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Overview
In a month bookended by the four-day Jubilee weekend and taking my own two-week summer break, I wasn’t sure if there would be very much to report on from the Hub in June. However, the momentum around funder collaboration doesn’t seem to be slowing down.
We’ve continued to see new opportunities regularly added to the Hub, reaching our 100th collaboration opportunity at the start of July.
It’s becoming clear that funders are pursuing a wide range of benefits through their collaborations. In my latest blog, How funders are finding their collaborative advantage, I started to explore the four most common ways I'm seeing funders achieve more together than they could alone:
- The power of networks
- Improving efficiency
- Engaging with non-funders
- Tackling systemic issues.
It felt like this barely scratched the surface, so I'll be expanding on each of these topics in a future series of blogs.
For now, here is a summary of our latest progress against the Hub’s three priorities for 2022.
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:
- 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
Our progress:
With 25 opportunities added to the Hub since January 2022, we are precisely on track towards our full-year target of 50.
The three collaboration opportunities added to the Hub in June were:
- Music Investment Model (emerging opportunity)
- Foundations for Social Justice (existing collaboration)
- Plymouth Partners & Funders Forum (existing collaboration)
After May’s spike in visits to our collaboration opportunity search page (likely to have been driven by two blogs exploring our opportunity listings by issue and geography), in June use of the search page returned to more typical levels.
June’s Top 10 most visited collaboration opportunities were:
- DEI Data Standard (341 views)
- Funder Safeguarding Collaborative (109 views)
- Reducing language bias in grant-making (101 views)
- Environmental Philanthropy Lab (72 views)
- DEI Coalition (59 views)
- Music Investment Model (59 views)
- Foundations for Social Justice (52 views)
- Empowering Local (48 views)
- Tackling Racial Injustice (42 views)
- Wales Funders’ Forum (42 views)
We started analysing how funders are aiming to increase their overall impact through collaboration, with initial findings summarised in our blog on how funders are finding their collaborative advantage.
We are continuing to gather evidence relating to main ways that the Hub contributes to increased engagement between funders, including:
- Funders connect through the Hub to initiate new collaborations or shape work at an early stage
- New funders engage with existing collaborations through the Hub
- Existing collaborations share their learning more widely through the Hub.
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:
- 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
Our progress:
In June there were 1,303 views of our blogs and funder collaboration case studies and 191 views of our Funder Collaboration Toolkit homepage – both well above our monthly target.
June’s most viewed blogs:
- Mapping UK funder collaboration – where are the ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ spots? (304 views)
- How funders are finding their collaborative advantage (180 views)
- What issues are funders collaborating on? Our first look at the data (169 views)
June’s most viewed case studies:
- Building a movement (99 views)
- One application to many funders (52 views)
- Changing the system (26 views)
If you have a viewpoint or some learning to share about funder collaboration, please get in touch about contributing to a blog or case study.
Priority 3: Integrate the Hub within the wider landscape and develop a sustainable model
Raising awareness of the Funders Collaborative Hub continues to be a major focus, both amongst funders and with wider stakeholders who have an interest in effective funder collaboration.
Total visits to our website dropped from May's year-to-date high point (6,409 page views in June, compared to 8,590 in May). The reach of our other communication channels continued to grow:
- 682 newsletter recipients (+2.4% vs May)
- 1,759 Twitter followers (+2.4% vs May).
We also:
- Met with the team behind UK Charity Activity Tags to discuss how we have adapted this system to classify funder collaborations by ‘issue’ and to explore ways we might build on our use of data
- Attended the Association of Charitable Foundations (ACF) AGM, where ACF members heard about the Hub's progress as part of CEO Carol Mack’s review of the last year.
Previous monthly updates
Get in touch
We welcome all feedback on the Hub. Whether you're a funder, or anyone else with an interest in how funders can work together to make the world a better place, get in touch to let us know what we're doing well or what we can improve.
