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Overview
Each month, we publish our progress towards the Funders Collaborative Hub’s three priorities for 2022:
- Growing and developing our collaboration opportunities offer
- Developing the Hub’s inspiration and influencing role
- Integrating the Hub within the wider landscape and developing a sustainable model.
In May, we published our first two blogs looking at what we can learn from the data on more than 90 collaboration opportunities that have been shared on the Hub. We explored what issues funders are collaborating on and where they are collaborating.
Sharing this analysis highlighted the breadth of existing collaborations and emerging opportunities that are now available to connect with through the Hub. The interest generated by this is likely to have been the main driver for May’s significant increase in users exploring the Hub for themselves. Our collaboration opportunity search page was visited more than 2,000 times by more than 300 users.
We are now moving on to focus on the next part of our analysis, looking at the intended benefits of funder collaboration.
I hope that this series of data explorations will just be a start. If we can bring together the Hub’s unique (and constantly growing) dataset with other sources of insight on funding and civil society, this could inform future funding collaborations in response to the gaps and opportunities it highlights.
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 22 opportunities added to the Hub between January and May 2022, we are on track to meet our full-year target of 50.
The six collaboration opportunities added to the Hub in May included two emerging opportunities:
The other four are existing collaborations:
May saw significant growth in use of our search for collaboration opportunities page, reaching 2,154 views by 381 users.
This re-established the upward trend that had been briefly interrupted in April by the Easter holidays.
May’s Top 10 most visited collaboration opportunities were:
- DEI Data Standard (584 views)
- Building alternative futures (114 views)
- Empowering Local (111 views)
- Funder Safeguarding Collaborative (94 views)
- Environmental Philanthropy Lab (93 views)
- Reducing language bias in grant-making (93 views)
- DEI Coalition (69 views)
- Tackling Racial Injustice (68 views)
- The Arts Funders Group (62 views)
- Civic Power Fund (55 views)
Most used ‘Issue’ filter:
- Grant-making practices (67 views)
Most used ‘Location’ filter:
- London (55 views)
We have started gathering evidence relating to three main ways that the Hub contributes to increased engagement between funders:
- 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.
We are also analysing how funders are aiming to increase their overall impact through collaboration.
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 May there were 1,583 views of our blogs and funder collaboration case studies – our highest-ever monthly total – and 173 views of our Funder Collaboration Toolkit homepage.
Our two blogs exploring the Hub’s data on issue-based and geographical collaboration opportunities marked the start of our work to explore potential gaps and opportunities that new funder collaborations might address.
May’s most viewed blogs:
- What issues are funders collaborating on? Our first look at the data (429 views)
- Making funding strategies more connected (256 views)
- Funding community organising: lessons from the US (206 views)
May’s most viewed case studies:
- One application to many funders (76 views)
- Changing the system (72 views)
- A shift in gear (32 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.
The reach of all our communication channels grew in May:
- 666 newsletter recipients (+5.5% vs April)
- 1,718 Twitter followers (+4.9% vs April)
- 8,590 page views of our website (+58% vs April).
We have continued to feed learning from the Hub into ACF’s ongoing strategic review. The results of this review, which will be completed in the second half of 2022, will provide vital context for the development of the Hub’s longer-term plans.
In May, we also contributed to the following collaborative initiatives led by other organisations:
- Young Manchester’s launch of Tackling Racial Injustice – community co-research exploring barriers to funding for Black Diaspora-led groups
- A Yorkshire Funders workshop on developing a Yorkshire Common Application Form for small grants
- A review by Science Practice for Wellcome Trust, seeking to identify innovative approaches to equity, diversity and inclusion that could help address inequities in funding outcomes.
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.
