Case study

Enhanced support for local charities

Developing strategic planning, fundraising and governance for small charities supported by Lloyds Bank Foundation for England & Wales

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We are a leading charity, working at the centre of the giving world. We help donors to give more impactfully and charities to build their resilience so they can do more of their life-changing work.

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Project snapshot

Developing strategic planning, fundraising and governance

To strengthen charities' capacity for long-term resilience and sustainability

The objectives

Lloyds Bank Foundation for England & Wales provides unrestricted funding, including core costs, to small and local charities across England and Wales working to help people overcome complex social issues. Alongside their funding, their Enhance programme offers a range of development support, including training, consultancy and mentoring, to help partner charities become more resilient.

Charities Aid Foundation’s Charity Advisory team has been a trusted partner within Lloyds Bank Foundation’s Enhance programme for many years. For each charity client, the team draws on years of experience and deep sector knowledge to create a viable strategy for income diversification through a holistic approach to charity resilience that includes aspects such as governance, fundraising, marketing, theory of change, impact assessment and staffing.

Our support

Charities Aid Foundation’s offer under the Foundation’s Enhance programme is to deliver bespoke consultancy to small and local charities to develop their strategy, improve governance and develop new income sources, with a particular focus on increasing the level of income from both major donors (high net worth individuals and corporate donors) and individual regular donors.

Although bespoke to each organisation, the package of support for the Foundation’s charity partners often includes providing strategic advice and working closely with the charities’ senior leaders, Trustees and CEOs on:

  • Developing a strategic plan for fundraising (reviewing their case for support to increase or develop core funding/unrestricted income)
  • Governance: developing a philanthropic culture amongst the charity leadership, setting up a major donor circle, and reviewing the board of Trustees, terms of reference, safeguarding policies, skills, etc.)
  • Developing a case for support to realise their fundraising potential
  • Prospect research
  • Benchmarking: sharing best practice and examples to provide insight, provoke questions and share ideas towards the development of the charity

We have worked with over 40 charities through the Foundation’s Enhance programme, providing expertise and tailored support for each charity, typically  over a seven-day period.

Feedback to the Foundation

For each charity we work with, we provide Lloyds Bank Foundation with a report on the learnings and lessons we have identified, to help them understand the challenges faced and solutions proposed.

Charity football team
Image: North East Young Dads and Lads Project

The impact

Our partnership with Lloyds Bank Foundation has enabled them to enhance the support they offer to charity partners so they can put the funding to best use to improve their organisational resilience and capacity for serving their communities.

Hear from some of the Lloyds Bank Foundation grantees we’ve supported so far:

North East Young Dads and Lads: corporate engagement strategy

“Our Advisory Manager asked those difficult questions and provided that CAF knowledge bank so we could understand how we compare to other charities of our size, where we should or could be, and gave us some clear goals to work towards. It’s a really important piece of work for us; it gives us something meaningful to reflect on and implement and the confidence to look at what we could do differently.” Read the full story

Lawrence Weston Community Farm: corporate engagement strategy

“Being able to use CAF as a very well informed ‘critical friend’ to discuss ideas with was invaluable. We were able to tap into CAF’s extensive experience of the wider sector and current trends in relation to us developing increased income from corporate donors. The support has enabled us to refocus energy and enthusiasm on this area of our work, which has already begun to produce positive results.” Read the full story

YMCA Exeter: major donor programme

“The support from CAF has developed our capacity to steward a major donor programme and this will help us improve our core funding to expand our programme. We immediately took CAF’s advice and got in touch with one of our major donors. We felt it important to update them on the progress of the project they had supported and this led to the donor introducing us to a friend who was also in a position to make a substantial donation.”

YMCA Exeter

“CAF offers real expertise to our charity partners to develop their relationships with corporates and major donors that we know they could not access easily elsewhere.”

Neil Shashoua, Manager, North East and Cumbria
Lloyds Bank Foundation for England & Wales

“Working with corporates is an area that more and more charities are looking to explore as they diversify their funding mix post-Covid. CAF offers specialist and tailored support that helps organisations consider their options and develop an implementation plan.”

Frances Warwick, Manager, East of England
Lloyds Bank Foundation for England & Wales

Project takeaways

Flexible support within a timebound package

Our arrangement with the Foundation enables us to provide flexible, tailored support to their charity partners on the core areas of strategy, fundraising and governance over a period of seven non-consecutive days. We aim to complement and enhance the charity’s work through our knowledge and expertise, rather than delivering a set programme of work.

Building capacity in a sustainable way

We work collaboratively, engaging clients and their stakeholders to build consensus and commitment to the chosen approach, ensuring that any changes and new developments are owned by the client and are sustainable. We seek to build organisations’ capacity, not create dependency on us as consultants.