by Karen Millen, Senior Grants Manager
Karen Millen
Like everyone in the sector – and beyond – the ‘stay at home’ instruction in March 2020 was a big adjustment for the entire John Lyon’s Charity Team. We were fortunate that the transition to home working was relatively seamless, but we were all acutely aware that we were about to lose something which was core to our approach – ‘Grantmaking by walking around’. How could we ensure that we continued to support our grantees and maintain good relationships when we were no longer visible in the way we had all grown used to?
It required some quick and practical thinking.
Unfortunately, this was not the first time in recent years when John Lyon’s Charity has had to respond to a crisis. The devastating fire at Grenfell Tower was firmly in the heart of our Beneficial Area but our emergency response to that, in partnership with London Funders, put us in a good position to react. So, we had a template to work from.
The important factors? Speed, simplicity, collaboration. We were one of the first signatories to the London Funders joint statement and its commitment to be flexible and responsive and when London Funders announced within days that they would be setting up the London Community Response Fund, we knew it was a good place to start. Colleagues took a lead on the Children and Young People theme, participated in the Comms working group and the overall steering group meetings. Our Trustees responded swiftly too, allowing us to ringfence £500,000 towards the emergency response and later increasing that to £1m.
We also knew it was important to try and maintain some level of business as usual. The pandemic wouldn’t last forever and therefore at some point, organisations would want to return to their normal activities. We knew it was important to ensure they had the funding to do this, particularly as funding beyond the Charity’s own resources focussed on the immediate response, making the funding pipeline much more limited. Whilst we had to focus on organisations that we already had an existing relationship with, rather than brand new applicants, we maintained our usual grant cycles throughout, providing much needed reassurance to our community.
There has never been a time in our history where we have spoken to all our grantees in such a short space of time – the medium was different, but we could still maintain our relational approach. Many were keen to get reassurance, ask us questions or just needed a sympathetic ear. Where we could, we allowed grantees to change the purpose of their grant, with many exploring digital delivery for the very first time. For those where their income had been decimated overnight (mainly due to the loss of earned income), we allowed them to use our funding more flexibly to ensure their survival. There were also some simple changes we could make ourselves. We changed some internal processes, moved to accepting bank statements by email for the first time and through our ‘Lyon Bites’ monthly newsletter we were not only able to signpost grantees to different opportunities and information, but also remind them that we were still there to offer our support.
Recognising that there was a particular pressure and loneliness for charity CEOs, we were also able to award a Small Grant to the Institute of Voluntary Action Research. It put together regular peer sessions where CEOs could just chat and share their concerns (or celebrations!) in a safe space. Anonymised briefings from these sessions proved to be valuable learnings and reassurance that our approach, ever evolving as the pandemic changed, was the right one. Capacity Building has always been a tool in our box, but we took that a step further too. Goodwork, a PR and Communications agency the Charity has worked with for several years, was keen to do its bit to support the sector. In collaboration we were able to design a package of micro grants which would provide access to some important communications training – organisational messaging, media training and press releases amongst others. Using a short and simple application process, existing grantees were able to receive training from Goodwork which would help support their recovery and longer-term growth. These micro grants are here to stay and the Team is working on building this beyond communications so we can provide more capacity building opportunities across a multitude of different topics. It’s clear to us that capacity building on a wider level will have an important role to play as charities find their feet again.
When lockdown first hit, we couldn’t, with good conscience, keep our School Holiday Activity Fund open. Whilst we all naively hoped that normality would be back by the summer, in March who could tell? Our usual deadline of 1st June came and went and although there were small steps back to in-person delivery, we needed more reassurance. The National Youth Agency (NYA) proved to be our answer, taking the lead in liaising with government to agree guidelines for the delivery of youth activities. With this knowledge, we were able to open for Covid-SHAF applications from 1st July for a month. We adapted our guidelines; we would fund activities for the entirety of July and August and applicants were asked to provide an alert delivery plan (in line with the NYA guidance) so we could understand how they would operate within different restrictions. Trips would not be supported but the grant available was increased to £6,000 to recognise the increase in costs associated with PPE and additional staffing. Whilst already straightforward, we changed the application process so that existing grantees didn’t have to provide the same level of information as a new organisation. Demand for the Covid-SHAFs was on par with usual years, with many organisations desperate to offer activities to their young people who had been isolated and inactive for such a long period. For many, it was also a good mechanism to ‘test’ their procedures before the planned September return. Speedy decisions were even more important and within the space of five weeks we awarded 66 SHAFs, totalling £329K!
The repercussions of the pandemic are far from over and this has led to the creation of our Home-School-Community strategy for the years to come; this embeds some of the changes we have made but also takes us further. It’s also built on our lessons over the past year about what children and young people need. Where we can, we are keeping some of our new procedures and we are beginning to relax others precautions we had put in place (like the alert delivery plan).
What have we learnt? That you cannot replace Grantmaking by walking around. It’s clear that virtual meetings do have their place in the new ‘normal’, but we are all excited at the prospect of returning to visits in-person. The relationships we have built through this approach over the last 30 years ensured that grantees were open and honest with us about their situations. In turn that meant that we were in a better position to confidently provide them with the support they needed.
The physical distance between us as a Team may have been greater but the experience of the last year has made us even closer and we are proud of what we were able to achieve in such a short space of time. However, this is completely eclipsed by the pride we have in our grantees, who have faced one of the most challenging periods in a generation. They have not only lived to tell the tale, but have innovated, collaborated, remained determined and, most importantly of all, have supported children and young people to ensure that their experience of the last 18 months does not define their future.