Photos: Michelle Leman on Pexels and (insert) Matthew Henry on Burst
The material on this page is for beginners. If you have three or more years’ experience as a trust fundraiser, you may find the following page more useful: .https://goodgrantfundraising.org.uk/the-organisation/.
All trusts proposals say something about the charity that’s delivering the work. They need to do so for two specific purposes:
Firstly, you want to know if they’re competent to manage that work. That means you want to say something about its track record in the area of work. Suppose you’re a homelessness charity and sending in a proposal for your first homelessness prevention project (a different field of work). You’ll want to say something about your expertise in the components that make up your homelessness prevention project (e.g., welfare benefits advice, mediation with families/landlords, keywork that links people into services in field like abuse, mental health and addiction). You’ll also want to say something about the charity’s ability to innovate.
Secondly, some trusts fund the project as a way of funding the charity. (Just to be clear: they’re usually still trying to improve the lives of end users, rather than, say, joining the Age UK fan club. However, they’ve developed trust in and/or a relationship with that charity as a way of doing so.) So, it’s worth projecting yourselves as an important charity, in order to attract that wish to invest in your charity.
Most charities produce generic descriptions of themselves and some trust fundraisers will just paste these into the proposal. It would be a real surprise, though, if these generic descriptions will do what you need of them for the proposal. They can often be tweaked into shape, though.
Things to include in a description of the charity might include:
The date you were founded. This can be shorthand for: “You can trust us to still be here across the grant period and to have experience in our overall field of work.”
That you’re a registered charity, if you are. A lot of trusts can only fund charities.
A short overview of who you are, giving a few key achievements, such as the number of people you help p.a. and any key awards. There’s a balance here, in that what you say isn’t directly about the project – but it does give a sense that you’re a substantial, significant charity that’s recognised and worthy of support.
Points about your charity that more directly answer the question, “Why do you think your organisation is well placed to deliver this project?” Again, numbers are persuasive.