Over one-third of grant applications are ineligible

Full article published on the Charity Times website.

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Research by the Directory of Social Change (DSC) indicates that over one-third of applications to UK charitable grantmakers in the last year were ineligible.

More than 361,000 out of a total pool of nearly one million applications were rejected because they didn’t meet the funder’s stated criteria.

For example, applications for work in England going to a trust which states it only funds in Scotland, or a foundation which funds respite breaks for carers receiving requests to support scientific research.

If each application took 10 minutes to write, (a very conservative estimate) that adds up to nearly 7 years of wasted effort every year. If each one were posted first class, that amounts to around £141,000 just in postage stamps.

DSC surveyed 2500 grantmaking trusts and foundations and asked how many applications they received in their last financial year, how many were ineligible, and how many awards they made.

The report published today includes statistical analysis of responses as well as recommendations for how funders and fundraisers can start solving the problem.

The top 2,500 grant-making trusts made grants worth £2.4 billion in 2008/9.

Overall: 983,753 applications were made, with trusts receiving 361,149 ineligible applications (36%).

Trusts which gave more than £5 million a year had the lowest ratio of ineligible applications to applications received (22%), and the highest ratio of awards to applications (37%).

Below that threshold there was little variance in the ratios of ineligible applications to
applications received; the average for trusts below the £5 million mark was 35%.

DSC’s director of policy and research Ben Wittenberg said: "This research is part of our Great Giving campaign to improve relationships between charities and their funders. We wanted to get a sense of the scale of the problem, in order to start some discussion and debate about causes and potential solutions.

"We know that a main cause of poorly targeted applications is that too often funders aren’t clear about what they want to fund and how their application process works – leaving it up to the prospective applicant to guess.

"But funders will also tell you how they receive many applications which don’t show any knowledge of the guidelines or criteria which are available.

"Fundraisers need to carefully research who they apply to and read any guidelines thoroughly. Making contact with the funder to ask for advice prior to submitting an application is also generally a good idea.’

"We think this is important because fewer ineligible applications could mean quicker responses to the eligible ones, better engagement with applicants, and possibly more resources to allocate as grants."

DSC’s research also points out the good news – that if fundraisers ensure basic eligibility their chance of success increases significantly.

The responses received from the individual trusts regarding their ineligible applications are also now available for viewing by subscribers to DSC’s trustfunding.org.uk website.