Funding London: a special case

Gaynor Humphreys, director, London Funders

Understanding the complex, multi-layered funding landscape is vital for those who want to maximise efficacy. London’s funding ecology is particularly complex and here London Funders’ director Gaynor Humphreys maps the challenges for those wanting to support the capital’s community projects.

In recent weeks the London tube map has been in the news. The internet has been abuzz with new versions to address the increased complexity of London’s railways now the Docklands Light Railway and the Overground need to be fitted in. None yet rivals Harry Beck’s schematic map, constantly updated since 1931, but effort is still going in to finding the perfect solution to clarifying London’s more complicated connections.

 Many of London’s funders have been working together for a decade or so to build metaphorical maps of London’s complex demography, needs and assets in order to strengthen their responsiveness. They came together in London Funders (LF)  – across sectoral boundaries – bringing the London Boroughs together with foundations, Lottery distributors and corporate funders, to draw on each other’s experience to strengthen their own individual approaches. Some of the complexity they seek to cut through is not unique to London: grant-makers these days need to understand commissioners and social lenders – the groups they fund grapple with all these regimes. So getting to know each other and understand their language and the procedures is a practical part of what funders need. London Funders is a platform for shared knowledge, opportunities for funders to get to know each other and learn about each others’ policies and programmes and explore scope for collaboration.

Why do funders feel so strongly that in London they need some power-assistance to get to grips with their funding? London is a complex place. It is the biggest conurbation in Europe. It is the most culturally diverse city in the world. We have the largest refugee population in the UK, encompassing great diversity, and the largest settled LGBT community. We have central government focused here, much of the country’s media and corporate structures headquartered in London, and many of the world’s financial services. Unlike other parts of England we still have three very distinct tiers of government (the Greater London Authority having survived, with somewhat enhanced powers, the government’s recent cull of regional structures while 33 boroughs divide the London population between them for local services).  Funding to support Londoners well in this complex environment tests the knowledge and skill of experienced funders.

London, as a whole is the most prosperous region in England and while aspects of London’s diversity are its strength, digging deeper into the statistics shows the largest proportion of children living in poverty, higher unemployment than the UK average, especially among young people, and the biggest inequalities in wealth. Trust for London’s London Poverty Profile (www.londonspovertyprofile.org.uk) has become a vital source of analysed data that not only substantiate the detail of these painful statistics but help funders keep on top of trends – that child poverty, for example, is now growing faster in Outer London and in households where someone is in work. Cripplegate Foundation in Islington, one of London’s oldest grant-makers, has researched poverty in its area – one where the inequalities between rich and poor are at their starkest - to deepen its understanding of the reasons for poverty in its patch (often associated with disability, mental illness or limited employment skills). Their work is now driven forward at many levels – continuing ameliorative, urgent support to address need and increasingly also funding services which offer new opportunities and skills to local people; collaborating with the local council in policy development, e.g. in a debt strategy; and building a coalition of local funders to raise new resources from wealthier local people and businesses (Islington Giving )

Funders ask London Funders for a regular digest of information about London and about each other’s programmes and policies that will help them rapidly keep up to speed. LF’s members’ events concentrate on emerging issues or areas of practice: a meeting to provide a rapid introduction to the personalisation agenda in adult social care helped funders understand the implications of big structural changes on the horizon for voluntary organisations working with disabled people, older people and others; what we did not expect as an outcome from this same event was to find that borough officers working to develop good structures and systems for personal budgets were doing this in isolation from other boroughs – an informal support network emerged.

At a more tangible level, our project group that brought together funders interested in supporting VCS infrastructure (the organisations that help keep frontline services informed, trained, coordinated and supported), played a valuable role when Big Lottery Fund’s Basis programme and Capacitybuilders funding started. It was this group which provided a funder perspective on the myriad generalist and specialist second tier organisations in London and helped the specific funders develop a strategy to direct effective support: no other England region was able to involve funders in kick-starting strategic funding in these programmes as effectively.

A recent discussion in our Olympics project group has brought some funders together to look at the feasibility of a legacy fund for London following the 2012 Games– a permanent addition to the resources in London for community-based sport.

A chilling recent use has been made of the Tube map to highlight the needs of Londoners. If you live eight Jubilee Line stops east of Westminster, for example, you have eight years knocked off your life expectancy. Many of London’s funders are alert to the challenges and by sharing what they know and collaborating in what they do are aiming to work their funding smarter and harder to London’s benefit.

Gaynor Humphreys, director, London Funders
London Funders welcomes membership enquiries from institutional and individual funders and philanthropists: info@londonfunders.org.uk