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Progress update

April 2022

Overview

This month has been focused on two major pieces of data analysis.

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Collaboration has been a key theme of the stakeholder engagement that is informing ACF’s strategic review. The Hub has contributed to analysing what foundations and other stakeholders have told us about:

  • The perceived benefits of collaboration
  • How, on what and with whom funders might collaborate to achieve these benefits
  • Challenges and barriers to collaboration
  • What could help (including potential roles for ACF).

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We’ve also started looking at what we can learn from the data on collaboration opportunities currently shared on the Hub.

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With lots of people taking holidays over Easter, April was a quieter month for new collaboration listings and visits to the Hub website, but we still saw high levels of interest in new content such as Cassie Robinson’s blog on making funding strategies more connected and our latest case study of the month sharing learning from the Community Justice Fund.

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If you have any feedback or questions about this progress update, or any aspect of the Funders Collaborative Hub, please get in touch.

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Priority 1:

Grow and develop our collaboration opportunities offer

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Intended outcome:

Funders are more connected, through using the Hub to share and engage with impactful collaboration opportunities

Indicators:

  • Increase the number of collaboration opportunities shared via the Hub (2022 target: 50 collaboration opportunities added)
  • Increase the number of funders actively using the Hub to search for opportunities
  • Evidence of increased engagement between funders through using the Hub
  • Evidence of the contribution of funder collaboration towards increased overall impact

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2 collaboration opportunities were added to the Hub in April (2022 year-to-date: 16)

The number of users and views of our search for collaboration opportunities page dropped in April. This was a result of significantly reduced visits to the website around the Easter holiday period.

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Most visited collaboration opportunities (April page views):

Data analysis

We carried out further analysis of all 93 collaboration opportunities listed on the Hub.

Top issues funders are collaborating on (see blog for more on this):

Geographic focus of collaboration opportunities:

Intended benefits of collaboration (provisional analysis of stated aims/activities):

  • 61% aim to improve coordination between funders (eg to identify gaps or avoid duplication) through more mutual awareness
  • 37% aim to tackle complex issues together (eg by using collaboration as vehicle for policy work)
  • 28% aim to enable more equitable engagement with other organisations (eg by involving non-funders in the governance of collaborations)
  • 26% aim to make funding processes more efficient (eg by pooling funds or standardising forms)

Share what you’re working on: use this simple form to tell us about an existing or emerging funder collaboration opportunity.

The role of the Funders Collaborative Hub:

  • 53% of collaboration opportunity listings on the Hub include information not previously published in any form
  • 67% want to engage new funders in existing collaborations
  • 19% are using the Hub to initiate or shape new collaborations
  • 14% are mainly using the Hub to share learning from existing collaborations

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Priority 2:

Develop the Hub’s inspiration and influencing role

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Intended outcome:

Funders are informed and inspired by the Hub to collaborate more effectively

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Indicators:

  • Number of views of Hub case studies and blogs (2022 target: 600 per month)
  • Number of views of Hub toolkit content (2022 target: 150 per month)
  • New funder collaborations are developed, informed by data and insights on needs, gaps and opportunities

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There were 788 views of Hub blogs and case studies in April (+31% vs. monthly target)

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Most visited blogs (April page views):

Most visited funder collaboration case studies (April page views):

Do you have a viewpoint on funder collaboration, or some learning to share? Get in touch about contributing to a blog or case study.

There were 151 views of our Funder Collaboration Toolkit homepage in April (in line with our monthly target)��If you have used any of the tools, we’d love to find out what worked well and what could be improved. You can feed back either through this form or by emailing us.

Through our series of blogs analysing the current landscape of funder collaboration, we aim to help funders start to explore gaps and opportunities that could be met by new collaborations.

Read part one of this series here. Parts two and three will be published later in May.

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Priority 3:

Integrate the Hub within the wider landscape & develop a sustainable model

Association of Charitable Foundations (ACF) strategic review

The Hub has worked closely with our ACF colleagues to analyse a huge number of survey responses and one-to-one interviews that touched on funder collaboration in various ways. These findings have been shared with ACF’s Board to inform the next stage of the strategy development process. Here are some of the headlines from what we’ve heard from our stakeholder conversations:

  • The perceived benefits of collaboration correspond closely to the intended impacts we have identified through our initial review of the opportunities on the Hub - improved coordination, tackling complex issues, equitable engagement with non-funders and more efficient funding processes
  • However, these benefits were not always well evidenced - some may see collaboration as a ‘silver bullet’ but need further time and support to explore both its opportunities and potential risks
  • Funders’ understanding of collaboration covers a wide spectrum, from informal information-exchange to long-term partnership working. More examples were given at the lighter-touch end of the spectrum, although there was widespread appetite for more in-depth forms of collaboration.
  • It was emphasised by many that funders should collaborate with each other but also with other types of organisations (eg frontline charities, infrastructure, government, private sector) and that collaboration should engage trustees of funders as well as staff.
  • Common barriers to collaboration include: finding the ‘right’ collaborators; inflexibility around sharing power and attributing impact; lack of capacity to spend time on collaboration; and power dynamics involved in collaboration between funders and funded organisations.
  • Things identified as helpful for collaboration (including some activities already offered by the Hub or other ACF services) were: bringing people together, including ‘unusual suspects’; access to learning and tools; making collaborations more open and inclusive, including for smaller funders; and more proactive support to initiate and drive collaborations.

This insight builds on the findings from the Hub’s design research with Shift in 2021 and will help us to develop our approach to the longer term sustainability of the Hub’s impact, within the context of ACF’s future strategy.

Raising awareness of the Hub

Overall visits to our website dropped in April (5,434 page views compared to 7,053 in March) with very low levels of use around the Easter holiday period. Activity began to return to normal levels towards the end of the month. Meanwhile, the reach of our other communication channels continued to grow:

  • 631 newsletter recipients (+4% vs March)
  • 1,637 Twitter followers (+2.8% vs March)