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by Ben Wittenberg, Director of Policy and Research, Directory of Social Change
For those organisations that have found themselves edging closer and closer to the state over recent years, there will be real challenges ahead.
The attraction of contracts that appeared to be the answer to bad grant-making, and aligning priorities with those of various statutory bodies in order to “build capacity”, or “engage with public services” has been big business for some, and a necessity for others. It has left us with a chunk of the sector that if not part of the state, is certainly camped out in its garden.
The problem now is that the house is on fire, and the garden is getting to be a dangerous place indeed. Burning chunks of the roof are starting to fall off and scorch the lawn. Funding is in decline (no matter what they tell you) and it will drop further.
After a couple of years of being central to much of the political rhetoric, we are being pushed further and further down the priority pile as the realities of the current economic situation take hold.
But if you feel that you’ve gotten too close, what should you do? Well;
- Assess your vulnerability. Check the conditions of your grants and contracts and see how exposed to risk you are. Can your coveted three-year contract be terminated with four weeks’ notice? Do you have any rights to the intellectual property of what you have been developing with your funding?
- Scenario plan. If you lost that contract, or that grant, what would you do? How would you continue to support your beneficiaries? What would your organisation look like? Dust off the exit strategy, or develop one if you don’t have one.
- Remember why you’re here. Focus your energy on how you can continue to support your beneficiaries, not on how much money you need to support them in the way you have before. Don’t get caught up in maintaining income levels just because you think you need to keep paid staff – that’s not why you’re here. Rethink what you can do with the resources you have available.