Freegle Funding Group Report - 2016 10-2017/01

Freegle Funding report 18/10/16 – 10/01/17

This report covers messages 740 -824.

We have 49 members as at 10/01, anyone else very welcome!

In reading the notes, you may spot the recurring theme that we need a paid fundraiser or a volunteer with the time and expertise to take things forward. How do people on Central think we should progress this?

Topics discussed as follows:

Funding Newsletters

Jacky continues to forward 3 funding newsletters to the group – Green Grants machine newsletter, j4b Community Funding and one from Funding Central. There are also occasional training events highlighted. Jacky has sent out her password and also information about the Hot Chocolate fund, for small community groups, 70 prizes of £300, plus they are looking for nominations of outstanding volunteers.

Ebay

Probably everyone already knows that we came second in the eBay for charity competition which ran in October, winning £3000 with 6,496 votes. This was good, and thanks go to everyone who helped by getting behind this and promoting it to their groups.

There was a link at the top of each daily digest, 2 different centrally prepared admins, a lot of Facebook and Twitter promotion, both Freegle and Liz (Enfield) paid to boost some Facebook ads, and at the end of the month, there was a mass mailing to members of groups who hadn’t opted out ( 16 groups had.) There was some discussion as to how much publicity is good and when it becomes too much, and the trade-offs between central and local admins. Some people felt we could have won the top prize if we had done more. Other ideas put forward included asking members to email all their contacts and asking for a vote rather than a donation in the last days of a competition.

Other Funding and Awards

• Paul Hamlyn Foundation – had some grant funding available, found to be unsuitable.
• Aviva Community Fund– runs a voting competition each year. Maybe we should gear ourselves up for this in Autumn 2017.
• A suggestion was made that we look at having a fundraising target, which could be done on a per group basis, possibly using ads and then giving people the chance to use an ad blockers which they would pay for.
• The Co-op plastic bag funding launches in May 2017. Details here –

https://blog.co-operative.coop/2016/11/01/were-on-the-look-out-for-local-good-causes/?

• Tesco is also running a similar scheme called “Bags of Help” which offers monthly grants to community groups.
• David forwarded details of a fundraising fair in November.
• Uber partnership – brought to Funding, an initial draft was produced, but seems to have stalled.
• Discussion on applying for local funding to support central costs. There are some difficulties with this but it might be something that a paid fundraiser could do.

The idea of establishing a Friends of Freegle group, with paid membership + benefits was discussed. It was felt that *this is a nice idea but very time consuming. Adverts or sponsorship might be a better way forward, but this needs contacts and so again points the way to a paid fundraiser or marketing expert.

• Mark organised the promotion of a Christmas cheese product with some funds going to Freegle. The publicity was well received ( over 3000 hits) and orders of around 10 items were placed.
• Chris is hoping that someone will have the time to do an application for an award before Jan 20th - climate category - just a trophy as a prize - for our site/app developments over the last year. This has now been started.

http://www.digital-agenda.co.uk/features/impact-awards-open-up-for-entries/

Liz
Lewes and Funding

Links:

• Freegle Funding Group
• Previous report Freegle Funding Group Report - 2016 08/10
• Following report Freegle Funding Group Report - 2017 01/04