Progress update
March 2022
Overview
The news - and all of our thoughts - have been dominated over the last month by the war in Ukraine and its catastrophic consequences for millions of people. We know that many funders will be thinking about ways they might be able to help, whether in Ukraine, here in the UK or elsewhere in Europe. We have worked with our ACF colleagues to collate information on foundations and the war in Ukraine, including relevant collaboration opportunities.
We are grateful to funder collaboration Migration Exchange for their leadership on the UK’s refugee response, convening two informative funders briefings in March. These highlighted the work that another funder collaboration, Justice Together, is doing to meet the current and anticipated legal advice needs of Ukrainians in the UK - and how other funders can support this. At a Europe-wide level, Philea has launched Philanthropy for Ukraine to provide a platform for funders (including those based in the UK) to share their actions and requests for support.
Meanwhile, the Funders Collaborative Hub continues to help funders share and connect with a growing number of collaboration opportunities, on all the wide-ranging issues they are working on. We now have more than 90 collaboration opportunities on our website - in line with our plans for growth in this area of our work. We’re also starting to dig beneath these numbers, analysing the specific outcomes that funders are trying to achieve through their collaborations. This will be vital as we set out to evaluate the Hub’s impact, as we explore in our latest blog.
As ACF’s strategy review continues, we’re hearing more and more about the future of collaboration and the opportunities it brings for funders and civil society more widely. We hope that the Hub’s work this year will help us understand how we can develop the most effective solutions to unlock more of these opportunities.
That’s why your feedback is so valuable - whether you are a funder, or anyone else with an interest in funders being as effective as they can be. If you have any comments or questions about this progress update, or any aspect of the Funders Collaborative Hub, please get in touch.
Priority 1:
Grow and develop our collaboration opportunities offer
Intended outcome:
Funders are more connected, through using the Hub to share and engage with impactful collaboration opportunities
Indicators:
3 collaboration opportunities were added to the Hub in February (2022 year-to-date: 14)
We ran a workshop on ‘Developing your collaboration idea’ which was attended by 11 funders and has received positive feedback.
We had planned a follow-up event, ‘Collaboration cafe’, intended to showcase emerging collaboration opportunities and help them reach potential collaborators. Although this idea was popular with collaboration leaders, we had a much lower take-up than we hoped for from potential collaboration participants. As a result we decided to cancel this event to rethink the concept.
The number of users of our search for collaboration opportunities page remains fairly consistent, while average page views per user continued to increase month-on-month.
Most visited collaboration opportunities (March page views):
Impact and engagement
We carried out an initial analysis of all 91 collaboration opportunities currently listed on the Hub, to identify how they are seeking to engage with other funders. This found:
We are now starting to look at how these collaboration opportunities aim to enable funders to have more impact.
Our latest blog explores how this analysis will form part of our approach to understanding the Hub’s impact.
Share what you’re working on: use this simple form to tell us about an existing or emerging funder collaboration opportunity.
Priority 2:
Develop the Hub’s inspiration and influencing role
Intended outcome:
Funders are informed and inspired by the Hub to collaborate more effectively
Indicators:
There were 848 views of Hub blogs and case studies in March (+41% vs. monthly target)
Most visited blogs (March page views):
Most visited funder collaboration case studies (March 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 238 views of our Funder Collaboration Toolkit homepage in February (+59% vs. monthly target)��We aren’t currently able to track usage of the individual tools in the toolkit. We’re looking at how we can fix this.��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.
Using data to inform new collaborations
During 2022, we aim to explore and learn how the Hub is best placed to contribute, in partnership with others, to actively shaping new collaborations.
Next month, we will publish our first quarterly analysis of our data on funder collaboration, as a starting point for exploring what this can tell us about potential gaps and opportunities.
Priority 3:
Integrate the Hub within the wider landscape & develop a sustainable model
Association of Charitable Foundations (ACF) strategic review
In our last update, we shared some very early findings from ACF’s engagement with its members and other stakeholders to inform the development of its future strategy. We heard that collaboration is seen as one of the main opportunities for foundations over the next five years.
Building on this, the final week of this month-long conversation asked more specifically about what foundations (and ACF) should collaborate on, and with whom. ACF’s Chief Executive, Carol Mack, wrote about what we heard in this blog.
We’ve also carried out some one-to-one interviews with stakeholders, to deepen our understanding even further. We will be working with ACF colleagues to analyse everything we’ve heard through this process, together with our learning from the Hub’s work to date, and then to explore how we might answer the key strategic questions that arise from this.�
Raising awareness of the Hub
In March, the reach of the Hub’s own communication channels grew:
We also: