The hours and hours I’ve spent filling in long, complex and detailed evaluation forms from funders, repeating what we’ve already reported elsewhere but in the format and tailored detail each specific funder requires. Where we had more than one funder for a particular project, these took almost as long as managing the project itself! That’s not value for money.

I’ve found that the very worst of these are the corporate funders and their desire for lots of PR around the project they’re funding. They have huge PR departments themselves but often don’t involve (and won’t allow) these staff in the project through advice, contacts, training etc. The corporate funder still wants a huge PR impact, forgetting that the charity only has one person and a bunch of hard-working but pr-inexperienced volunteers to do that promotional work. They just don’t seem to get it.

I would LOVE to see my fundraising colleagues build more realistic expectations into their funding negotiations and not simply say yes to every demand made by the funder. At the end of the day, charities are set up to serve their cause, not to serve the whims of funders.

I believe we should issue a challenge ourselves –

‘Find us a business that spends NO money on operations.’

We should demand it; command them to it. “Name the business that makes profit but spends zero dollars.”

Then we might have a fair comparison.

It can’t be done but somehow in the non-profit sector, it’s DEMANDED.