Trust Targets and Hit Rates

Interesting.

I'm in a small charity with probably about £80k in trust funds a year.
With the handful we have dealt with previously, success rate is 50% (2 out of 4) in my first year.
The remainder of the applications, about 55 having a decision so far, have about a 23% success rate.

They are targetted as much as possible, using similar organisations or my area as a guide to who to target.
But many are general applications to general trusts who seem to fund all over the place, both geographically and in type of funding.
Quite a number of £500 applications, but had some successes with them. And its a foot in the door for next time, they will be vaguely aware of who we are at least. :)

Martin

Just for your interest, I've recently had to undertake an analysis of trust fundraising for our Trustees. I am the sole trust fundraiser for our medium sized charity, supported by one volunteer. I raise for both general funding and projects.

From 'repeat' appeals to trusts with whom we have an established relationship, the average success rate is between 44-50%, appealing to around 225 trusts and foundations annually.

For 'new' applications, that is, trusts who have not supported us before, the success rate is much less, at between 3-4% of approximately 500 applications per annum.

I have income targets set annually, but the number of applications I make to reach that target is entirely my decision.

Molly Housego MInstF (Cert), ILM (Cert)
Fundraising & Legacy Officer
BREAK

Thank you to everyone for your responses. This will give me something to take to my boss when I'm setting my targets for next year! Paula.

[quote]
Also what hit rate do most people expect to get from low level asks?
[/quote]

Just to sort of echo what's already been said: much of how you answer this will depend on what existing relationships you have, the distinctiveness of your work and also the luck you have in hitting trusts at the right time when they're minded to support causes such as yours.

In my first charity we had an almost 100% hit rate with organisations (of any size) who had previously supported us (we were very distinctive and they felt we were doing work no one else was doing that they felt strongly about) but close to 0% with new approaches - because it took a long time to explain what we were about and it was impossible to engage with them because we simply didn't have the staff resources to cultivate properly and no high level contacts to network on our behalf.

My thought is that you should build up your target based on those previous relationships and a realistic assessment of your resources - time to research, cultivate and approach - , rather than breaking it down from the figure you 'need' to raise.

[quote]I would say that while all fundraising is an art - Trust Fundraising can sometimes be more artistic than most in terms of completely confounding traditional ROI's and targetting methods (and I say that as a corporate fundraiser).[/quote]

Very tactfully put Rachel :grin:

It's simple laws of supply and demand: our funds are limited too, so sometimes it doesn't matter HOW good your application is - there just ain't enough money. Results from smaller trusts, particularly, can be quite unpredictable - faced with a larger pile of *eligible* applications than can be funded, it sometimes comes down to "We just like that one better" - for a reason that sometimes entirely unrelated to the project/beneficiaries. Passion and enthusiasm are attractive. Long words, tiny text and lots of unasked for statistics/reams of 'supporting' information (given that trustees of funders usually also have day jobs and are reading your application during the weekend before the meeting) are not.

I'd just like to reiterate Rachel's message - research and planning are the key to getting it right and should inform what targets are set - not the other way around. As an aside: if the fundraiser has not spent time with frontline staff, I would suggest that this would be a useful part of their "training" as it may enable them to communicate the work more effectively.

Hi,

I would say that while all fundraising is an art - Trust Fundraising can sometimes be more artistic than most in terms of completely confounding traditional ROI's and targetting methods (and I say that as a corporate fundraiser).

Your question could be answered with the 'how long is a piece of string' response as it depends on so many factors. What cause does your charity support? Is it national or regional in focus? Does it support hard to reach groups, or specialise in an area where few charities work? These can all affect the number of trusts that could possibly fund you, although whether they would is another matter.

In addition you need to look at the tools available to your fundraiser. Do they have a ready list of projects, all costed out and ready to be sent off to trusts? Has the market already been researched and is there a database of trusts whose criteria fit your mission? Are the charity trustees on board and willing to support applications by 'tapping up' their address books for helpful contacts? You say someone hasn't focussed on trusts for a while so that might not be the case.

In addition if you target someone to send out x applications a month they may ending up becoming a bid factory, churning out applications to meet their target. I'd always rather my team sent out one really good solidly researched application, that had a geniune chance of meeting a funders aims, than four that were just sent out to keep targets up. Don't forget the really large foundations such as Garfield Weston or Sainsburys can take years to cultivate before you get a substantial gift.

It might be easier to work together on a workplan that has really clear objectives, such as researching all trusts local to x that give to x, working on making approaches to those trusts and building in support from the trustees. Allowing a bit of flexibility to look at development projects for the organisation will enable a fundraiser to look at the bigger picture, rather than just plugging gaps to hit this months target.

Rachel