In strategy sessions and on websites for foundations and philanthropists across the globe, you'll increasingly hear the language of Venture Capital investing. "Catalytic funding." "First-mover advantage." "Disruptive innovation." This isn't coincidence — it's a deliberate shift as philanthropy increasingly
Those who spend their wealth in God’s cause are like grains of corn that produce seven ears, each bearing a hundred grains. God gives multiple increase to whoever He wishes: He is limitless and all knowing. (2:261) If you were told to annually give away 2.5% of
Celebrating the Renewal of HAF Funding After all of our work with HAF teams, we’re breathing a sigh of relief to see that funding for the Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) programme has been renewed for another year. This decision ensures that the invaluable work done by local councils,
Right now, charity funding in the UK feels like watching a much-loved first car slowly fall apart. Bits are starting to fall off, it doesn't run quite as smoothly as it used to, and some of the parts have given up completely. But no one can afford a
We're not doing it anymore. OK, but what on earth are you talking about? Fair question. A few months ago, we wrote a couple of posts about offering an AI bid-writing tool for charities to use for grant applications on a no-win, no-fee basis. I guess you could
Why we think grant-making needs to improve, how we think our platform can support that, and why the model we’re offering enables it.
Today we've made a big change to the pricing of our AI grant writer. We've moved towards a no-win, no-fee commission based model. But is this unethical or illegal?
Have you started to use AI to support your charity’s mission? Congrats, you’re ahead of the curve. Only 27 out of 100 charities have got there so far, according to The Charities Digital Skills Report. But as is common when you’re an early adopter, you might find
You might have guessed, but for our AI Grant Writing tool, we are using AI to make it all work. When we tell people this, they come up with lots of questions such as: * What is AI? * How does it work? * How do you make the answers personalised to us?
When you use ChatGPT, are you worried about a potentially massive environmental cost? You probably shouldn't be. While it's a familiar worry, as it's something we applied to other new innovations like fast fashion or cryptocurrencies, we’d make the case that it’s
We've taught an AI to find and write grant applications, massively cutting the time needed for everyone involved, and potentially saving charities hundreds of millions of pounds per year.
As a new university term starts, it seems like a good time to reinvent ourselves. We’ve dyed our hair green, and we’re going to see if we can get a new name to catch on. But this isn’t just a phase. Our newfound identity, "Plinth,"
Local Government
We all know that the Holiday Activity and Food Programme was hastily assembled to respond to a PR crisis. And it’s clearly not enough to solve deep-rooted issues of child poverty. But from the chaos emerged an extremely interesting model: * Trust in Local Authorities to manage the programme * A
Local Government
Council support can be unintentionally directed to those they have most contact with; not necessarily the people most in need.
Systems
When businesses work together, we call it collusion. It’s usually illegal. But for charities, it’s “collaboration”. Apparently, not working together is “damaging to communities”. Legally, the UK has a Government department dedicated to “promoting competition”. But the UK also has a Government department that explicitly advises: “Working together
Lamenting the state of charity digital skills has long been a popular past time for the sector. Fortunately, in the past couple of years, it seems we've found a theoretical cure-all in the form of "Big Tech" corporate social responsibility. However, despite months of gesturing in
Danny Kruger’s report on levelling up communities is a sensible blueprint. We've got some implementation suggestions.
Every month we speak to charities frustrated with the difficulties of grant applications and reporting for their existing grants. Some organisations have raised the question of whether particular grants were even worth it? Would it have been better to just not apply? To answer that, we've got some
Charities spend too many hours filling out monitoring reports for funders. This gets in the way of learning. We tried to quantify that effect and understand why.