Fundraising and Access to Information Guide

Caroline explained that applying to Tinker is “a classic two-stage process”. The first step is a one or two page letter of enquiry, and there’s a lot of variety in how organisations approach the challenge of telling the story of their work within such a tight word-count.

Caroline’s advice is that at this stage, you don’t need to include too much context around the problem you’re trying to solve. The funder will assume that you know the problem very well and that it’s important to address it.

As with pitching a piece of journalism to the press, your aim should be to answer the three questions: 

• Why this?
• Why you?
• Why now? 

Answering these questions will provide a clear articulation of the approach that you want to take, and why. Bids that answer all three compellingly tend to rise to the top of the pile.

The Tinker Foundation will be looking for the unique or differentiating factor. That might be your insider experience, or community-relevant networks that you can bring. In short, why are you well positioned to do the work?

‘Why now?’ is a particularly apposite question for Tinker: they are looking for ‘moments of dynamism and opportunity’, where organisations are very well positioned to make a difference or to avoid further harm.

Alice noted that there are very few funders that directly deal with the Right to Information, but that you can still find suitable matches if you think slightly outside the box.

For example, if your project deals with topics around migration, you can look to funders who work on refugee support. Partnering with a charity in that specialist area could strengthen your application: you don’t need to become an expert yourself, and together you can present a really good bid.

Ally brought a different perspective: his work is not about standing out to a big funder, but about capturing the minds — and opening the wallets — of ‘lay people’.

His first piece of advice was to perform extensive surveying of those who have already donated, and also people you would like to be donors. You should ask them what their values are, and what motivated them to sign up to your newsletter or social media.

Once you’ve heard what they care about, reflect people’s values back at them — if they signed up because of one aspect of your work, use language that emphasises that. Getting that piece of language right is really important.

You can segment your audiences according to what they care about, whether that be climate change, transparency or something else.

But don’t segment too much, or it’s diminishing returns, and a simple compelling message across all segments may also be good.

Caroline noted that the Tinker Foundation receives up to 400 applications per programme per cycle. With that quantity to sift through, they don’t perform in-depth research for every application at this stage: “So that first one or two pages needs to be a compelling calling card for your organisation”.

One thing that helps applications stand out is a clever use of evidence: the Foundation do often fund new ideas and activities, and this is usually because the evidence supports the concepts. 

Not that you have to submit a fully-realised piece of research, but you can gather data about your audience and the context in a relatively agile and low resource way, for example through surveys as Ally mentioned. Show you’re using evidence to inform your plans and that you’re a learning-oriented organisation that uses evidence to shape your strategy and activities.

Tinker, and no doubt many other funding organisations, also look at how connected and influential you are as an organisation. You might only be working on a very local basis, but are you finding ways to share your learning and participate in a broader ecosystem of actors than just the area you’re active within? Impact beyond your own community is a big plus and Caroline says that they’ll take a more enthusiastic look at your application if you can signpost such connections in your two-pager.

Alice pointed out that it’s good to make connections with funders, as well. She finds that funding bids are more successful if you have an existing relationship with the grantmaker, so networking is important, even if it’s hard for a small organisation to prioritise. 

It means you are not coming to the funders cold, and that you are already in their minds. Also, talking can give you insights that you might not get from their website — for example, the way they describe something verbally may give you a better indication of what they’re looking for. So Alice recommended that if the opportunity is there, you should always take it. Some grantmakers offer webinars — do attend if you can.

Apart from that, you can look up their trustees on LinkedIn and connect with them; or if you can find an email address, ask them an intelligent question about the grant. Even if you’re not successful in your application, having made this kind of connection can also mean you have a better chance of receiving feedback — something that isn’t always readily available.

Ally then spoke about engaging members of the public, indicating that how much you can do very much depends on how sophisticated your CRM or mailing system is. A good one will allow you to implement the classic “top of funnel, middle of funnel, conversion” model.

Working in the media, Ally says they know that 90% of donations come thanks to their email list, so their whole focus is on getting new people to sign up, then making sure they are engaged once they’re on there.

Most organisations don’t send frequent enough emails. You shouldn’t just be sending direct requests for money, but your news as well.

Then the question is, what can you do to push them over the line to the next level of engagement?

There will always be a segment of your audience who are barely reading your output: how will you move them up to being more engaged?

And there’ll be another group of people who are more engaged: you could ask them to subscribe to another part of your output, like your podcast or WhatsApp channel or whatever. You want people to have as many touchpoints as possible with your brand, so that even if they leave one of them they can still see your content on another.

Some might fade into the less engaged group, but if they’re following you in multiple places, they’ll come back when they see that you’re doing something interesting.

Ally says there are some spur of the moment donors who give right away, and after that it might take another 20 emails until the point where people feel they are getting value from your organisation and commit to £5 or £10 a month. In his organisations they plan their communications in quarterly chunks, spend most of the three months concentrating on recruiting people to the mailing list and giving them engaging content, and then making a donation request on that quarterly basis.

They will use opportunistic reasons (like current events or organisational crises such as a lawsuit) to ask for money as well: the challenge is to keep it creative and interesting. They might include a striking graphic in their communications which they know will get people to react, want to sign a petition or get involved in other ways. This gets new people into the funnel.

Do make sure you understand the laws around data protection and adhere to them.

There are also ways to get more coverage and sign-ups by, for example, asking like-minded organisations to promote your newsletter in return for promoting theirs. Everything you do should be aimed at increasing the mailing list: hand out QR codes at events; invite audiences to sign up while waiting to watch a film or panel discussion at one of your events.

Caroline mentioned the factors that would discourage the Tinker Foundation from taking an application forward. She said of course they, like every funder, do their due diligence, supporting only charities that are legally registered in their countries.

Beyond that, the biggest red flag is that they get a lot of applications from organisations based outside the region (they focus on funding in Latin America) who are interested in importing their model to the local context. That’s not enough — they need to see evidence of demand.

It’s different if a local network in Argentina or Peru have recognised the worth of the model for themselves and instigated a partnership; what’s not so good is if an NGO decides there might be funding opportunities and pinpoints the country they want to work in without any local buy-in or testing the viability. That makes for a quick ‘no’ from Tinker.

Caroline says they have seen a huge surge in the number of applications, partly because of the pandemic and the subsequent shakeup of the funding landscape since then; and some because they’ve translated their call for applications into Portuguese and Spanish. They’re still grappling with how to cope with so much interest when their grantmaking capability is pretty fixed.

Their funding cycle is six-monthly and while they approach it with excitement and curiosity — it is fascinating to see what CSOs in the region are working on, and learn from that — at the same time there is a side of them that has to be more judgemental. It’s a matter of getting the obvious no-goers out the way so they can be rigorous looking into the other opportunities.

Alice remarked that every organisation is sure to experience rejection and the important thing is not to take it personally. A 50% success/fail ratio is the norm. 

The reasons are usually outside your control: there might just have been too many other projects applying; they might have been too similar to yours. Do ask for feedback: you might not always get it, but if you do it’s always really useful.

Once you know how and why your application was rejected, you can reapply with more confidence. It is often worth applying twice, but don’t waste your time if you think you’re not a great fit. 

Caroline noted that grantmakers can try to take more responsibility for the fate of projects that have been genuinely impactful, for example by offering them extra funding at the end of the initial period (though that’s not always possible). 

As a Programme Officer, Caroline tries to accompany organisations beyond the official timeframe of the project — if that’s what they want, of course — but not always successfully. 

Funders can put their networks to work and recommend your project to their peers. While that’s something that many funders don’t always like doing, why would you not advocate for your grantees’ ongoing success? 

Every organisation is looking for sustainability and it’s broadly recommended that they try to secure a diverse set of revenue streams. While that’s the ideal, in reality it is difficult to achieve and it’s not a moral failing to be dependent on funding for a few years.

The Open Road Alliance study of 2018 indicated that 50% of events that caused projects to fail were funder driven: from the grantmakers not releasing funds to being inflexible about policies. 

It’s good to be candid and open up a frank conversation with your grantmaker at the end of your funding period. Show them the impact you’ve achieved, give them appreciation for the part they’ve played in it, and ask, “If you can’t help us continue, will you please go to others with this evidence?”

Ally has ample experience of using crowdfunding to raise money, especially focused around specific projects. 

He said, “It’s a top of the funnel thing, not a longterm path for sustainability.” It’s a good way to make a big noise. 

Again, you can go to your audience to ask what they care about: do a poll asking people which of the areas you work in are the most important to them. You can then use this understanding to crowdfund to be able to work within that area more effectively.

The first time Ally tried this at The Ferret, they needed ten or twenty thousand pounds — and they smashed the targets. So much so that they were able to put some of the money into the second priority. It created a “good flywheel of engagement: they donated, we made them members and then polled them about what to focus on the next time around”.

You can’t do this forever though: eventually it becomes boring to your audience. You should always try to surprise and delight them, go off piste.

It’s easier to retain an existing donor than to recruit a new one: how to keep them is the main thing to focus on. When people stop giving, always ask them why, and what other organisations they have decided to keep giving to.

Just because they’re not a donor any more, you can still keep them signed up to your newsletter and social media, and they will be alerted of your next campaign.

At OpenDemocracy, every one-off donor gets an automated message a year later, asking if they can donate again. This simple action brings in £20K a year without having to do anything.

Alice mentioned that you can find online directories — sometimes these require a subscription fee — and while the ones she uses are UK-specific, it’s worth a Google for ones covering your region. 

Also, sign up for mailing lists: for example Matt Stempeck sends out the Civic Tech Field Guide newsletter with global opportunities, and there are others.

One simple thing is to look up other organisations similar to yourself, and check who their funders are. In the UK, they have to put it in their accounts which are available publicly online, or some organisations put a list of funders on their websites. 

To be organised, you can keep a spreadsheet classifying funders by whether they’re low, medium or high opportunities. Keep a note of when their rounds are open and sign up for their mailing lists.

Ally was asked for examples of campaigns that were ‘creative and interesting’, since this is what he had recommended people do. 

He gave an example he wasn’t able to use because it was suggested by someone in a job interview — but he thought it was great. OpenDemocracy were campaigning around the ‘FOI clearing house’ in which journalists’ FOI requests were being treated differently by government than requests from other sources. This idea was that the text of a fundraising email would be completely crossed out with big black bars, like redacted information in an FOI response, so all the recipient would see would be a button at the end.

As an example of an ‘opportunistic’ campaign, Ally said that when Russia invaded Ukraine for the second time, there was a definite desire to do something practical in the air, be that to help refugees or anything. 

They were already reporting from Ukraine, and wanted to bolster that and also support other independent journalistic projects in Ukraine, so they said they would give half the money to the Ukrainian equivalent of the National Union of Journalists, and keep the other half for their own reporting in the country.

This was so timely that it was incredibly successful: they raised a five figure number with just a couple of mailouts.

Caroline was asked about joint applications. She said that the Tinker Foundation welcome approaches from consortia: her advice is to focus on the coherence and compellingness of the work itself rather than why a consortium is necessary to deliver the work. You can make the more nuanced case about the actual organisations in the later round of the application.

A question for all the speakers was: does having funding help get more funding? For example, if you have lots of small donors, does that help influence an institutional funder? 

Alice said it probably isn’t decisive, but funders do like to see diversified funding. There isn’t always a chance to include that in an application, though.

Ally noted that being able to say that 2,000 – 3,000 people give money regularly shows that a project has credibility, and also said that ‘people like to back winners’. Sometimes you can call in the cavalry with a message like “someone’s trying to sue us”, but you can only do that very rarely. People love to hear good news like impact, award wins or significant funding. These allow you to say “We couldn’t have done it without your support”, which always goes down really well.

The attendees then split into small breakout groups to discuss how they might use the learnings from this discussion. Thanks very much to our three speakers for all the essential knowledge they imparted.