.  We work with every charity we fund to identify areas for development and then connect them with external consultants (our Development Partners) that can support them in these priority areas. This helps charities grow stronger and more resilient.

Why we offer development support

We originally started offering development support to our charity partners in 2014 in response to increased demand for their services alongside shrinking budgets. Over the years, many of the infrastructure organisations that used to support charities have had their capacity cut or even disappeared entirely. Brexit, the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis have put even more pressure on both small charities and the infrastructure organisations they relied on.  Existing infrastructure support is geographically patchy (not all areas have it), and our charity partners tell us that the quality is inconsistent or that the depth of free support available is not as deep or as wide-ranging as they need.

Over the ten years  that we’ve been providing this support, how it is delivered has significantly evolved, and we’ve learned a lot, including:

• It takes time to build a trusting relationship with charities, so our approach is grounded in continuous conversations, working in partnership with those we support, supporting them through challenges and celebrating successes along the way.
• The enthusiasm and willingness for charities to engage in development support often far outweighs their capacity to do so. It’s important to plan and phase development support at a pace that works for the charity.
• The development journey is not linear; needs and development goals change over time, as does the context in which small charities work. It's critical that we work in partnership with the charities, be flexible in our approach and help them adapt to new challenges.

Launching the organsational development programme

We’ve often heard from charities we’ve supported that the development support we provided was more or equal value to the grant. In 2024, we launched our first programme that is solely focused on providing small charities with development support, with no cash grant attached, so that we can support even more charities in this way.

Focusing on a clearly defined cohort of charities was key, given that we planned to test the concept with a small number of charities (up to 60). We decided that the programme would focus on charities that support asylum seekers and refugees as there is a clear need to support this sector, recognising the increasingly hostile environment they are working in, and this is aligned with our strategic priorities.
We opened for applications in June, and in September we made 34 offers to charities to join the programme. The development ambitions of the charities within the cohort are broad and varied and include strategic planning, storytelling for fundraising, developing employment opportunities with corporates, influencing and campaigning, how to use AI, impact measurement, developing a training arm, financial resilience, strengthening the Board, and embedding lived experience.

Our Regional Managers have visited the charities to undertake a deep dive into their development aspirations and are supporting them in creating their development plans. We weren’t sure whether charities would want to access this support without a grant attached, but one of our Regional Managers reported that when they visited a charity for the first time, “the treasurer literally burst into tears of relief as I spoke about matching them with development partners.” This is perhaps an indication of how much this kind of support is needed across the sector.

We’ll be measuring the value of the organisational development support programme via an external evaluation, alongside our usual monitoring and feedback processes. Our hopes and expectations for the evaluation will be understanding the impact of organisational development support on charities without accompanying funding, helping us to understand how our offer compares to the support given by other infrastructure support and funders, and gaining wider learning from an external perspective, including any missed opportunities, in terms of what we do and how we do it.