The boss of a small charity has revealed how the “logistical nightmare” of having 35 different funders is costing vital funds and giving her sleepless nights.
Emma Pears, chief executive and founder of the children’s charity Selfa, called for an urgent overhaul of the funding system, to end the constant round of applying and re-applying for support.
Selfa, based in Skipton, North Yorkshire, runs health and wellbeing projects as well as providing mentoring, after-school support and mental health projects.
Pears first described the process on Twitter this week, saying that Selfa’s £350,000 annual income came from 35 different funders, most with their own reporting requirements. This created a “logistical nightmare” for the charity, she said.
Pears said: “It is very stressful, for a start. It is the thing that keeps you up at night. It is the thing that gives you sleepless nights – not knowing how the charity is going to keep going for the next few years.”
She called the process “emotionally exhausting”.
Pears and another member of staff handle all applications for funding.
She said: “About 30 per cent of both of our roles is spent chasing funding and then writing reports at the end of that. So probably in excess of £20,000 a year, I would say, for those two roles combined is spent just chasing funding and writing reports.
“And that is for a small charity.”
She said she would like government legislation to create “standardised reporting for charities”, adding that an extra £20,000 each year would help Selfa expand its projects to support local parents.
Pears worked as part of a project by the Institute for Voluntary Action Research which called on funders to standardise their demands on charities.
In November 2021, research by the consultancy Giving Evidence found that the costs to charities of applying for funding were sometimes higher than the grants they received.
Caroline Fiennes, chief executive of Giving Evidence, said this made the cost of capital higher for charities “than for most companies or the public sector”.