Something comes along every once in a while that makes you go ‘WOW’. For me it has been Ian McLintock’s Charity Excellence Framework. Ian started this up during the first lockdown. The germ of an idea to help other charities find funding, as other sources dried up almost overnight (e.g. closing charity shops, marathons, gala’s and face-to-face fundraising – in fact, the charity sector is projected to lose about 24% (£12.4bn) of its income this year. So we need all the help that we can get. Source: IoF, NCVO, CFG).
As he says in the marketing blurb on his website, it’s a ‘free online Charity Excellence Framework management database, which uses 8 questionnaires to enable you to evaluate your efficiency and effectiveness in half a day, to improve performance in every area. It works for any charity, requires no expertise to use and everything is completely free.’
Saying that it is a fantastic free resource for charities. The database grows every week, as he find new funders and updates it. We started using it to help us identify possible funders (as I think most people do) but quickly realised it has a wealth of other resources to help us better understand our charity and run it better. On areas such as governance, communications, people, strategy etc.
For example, here’s a list (one of many) of where to get IT funding, help and resources titled, “Charity IT Tech For Good – Funding, Grants, Recycling and Free Support – Computers, Hardware, Software & Digital” (here: IT Help report). We’ve used this to help ‘Wandsworth Digital’, as we work together with local partners to make Wandsworth the most digitally inclusive borough in London by 2024.
We would highly recommend Charity Excellence Framework to you – more here: www.charityexcellence.co.uk
Where else to get funding
Other helpful sources include:
FREE sources
PAID sources
Wandsworth Funders
*This is not a comprehensive list – please help us build this list and so tell us what we’ve missed*