SPEAKER_02 0:37

Hello, you're listening to the Philanthropisms Podcast. This is the podcast where we try to put philanthropy in context. I'm your host, as ever, Rodri Davis, and this week I'm in conversation with Mary Rose Gunn. Now, Mary Rose is the founder and chief executive of The Four, which is a philanthropic funder based here in the UK that has a mission to turbocharge exceptional small charities that are transforming lives and society. So the key thing is they sort of focus on giving support particularly to small organizations, but that support comes in the form of financial uh assistance, but also a wider package of kind of funder plus activities, including uh kind of mentoring, some skilled volunteering, um, trustee opportunities, that kind of thing, as you'll hear through the conversation. Um, so I sat down with Mary Rose uh back in December, just before Christmas, um, and we had a good chat. Um, we talked about uh how the four came about, why the particular focus on small charities was important. Um, we talked about whether there is a unique value to small charities so that they're kind of worth you know, inherently worth supporting because they bring something above and beyond what you could get from other kinds of organizations, or whether it's just a case of there being a particular market failure at the moment in terms of funding smaller organizations. Um we talked a bit about competition and collaboration and why within the charity sector that doesn't always work in the way that you think it might do. Um we also talked about uh collaborations between the public sector and the philanthropic sector when it comes to funding things and some kind of interesting uh potential there. Um we talked about whether one of the barriers to people funding uh small organizations, individual donors or grantmakers, is simply that they can't identify who them are who those organizations are. They just don't know. It's often very hard to find information about small charities unless you already know them and have a relationship with them, and particularly if you're not kind of locally focused in an area or networked, um, and how you kind of overcome some of those sorts of barriers. Uh, we talked quite a bit about core cost funding and why that was so important for small charities, particularly, I mean for bigger charities as well, um, and some of the myths that that are there around uh spending on things like overheads and how we we challenge those. Um we talked a bit about you know what it is that charities actually do spend money on when they're lucky enough to get core costs, um, right you know, rather than some of the kind of perceived wastage that that happens. Um we talked about whether the aim for small charities should always be to scale in some sense, to get much bigger or to kind of replicate what they do elsewhere, or whether actually sometimes being small is enough in itself and you don't necessarily need to scale. Um we talked about whether the grant making and grant application process is too onerous for small organizations and kind of how funders could do things about that to make that process less painful. Um and we never said we talked a bit about measurement and the balance between having trust-based relationships uh and trying to kind of impose measurements that uh meet the needs of funders but are also beneficial for for their grantees as well. Um, so without further ado, let's go into the conversation. Um, I'll be back at the end with the usual bit of housekeeping. Okay, great. Well, I'm here with Mary Rose Gunn. Hi there, Mary Rose.

SPEAKER_00 4:15

Hi, good morning.

SPEAKER_02 4:16

Great to have you on the podcast. Um, and for those listening, as you'll have heard, Mary Rose uh is the uh chief executive of the four. Lots to talk about, I think about you know how to fund charities and the power of small organizations and some of the challenges kind of facing those organizations at the moment. But maybe the best place to start just for you to say a bit about what the four is, how the organization came about, and what the kind of um key aims of it are.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Uh okay, thanks very much, Roger. It's lovely to be here with you today. I set up the four in 2017, we launched officially in 2017, but I actually set up a pilot sort of on the side of my day job, really, in 2012, and it was about trying to address a massive gap in the market that I had noticed. So in 2012, I had been in the charity sector for five years, and I had come to realise that there was nowhere for small charities and social enterprises to go to get hold of seed funding and skills support. There was just a lot of support out there in terms of program funding, and uh it was not really working for people who had good ideas. So, you know, for example, one of the reasons why I really came to this conclusion was um I was approached by somebody who had set up a charity that was using a volunteering model to coach, individually coach adults who had literacy um uh were struggling with literacy issues. And uh she had realized, having done work in prisons, um, that there was a huge problem outside of prisons, but that people didn't want to admit that they didn't know how to read because it was really embarrassing. And therefore, going to big public classes was not really an option, and that um you could have a huge amount of success in changing people's life and change people's lives through um helping them learn to read if you did it on a one-to-one basis. And she did volunteer reading coaching. Anyway, she had set up a group um down in Dorset where she was doing coaching, and then she had other friends and um colleagues who wanted to get involved as well, and they're working well down in Dorset. She then moved up to uh Gloucestershire and set up a similar group up in Gloucestershire because there was exactly the same problem uh in Gloucestershire, and she realized as people were starting to approach her to start these reading volunteer coaching literacy groups around the country that she needed an umbrella charity, an umbrella body to be able to provide support to people that wanted to do this. And there was nowhere for her to go to get hold of any kind of funding support for this sort of thing because you know it wasn't a project-based funding, it was about setting up a governance structure, and it was also somewhere there was nowhere for her to go to get the kind of skill support that she needed. You know, she was somebody who was an expert in adult learning, she didn't know how to run an organization and hadn't done it before. So when somebody said, Oh, can you write a business plan? She needed some help in doing that. Anyway, we worked with her to support her 11 years ago and gave her a grant and um helped introduce her to a number of um trustees and other um types of skills support. And it was this and the success of this that basically really inspired me to set up the four as a funding model, which is about asking charities, small charities and social enterprises, what they need rather than deciding what we want to give them. So it's about investing in these charities and social enterprises rather than buying outcomes. You know, we weren't supporting her on the basis of how many more adults are going to know how to read once they've worked with you. We were saying, look, you're setting up a business, basically, it's a charity, but it is also a business. And what do you, you know, what do you need money to invest in and you can spend it so it's unrestricted funding. Um and uh working as a as a as a supporter um rather than a shopper, basically, is how I sort of like to put it. Um and it was on the back of this that the four pilot was set up, and we in the pilot we for between 2012 and 2016 um we made 51 grants and gave away a million pounds and had phenomenal results in terms of the charities that we were supporting, and 10 years later, 50% over 50% of them are now national charities. Um, and then in 2017 we launched formally as the four, and uh we've given away nearly nine million now, um, and have got 555 charities in our portfolio and counting basically, we're adding them to them every day. And to go back to that initial idea, the charity that Ginny set up, it is now a national charity, it has been featured in BBC Documentary hosted by Jay Blades, the presenter on um Repair Shop, um, if anyone's heard of him. Um, and Ginny herself is now retired, um, and the charity is going from strength to strength. Um, it's called Readeasy UK, and we are extremely proud. Ginny joined our board at the Four and she's just retired from there as well, um, but was really involved in helping us do what we're trying to do at the Four because she herself was such an advocate for how needed it is in the sector.

SPEAKER_02 9:45

Yeah, it's really, really interesting to hear. Um, and maybe you could say a bit more about kind of as the model has expanded beyond that project into supporting um many other small organisations um, you know, with their their needs and helping them to grow. What that's looked like on the funding side, because I know a lot of your work is about sort of making it possible to bring in philanthropists and funders from from elsewhere who kind of share your your aims.

SPEAKER_00 10:13

So I think it's it we've just been doing more of I think what we really more of the same of what we did to start with. So the pilot was largely funded by an outside funder who I went to and said, I've got this idea for this different type of funding model. Would you be interested in putting money in to support grants? Because if we're going to go out and get charities to apply and ask them to spend time on it, we need to know that we we've got something to give them at the end. And um, the funder who was really interested in the idea of getting money into grassroots organization and you know, visionary leaders, basically people with great ideas from the bottom up, was really open to that and was really keen. And um, we worked with them in getting them involved in helping, they were very hands-off in a very positive way, but also they wanted to understand that the right decisions were being made. So they were involved in the decision-making process, but not they didn't have autonomy over it. Um, and I think that's something that we continue to do and take forward in that we know that the decisions that are being made about who gets the funding are around the best charities with the best management systems, the best who are being run by the best people, who've got the best um uh knowledge of the problems and the communities that they're working in, um, rather than because it's so difficult when you are funding to take the emotion out of it and to not feel connected to certain causes. But so the decisions on who gets support initially are very much made on those objective criteria. And then what has changed, I think, is that as we have expanded the supporters that we work with, so it's a mixture of businesses and philanthropists, if they then have certain specific areas that they want to support, they can then choose which ones to work with of the ones that have been so you know, we, for example, we just um published our latest list of grants in our current funding round. So we've got 12 new charities on board, and then some of our supporters that we work with will then essentially sort of adopt the ones that they particularly resonate or particularly resonate with them with certain of them. But we the who gets into the pool in the first place is done on completely objective criteria. Um, so it means that everything of a certain quality, which I think is a big part of how we are able to work really positively with so many different funders, is because they know that there's a quality control is kind of inherent in the process before they then are able to put their own personal interests and and cause-based um uh wishes on top of that. Um, but I think in terms of how the kind of individual relationships, we're very we're now we're very flexible because everybody has different needs, different motivations and for getting involved. And we really enjoy the fact that we can work in a number of different ways with different partners. So obviously, a partnership with somebody like BlackRock, who is one of our um big corporate partners, is very different to a partnership with an individual philanthropist who is getting involved because you know they might have um been quite successful themselves, and they realize that a lot of that was down to the fact that they were given some lucky chance, um some lucky breaks in life, and they want to be able to do that for some of these social entrepreneurs. They want to be the person that that takes a risk. And so, you know, from their perspective, they're they're looking for something quite different from a corporate, but it's really fun trying to make it work for everybody because fundamentally, you know, these are all very positive relationships and extremely collaborative. Um we have an extremely collaborative model where there's nothing, you know, there's nothing better than as a philanthropist getting to meet um somebody like Ginny or you know, a young person that's set up a charity because they've been through the care system and they want to make the care system better. Um and uh I think that's that's something that has evolved in that we've got now we've got donors who want to get much more involved than than some of our initial supporters were who were much more hands-off.

SPEAKER_02 14:36

Yeah, that's that's really interesting. And you you mentioned collaboration there, and there's obviously one part of that that is kind of collaboration between the the funders and the donors and the organizations um receiving that funding and doing the work. Do you also see any elements of collaboration between funders on projects? Because I guess you know, often the model that we have in mind of philanthropy is a relatively individualistic one. It's like an individual person or company deciding what they want to do and going out and funding something. But actually, you know, in the sector we talk a lot about how important it is that we find ways to get more collaboration on the funding side within philanthropy. Is that something that you see happening through the four?

SPEAKER_00 15:14

I think, yes, in a few ways, and more and more so as time goes on. Um, in that I think that there is, you know, it can be very lonely being a philanthropist. It can be very lonely running a small charity, but it also can be very lonely being a philanthropist. And we are finding that we're meeting more and more partners who want to be able to retain control but also exchange ideas and work together. Um, and so yeah, we are actually as we go forward, we're kind of setting up more systems and and ways in which we can bring people together to have really useful and positive conversations about what they're doing and to share ideas and experiences. Um, because I think I think you're right that there is definitely a uh a movement towards more collaboration because you know no one is going to change things on their own. Everybody needs to work together. And um, and we are, I mean, we are working on some ideas for next year actually around specific um uh cause areas. I mean they're very broad, but so for example, we're looking at doing a big project on uh getting people together who are looking at funding sustainability um and grassroots sustainability projects and programs, um, because I think there's you know, climate change is obviously a massive issue and top-down changes aren't going to solve it alone. We need to have a lot more support for grassroots activism, and you know, whether it be circular economy type of charities or um local biodiversity projects, they they are in need of um small amounts of support just as much as you know the projects working in in social equity and inclusion or in mental health. Um, and to be able to bring people together to talk about these things and and kind of brainstorm and and get excited about the change that is possible is something that is really interesting, I think, to donors.

SPEAKER_02 17:12

Yeah, absolutely. Um and and kind of going back to the the focus of the organization on on small charities, and obviously you sort of said about how it all came about through that that one particular example that kind of set the template. Um, and to some extent, you know, that there's clearly a market failure in terms of the funding available for small organizations, particularly sort of startup ones or ones that they're a point of of needing to grow or develop as organizations. But is that also what you do kind of in part driven by any sort of sense that smaller organizations in the charity sector have some sort of unique value, not that they're necessarily better than big charities, but they do things differently and perhaps do things that bigger organizations can't or don't do?

SPEAKER_00 17:59

Yes, a hundred percent. Um I yeah, they they have a completely unique value, um, both in terms of uh uh I would argue innovation, but also in terms of uh improving equity. Um so if I mean nobody would expect Marks and Spencer's to be able to you know come up with the next best idea in in um you know online retail, um they are big businesses are generally not innovators, the innovators you know come from the smaller um uh startup businesses, innovation comes from startup businesses, and it's exactly the same in the charity sector in that the so much innovation is in really small organizations, and if we don't support smaller charities to be able to get bigger and to be able to take their innovations to the mainstream, we you know we're not going to be able to solve social problems. So the role of small charities from that perspective is really vital, but it's also, I mean, there's a lot of research now that shows that um charities working in marginalized communities are smaller, they find it really hard to access the kind of main funding streams. So for us, it's a vital, um, it is of vital importance to support small charities if we really want to support equity and inclusion. And we are very proud of the diversity stats of the leadership of the charities that we support. So in 2022, 19% of the charities we supported have leaders, uh, had leaders who were people of colour, and 15% had leadership with experiencing disability. So we're we we're pretty, I mean, there's still a lot of work to do. We could get our statistics could get even better, but we're really proud of the fact that we are breaking down barriers, and that is vital, I think, both for the equity of society, but also from the perspective of allowing innovative solutions to come through. Um, because you know, if we want there should be proper competition in the charity sector, the big charities should have people nipping at their heels with really good solutions that they can take on board, that they can incorporate, you know, that they could collaborate with. And if small charities aren't able to get hold of any kind of resource, their solutions remain in the grassroots. They're never able to get beyond that.

SPEAKER_02 20:21

And what's your sense of of what the kind of the biggest barriers have been to them getting that funding? I mean, is is it just a case of you know, literally people aren't aware of them and the work they're doing, certainly donors and companies, and if they were, they might they might be willing to fund them? Or I mean are there kind of other issues in terms of having you know slightly higher hurdles to jump in terms of people having trust in them or feeling as though they need to do more due diligence than they might on a big um sort of well-known brand name organization?

SPEAKER_00 20:52

There are a huge number of barriers to small organizations getting hold of uh funding and support. And I think that they are across a range of areas, but you know, complicated processes that trusts and foundations and funders put in place are a huge issue in that in order to try and reduce their burden on due diligence, funders put in place processes that are basically putting hurdles in the way for many small charities. So, you know, a complicated form where you have to try and describe in 150 words what your organization does. And you know, if you have a fundraising department and you have grant writers and bid writers, that's not that difficult for you to complete and to do. And they, you know, people are practiced at it. But if you've got one or two or three staff spending time honing and crafting your pitch so that it, you know, you've got it written somewhere in 250 words, and then this person wants it in 150 words, and they want it phrased in a slightly different way because the way the question is asked is different. Can be a massive barrier for small organizations because they just don't have the capacity. There's also a confidence thing, and this really affects the discrimination point, I think, is that often people running really small organizations, particularly when they're from marginalized communities, you know, they might have tried once or twice, but they haven't, if they haven't been successful, they sort of turn away and think, well, they clearly don't want to fund me. So what is the point? I know I'm obviously not good enough because you know I don't necessarily understand some of the jargon that the funder might be using. And if you know, I this makes me feel like it's it's not for me and they don't really want to support me, when actually this is often completely the opposite. You know, for example, you know, some of the lotteries wording, it's it's it's much better, I think, than it was, but you know, a lot of you know, using words like stakeholder and community capacity and all of these sorts of things. I mean, I often am a little bit lost in some of the different jargon that the sector uses. And so if you're somebody, if you're a teacher who's set up a charity or you're a care worker who set up a charity and you've worked in a totally different sector, yeah, some of that language can be really um uh detrimental, I think, in helping you to understand that these are people that want to support you. So that is a huge barrier. There are also, you know, there are so many myths around inefficiency and poor practice in small charities. And so, I mean, undoubtedly, there are always going to be examples of bad practice, but there are so many examples of good practice, and the vast majority of people who work in the small charity sector are really good people who are trying to do things well. And I think that um it is really important that funders remember that and don't penalize people for not necessarily doing things in exactly the way that they want, because often it's quite arbitrary what a funder wants as opposed to you know what a charity, how a charity is operating on the ground, because you know, so small charities they are operating on a hand-to-mouth basis. It's so hard to get a hold of funding. Um, and you know, to put money into fundraising and to spend time on it. Um, for me, I I feel that funders owe them a duty of trying to make life as easy as possible for them. Um, because you know, fundamentally time fundraising is time away from their beneficiaries.

SPEAKER_02 24:27

Yeah, absolutely. And and you mentioned there that there are you know the sort of well-known and unhelpful myths out there, and certainly you know, one of them that that comes to mind there is I mean, everybody talks about the the overhead myth. So, you know, kind of the donors or funders end up focusing on you know these perceived things being spent on overheads or you know, kind of wasteful elements of things that aren't really necessary when they want their money to go to the front line. And obviously, you're you're talking about trying to get core cost funding, unrestricted funding out to the to these organizations. So, I mean, in terms of overcoming some of that that myth in the minds of donors, I mean, what do you find in terms of what these organizations actually genuinely spend core cost funding on? You know, because it'd be really interesting to hear when when you do that and place faith in these organizations what it is that they actually go and use the money for, because I'm sure it's not inflated CEO salaries.

SPEAKER_00 25:23

And it's yeah, it is not spending too much money on post-it notes, put it that way. Um so, well, our due diligence and and application process is about working with the applicants to help them work out what they need to spend money on in terms of creating some kind of step change in their organization. So we are giving charities and social enterprises funding that is going towards helping them increase their impact, increase their sustainability, um, helping to secure them basically in the longer term so that ultimately they can do more of what they are doing because it's really good. And we ask them initially to tell us very briefly what they might use the funding for and how it would help them take a step forward as a charity in becoming stronger or scaling in some way, and then the role of our consultants is that they work with the top um uh percentage of applicants to kind of kick the tires on that as a critical friend. So to really check with them, you know, you're asking for funding for this, um might be a role. Uh, you know, how is that really going to make you stronger as an organization? How once our funding has run out, how are you going to fund that in the longer term? You know, what is this really going to unlock for you? And the charities, I mean, they know the answers, they've already got the answers, and that's also something that we're looking for. We're looking for people who know what they need to do, they just can't find somebody who will support them to do it. And so I think it's it's not that difficult for charities to know what they need to do. A lot of it, from our perspective, is it's often going to support salary costs. I mean, a lot of the charities that we are giving money to, it's unrestricted funding, so they use it for what they they decide to use it on, but that's done as sort of in collaboration with us during the due diligence process, is them deciding what they need. But a lot of it is going to, for example, paying for salary costs so that a founder can give up their day job to run their organisation full-time or to take on somebody. Often there's the founder might be spending so much time on delivery that they don't have time to spend on scaling up. So they'll use funding to pay for a new staff member to take over some of their delivery responsibilities so they can contact uh concentrate on um uh looking at the strategic direction of the organization. Um, or you know, we fund boring things like if you've got we just funded a charity who is bringing in a CRM and IT system to do better data management, and if they can do better data management, they'll be able to report back and they'll be able to build more partnerships with the local authority. They're working with um uh children who've experienced extreme trauma, and they obviously need to have a really, really robust data management system that is completely and utterly um secure and safeguarded and all of those sorts of things, and that costs money. But if they can pay for that, it's going to save them. I think they're reckoning on it's gonna save them 10 staff days a month when they've got that in place. So, I mean, the funding can be used for anything, but generally the charity know what they need to spend money on to make them more efficient or more effective or able to help more people, and it's just kicking the tires on that thinking and making sure that they are and doing it gently in a really positive, supportive way, so that you know they themselves really have confidence that that's what they need the money for as well as us.

SPEAKER_02 29:01

Yeah, absolutely. And and you mentioned there about um uh scaling up and and obviously with in organizations at a certain uh size, you know, smaller ones, obviously there there are various routes forward for them because uh you know if they get additional money, and part of that might be about just doing more of what they're already doing, but some of it might be about aiming to get bigger or to replicate what they're doing elsewhere. I mean, what what do you see in terms of the organizations that you work with? Is is there quite a focus on organizations for whom part of their thinking is that they do want to scale up? And and what's your sense kind of more broadly across small charities of of uh of the kind of overall landscape? Because I I sort of wonder whether you know sometimes we feel as though all small small organizations in the charity sector should be aiming to uh to scale up. But then some people say, well, actually, in some cases, maybe it's enough to do what they're they're doing, and it's good good for some organizations to grow, but other ones are just very small, kind of place-based organizations that just need to do their thing, and and that's probably enough. So, what what's your your sort of sense through the work you do and kind of how that fits in more broadly?

SPEAKER_00 30:09

I think it's it's very much each to their own, and that was something that we hope really comes out through our application processes because for some, you're I couldn't agree more, for some, you know, scaling up is absolutely what they need to do, and it's the right thing for them, but for others, they are a very vital local community-based project that is never going to want to get beyond the local community that they're in. But in a situation like that, we would be supporting them to try and become more sustainable because you know there are so many amazing local community projects that have provided vital support in the community, but they're so reliant on one key person and they fundraise on an ad hoc day-to-day basis that when that person wants to retire, the whole project falls apart, and any learning that's been had from or been been taken from that is lost, and the community is much worse off for it. So, in a situation like that, we would be working with them to say, well, you know, what's right for you if it's what's right for you is to be more secure and more sustainable in the long term. You know, how are you going to work out a system whereby you have got more secure longer-term funding streams that aren't going to necessarily go be strong, be higher, you're not going to be raising more money. But how can you make sure that you're not constantly feeling like you might go bust in three months' time because you know all of your grant funding is only on an annual basis, that sort of a thing. Um, but with scale up, it also depends on demand. You know, we would never fund anything to scale up that wasn't able to evidence very serious demand. Um, and the potential um it completely depends on each different applicant. And so we're about giving organizations money to invest in what is right for them for the mission of their charity. So, you know, our mission is to turbocharge exceptional small charities and that are transforming lives and society, but we do that by investing in the missions of each individual organization so that you know kind of take that back a step, it means we're looking for charities and social enterprises with really strong missions. But when they've got those, they know what's right for them, whether that be scale up or whether that be just to embed themselves more strongly in their local place-based community um solution.

SPEAKER_02 32:37

Yeah, absolutely. And and obviously, in terms we talked quite a bit about you know the the upfront stuff around the due diligence and how how that works and how it kind of um works with the organizations and puts them in a position to potentially receive funding. But obviously, I mean, from what I'm I'm aware, that's not where the work that FOR does kind of finish, and actually there's quite a lot of additional support after the money as well. It'd be really interesting to kind of get your sense of what it is that those small organizations need and value apart from the money, which is obviously important, but what other kind of support and and um skills that they benefit from.

SPEAKER_00 33:15

Uh yeah, we're very definitely not just about the money. Uh, in fact, we published a report about a year ago entitled Just That. Um and I'm always really proud of the fact that people who apply say, Oh, the reason why I really wanted this grant wasn't just for the funding, it was because of the fact that we offer a whole programme of non-financial support. And that is a range of things. It's from peer-to-peer networks because it's very running lonely running small charities, to um access to um pro bono volunteers. So, what you know, you might be looking at building contracts with um businesses, and you'd love to have a lawyer on your board because it would be really good to have somebody who's got legal experience to look over contracts before you decide whether you would need to take that to for you know expensive legal advice or help with marketing. It could be anything from a skills perspective, but we also run loads of workshops and a queue, which is actually open to any charity that's applied to us, to come along to our workshops and seminars, run with a whole range of partners on all sorts of subjects, which are both dictated by the portfolio charities in terms of we talk to them and find out what they're interested in and what challenges they're facing, and what might they want to learn more about, be it about governance models or fundraising or um you know how to write basic accounts or we know how to write a cash flow. Um, uh, and then it's also really important as we help uh all of the charities we work with if they need it with impact management and measurement, because fundamentally, if the charities we're supporting can't measure the difference that they're making, they're never going to be able to see be successful in the long term. You have to be able to show the difference that you're making.

SPEAKER_02 35:05

Yeah, absolutely. And and instead you mentioned there, one of the things as well is kind of uh uh creating peer-to-peer networks and giving sort of um direct uh training and support for organizations to develop their skills is the potential for uh kind of skilled volunteering or putting people who might come from the the funder side or corporate side um you know in positions as as trustees to bring their skills to bear. What have you found in terms of what that requires? Because it's certainly something I've you know I've talked to people about over the years, and they say it's brilliant when it works, but if you assume that you could just take somebody from a corporate finance or a legal background and plonk them in a small charity and it'll all be magical, you're gonna be very sorely disappointed. So it's a kind of how much you know managing of that relationship do you find it requires?

SPEAKER_00 35:52

Actually, surprisingly little. We've got a huge amount of experience in doing this because actually, before I set up before, I set up a skills-based volunteering network in 2009. So I've now been doing this for nearly 15 years. Um, and one of the key things that we do is that we coach the charities as well as the people who are interested in sharing their skills. So we do a lot of this and we connect a lot of our donors with uh charity leaders because they're really interested in helping out and and sharing their expertise. Um, but one thing that we've noticed is that because yeah, it it can take a lot of time to manage relationships, but if you get the chemistry right, then it it can generally it can be very positive very easily. And one of the crucial ways of getting the chemistry right is making sure that the charity feels like they don't have to work with somebody who isn't the right fit. So we will say to every charity that we talk to, and we'll say the same thing to the professional volunteers as well, but we'll say to the charities, look, you know, start with a coffee, and I mean these days it's even easier, you can do 20 minutes on Zoom, but start with a quick chat. And if you feel like this person is interested in your work and is has enough of an understanding and is and is asking you interesting questions that make you feel like you go away from the conversation, feeling like you know you you've had a had a really interesting chat and it's made you feel good about yourself, then you know that's the right chemistry. And it's the same from the the um professional person's point of view, they need to be excited to be talking to, they need to be excited to be able to think, oh, you know, my knowledge of um writing strategic business plans or my knowledge of being a marketing expert, I can really help this charity, I can make their life a bit easier. And when you get that chemistry between two, you actually we don't need to do very much. So for us, it we will say, look, you know, you're both grown-ups, you are it's a bit like dating. It's like, you know, we'll introduce you, but we can't tell whether it's going to work. Only you can tell whether it's gonna work on both sides. Um, so we'll make introductions. If they if the chemistry is right and you enjoy meeting each other, those introductions go somewhere. And if they don't, that's absolutely no trouble at all. Because from the charities perspective, you know, there are lots of lawyers out there, for example, who are interested in joining the boards of charities. We can find you another lawyer that there will be the right chemistry with. And similarly, from the professionals' perspective, we say, you know, you've got to come away from a conversation excited about what they do as a charity and feeling energized by it. And generally, when that happens, that person is very respectful of the fact that the charity is very busy and doesn't have much time and won't, you know, they will, if they are going to become a trustee, you know, we encourage, for example, the charities to you know put in place some standard sort of job recruitment hoops for that person, the the applicants to jump through. Because if they've jumped through the hoops, then they're going to make a good trustee and they'll turn up for meetings. So I think our uh advice on that skills matching, and we've done you know, hundreds of them over the years, is basically it's it's about thinking most chemistry is is the most important thing of all. And you know, the charity might, as a professional, you might have a complete love for charities using music as a way of um uh giving people with disabilities um access to you know a certain kind of mental health support. But if the person running the charity that is doing exactly that isn't someone you get on with, it doesn't matter how great you love the cause, it's never going to quite work. So we also encourage our professional volunteers to think a little bit more broadly about what um about what causes they're interested in, because often, and I say this from very personal experience, you know, I'm on the board of a charity that is about environmental sustainability and architecture, supporting traditional architecture. It's not something I knew very much about at all, but I'm fascinated by it the more I learn about it, and I completely the woman who at the exec director is fantastic. And I met her and I realized that I could help her, and that with the knowledge and experience I have, I was able to share that would be valuable to you. My sharing would be valuable to her. And for professionals, I think that is something that we really encourage is is to you know, it is about chemistry, it's about personalities, and try not to be too prescriptive in terms of cause, because actually you might be quite surprised by the person that you really decide you realize you want to help, and it might not be something you expect.

SPEAKER_02 40:52

Yeah, that's a really interesting point because I guess at that scale, particularly, I mean, as they say in in kind of you know venture capital investment, it is sort of unavoidably about people and kind of individual uh relationships, and there's no getting away from that, and actually sort of better to embrace it and make that a part of your thinking rather than try and and sort of make it all entirely, you know, dispassionate and and and objective.

SPEAKER_00 41:14

Yeah, we have a quite so sorry to say we it it's quite an interesting um balance because on the one hand we have these very we're very objective, we've you know, we we fund across all cause areas basically, but on the other hand, it is all about people, it's all about leadership.

SPEAKER_02 41:30

Yeah, which no, which is is really interesting, isn't it? Is kind of you know at the points at which you sort of allow that that balance to to shift back and acknowledge it. Um, one thing I wanted to ask you is as well, kind of coming back to to the funding side of it. I mean, looking at all the grants you've made, um, you know, in one sense, it's a funny thing about philanthropy, isn't it? That they're like in one sense, from the point of view of the organizations receiving the money, it is a lot of money and it's probably transformative. But then in another sense, actually, they're not huge amounts of money, they're not vast grants on the scale of a Gates Foundation or that kind of thing. But do you find it frustrating sometimes when people are talking about philanthropy more broadly, that it does end up being about, well, how big is the amount of money and everybody gets fixated on these kind of huge sums? Whereas actually sometimes, you know, is it difficult to make the case that much smaller amounts of money can be incredibly effective, but if they are targeted carefully and done done with thought, and actually maybe that's what we need to focus more on, because in reality that's where most people who are out there who potentially could be philanthropists are going to be operating, not at the scale of the the Bill Gatesers of this world.

SPEAKER_00 42:41

I don't think it's that difficult in my experience to make the argument because I think that the sorts of people that we're talking to are, I mean, sort of by definition, they're talking to us because they're interested in making smaller grants to smaller charities. I think that helping people to realize that you can have the most enormous impact with that is something that is more of a challenge because a lot of people just don't realise that 30 grand can, I mean, it has the potential to genuinely change the world. And um and I think that's it's it's fun from my perspective being able to explain that to people because they find it really exciting. And we work with quite a lot of um donors who are interested in giving more, but they don't have a pipeline, and they are really excited when they meet us because they had no idea that there is an organization out there like ours that can basically provide them with that pipeline. So they'll work with us on supporting a wide range of uh charities doing all sorts of different things, and then they'll get to know the charities during that initial smaller grant phase, and then they'll go on and do follow on funding to the ones that they really want to get in. Involved with. So, you know, for example, we work with uh an entrepreneur who um uses our ability to look at an enormous range of charities to help her narrow down the ones that she really wants to join the board of or become a mentor to the C to the chief exec of. Um and uh and I think that is really exciting for philanthropists and donors when they can realise quite how their resources have the ability to be properly catalytic.

SPEAKER_02 44:34

Yeah, absolutely. Um and I just I'm I'm aware in danger of taking up uh too much of your time. I just wanted to ask um whether, in you know, the last couple of years that you've been working, obviously the environment for charities more broadly, but particularly small organisations, has changed and got tougher, and whether you've seen that reflected in the work you're doing, you know, in in terms of whether you've seen more issues around burnout of people leading small organizations and and you know dealing with the kind of stresses of doing that when the funding environment has got much, much more difficult. And also whether you know you've seen more focus on the idea of kind of developing resilience in organizations, because again, I think so many small organizations had to deal with the impacts of the pandemic and are now dealing with with kind of wider issues around funding. That feels as though there's a huge emphasis on on that idea of resilience. Is that is that something that's going to come through in your work?

SPEAKER_00 45:31

Yes, it's something that I'm really we're really worried about, really, really worried about. The I mean the recent NCVO data that was published in the the last Almanac, civil society Almanac showed that funding to small charities has it's like the bottom has dropped out of it. There's for the first year ever, funding to the sector in total incoming sector is down, but the the majority of the hit is being taken by the small charity end. And yeah, we I mean are we in constant conversations with the um charities in our portfolio, and what we are hearing over and over again is that the funding environment is incredibly tough at the moment, and the ones that we are backing are very creative and very um agile and very impressive in what they're managing to do with smaller amounts of money and with kind of very clever partnership models and all sorts, but there's only so long that people can have the energy to keep things going on extraordinarily tight budgets when they're losing staff because they can't afford to give them the pay rises, that the staff need to be able to live. So it's something that we are really worried about, and we are trying to do what we can around the non-financial support to support them and the peer-to-peer networks are, I think, are really important in this instance. Um, but it's it is it's something that is really concerning for us. But on the other hand, I think there is awareness of it in the funder community, and there is definitely post-COVID, you know, everybody saw the incredible difference that the small community charities were making in their communities, and I think the value of small charities has been um uh it has improved hugely because of the amazing work that they did in the pandemic, and therefore the donor community I think are much more open to the idea and excited by the idea of supporting them. So, I mean that's a sort of a key um role that we hope to play is being that um intermediary. I mean, I don't really like thinking of us as an intermediary, but being that partner, being that person that you can collaborate, that organization that you can collaborate with if you're wanting to work with smaller charities, but you just don't know how to find the good ones in helping people channel funding in a really high impact, measurable way into the small charity sector.

SPEAKER_02 48:08

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and as you say, it's you're difficult to avoid the the reality that the situation is very difficult for lots of organisations out there. But I but I guess you know there are some silver linings or points of light, and and among them, as you say, is the fact that maybe we just need to hang on to that realization that so many people had during the pandemic, as you say, of the role that small, very you know, local organizations are playing in their in their communities, but try and match that with actually finding ways to to keep supporting them now rather than just when when we're in the midst of a an acute crisis. Um listen, Mary Rose, it's uh you know, thanks ever so much for finding the time to come on the podcast. It's been absolutely great to to talk and hear all about the work that you're doing. Um, before I let you go, is there I'd just give you a chance if there's anything particular that you've got coming up that you want to to flag up or bring anyone's attention to?

SPEAKER_00 48:56

Uh I think that we're about to set up in the new year some philanthropy. We're going to be doing some breakfasts to bring together um donors and sort of probably more individual family foundation type donors, particularly um new donor-advised fund holders who are interested in talking and sharing their experiences around giving money to smaller charities and talking as well about things like early stage social investment and um other pertinent issues. So um we are very open to people contacting us if they think they might be interested in attending uh on that point. And you know, it'll be a really lovely opportunity. We'll be introducing a few of our social entrepreneurs, the leadership, the leaders of the charities that we're supporting into these groups. So it'll be a really interesting um place to meet some people with really on the ground experience as well.

SPEAKER_02 49:53

Great. Well, I'll put links in the show notes to place where people can find information on the for and get in touch with you. Um just remain to say thanks ever so much and you know all the best with the work in the future.

SPEAKER_00 50:04

Thank you so much indeed for having me.

SPEAKER_02 50:15

Okay, well, my thanks again to Mary Rose for finding the time to come on the podcast. Great to have a chance to talk to her and find out about the work that the four's doing. I'll put links in the show notes to places where you can find more information about the four and also uh some things that you might find interesting to read that kind of touch on the topics that we were talking about. If you're interested more broadly in issues around philanthropy and civil society, do check out the website at whyphilanthropymatters.com where you can find articles, news updates, um, back episodes of this podcast, and lots more. If you want some shorter form musings and things, you can follow me on various types of social media. Um, best place these days is probably LinkedIn. But you can also still find me on X and I'm around on various other things, although not really doing very much with it. Uh, if you've got ideas for people that we could talk to on the podcast or topics you'd like to see covered, uh do drop us a line. You can find the contact details at the website. Otherwise, just like, subscribe, uh, leave a nice review wherever you get your podcasts, tell all your friends about it, uh, and I'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_01 51:16

Bye.