USP and Organisational Aims

Funding Strategy

2016-2020

Contents

Background

USP and organisational aims

Review of progress so far

Income streams and diversity

Analysis of opportunities

Collaboration and partnership

Finances & Triggers

Risks

Detailed plan with targets for monitoring

Conclusion

Appendices

1. Options long list
2. Detailed training development plan
3. Paid services fees document
4. Forecast expenditure

Background

Dingley’s Promise has grown steadily over the past five years from just over £300,000 income in 2011-2012, to just over 430,000 in 2015-16. In 2016-17 our budget has risen to over £550,000 along with our ambition to reach more children and families with our life-changing services.

In 2015, we produced a five year business plan for the organisation, with the key aims of increasing the number of learning through play sessions we can offer by opening new Centres and ensuring shared provision is an option, and expanding our additional services. These include PASS (Providers Advisory Support Service) for mainstream settings, Family Support Worker activities, and advice and guidance publications. Both strands were aimed at helping us to reach more families.

Since this plan was produced, the SEND Reforms have gained momentum, leading to two fundamental issues for us that will change the way we fund our charity: direct payments will be introduced across the country as part of the personalization agenda, giving more control to families, and; local authorities are legally bound to provide the same alternatives to all children – regardless of whether they have an additional need or disability or not. This second point has become much more important in recent months with the announcement of the 30 hour free offer and concerns around how children with SEND are going to access their 30 hours in line with their mainstream peers.

Direct payments will take money out of local authority grants and place it in the hands of families. While we agree with the principle of giving parents control, the difficulty for local charities is that it forces us to charge parents directly for services, or simply be unable to continue.

Strengths / Weaknesses
Strong team with real passion & dedication
Good reputation and public awareness growing
Clear USP with few competitors
Good M&E systems – tracking outputs & outcomes
Strong board/ good governance
Good business links & potential
Transparent & active in local networks
Established parent committee to guide organisation / Not fully utilizing resources
Lack of human resource for fundraising
Lack of capacity to deal with increasing demand
Database not yet embedded
Lack of high profile supporters/ Patrons
Opportunities / Threats
LA’s shifting to new model – need partners
Closure of Children’s Centres
Local VIPs/ MPs aware and supportive of us
Increasing demand for advice (eg/ EHCP)
Rise in popularity of fundraising challenges
Local areas without our kind of service
Economy improving and local areas are wealthy / Austerity – cuts to funding
Inclusion – on the surface we are not inclusive
LA focus on introducing self directed funds
Public attitude to charities increasingly negative
Personal donations at lowest level in years

USP and Organisational Aims

Dingley’s Promise is passionate about reaching as many families as possible to make sure that every child gets the best start. Uniquely, it achieves this through specialist services that build inclusion, rather than the more common way of doing this, which would be inclusive services with some specialist support. The reason for approaching the issue in this way is that we can have a greater impact on inclusion as whole through modelling good practice, developing clear pathways to inclusion and supporting mainstream settings to include children with SEND, than we could have if we had only inclusive nurseries. Our specialist early intervention may only be needed for a few terms, but it ensures that children are put on the right path as early as possible and have the best chance of reaching their potential and/ or experiencing mainstream education.

The second unique aspect of our work is that it gives parents of children with SEND regular short respite breaks from caring, whereas most other organisations working with this group of families provide activities where the parents stay too. Our families are feeding back to us that the regular breaks they get are vital for their wellbeing, and although it is this that makes the cost of our work so high, it is key to improving family wellbeing. Teamed with our high quality support and advice when parents are in the very early stages of adjusting to life with a child that has additional needs, it is easy to see why our support is lifechanging.

Review of progress so far

In the six months since we completed our original version of the funding strategy we have achieved the following:

-Carried out research and consultation on the 30 hours offer to ensure we are best placed to lobby for higher rates of pay from central government for early years places for children with SEND.

-Set up our direct debit offer ‘Friends of Dingley’s Promise’ and promoted with our families – past and present.

-Set up our corporate offer ‘Securing Futures’ and begun talking to local businesses.

-Rebranded and launched new website.

-Added legacy giving to our ways of supporting the organisation.

-Recruited freelance fundraiser for large core funding bids and fundraising advisor to guide strategy.

-Established community fundraising groups at each centre to bring in more funds locally.

All of these actions have led to us having a more robust and diverse income spread, but the key to stable long term income is not only to have taken these steps, but also to build our open market income.

Income streams and diversity

Last year our income was spread fairly equally between gifts and donations, grants, government (including NHS) contracts and open market payments for services.

In the coming years it is likely that the government contracts are going to drop substantially as money is given directly to families to use direct payments to pay for services.

20% of our income under the open market was also from local government, but was our Nursery Education Grant income. This is not a grant but a payment for a service and so we do not consider it to be under threat. In fact, the NEG is going to rise in the coming year with the governments new early years funding formula. All other funding from local authorities is dependent on their budgets and priorities and so it is considered not to be open market income.

Key areas that we need to focus on developing over the coming years are:

Gifts from families through challenges, regular giving and legacies.

Major gifts through detailed research and tailored approaches.

Grants through bulk generic applications, negotiation of new large core grants and new larger donor research and applications.

We will work hard to retain as much government funding as possible so that they meet statutory requirements, and will also focus on engaging with the NHS who are investing more locally.

Develop open market activities as social enterprise to plough profit back into charitable activities.

Analysis of opportunities

We have identified a number of activities that will help us to achieve this shift in our income. The shortlist is detailed below:

Gifts (to increase from 18-21% of income) – FCM responsible

We are lucky to have a new fundraising advisor who is supporting on development of this section. Corporate income has expanded substantially this year so that at the beginning of January we have already seen a 40% increase on the previous year. This is due to us recognizing the potential of this type of donation and focusing on building relationships this year, which indicates we would be able to continue to build.

-Corporate giving offer pipeline and individual approaches. We will focus on establishing three centre corporate partners (5-10k) and one main partner (10-20k) by March 2018. In addition we will link up with various other companies as their charity of the year/ event beneficiary.

Investment needed: Researching and building relationships by existing staff is part of ongoing targets.

-To develop more attractive payroll giving offer for local corporates. We will promote this and confirm one company (1k) by March 2017, 5 companies (5k) by March 2018, and 10 companies (10k) by March 2019. This will be promoted to parents and relatives so they can ask their employers to engage.

Investment needed: use established offer and add to discussions – not own scheme.

-Individual giving campaign (only 5 DD set up after 30 years of work). We will invest time and effort to inform people of this opportunity to become a ‘friend’, and expect to see 30 friends (£1800) by March 2017, 70 by March 2018 (£4,200) and 100 by March 2019 (£6000). Exclusive events and special communications are the special offer to all friends. The core offer and printed materials have already been developed and we had a soft launch at our last AGM – now we just need to focus on making sure it is known by all of our supporters. The key to making this successful is to build relationships with ‘Friends’ so that they link us to other donors, possibly employers, and also consider making larger gifts or even remembering us in their wills. It is not simply the direct debit income that we expect to see coming from this activity.

Investment needed: promotion by existing staff online and in Centres, time to develop ‘friends’ ongoing communications and events.

-Further development of our challenges offer and packs for fundraisers. Clear timeline of sponsored events and support for those who want to take part for us. This has been an area of growth already and next year we have our first London Marathon runners for Dingley’s Promise. This growth has happened even though we do not yet effectively promote upcoming events to supporters. We are sure that with more information, more people will choose to support us.

Investment needed: research and development time of existing staff member is part of existing targets and regular communications about events also part of existing role.

-Legacies has been introduced recently, and we will run a campaign on this in the future to make people more aware, as well as giving legacy leaflets to all families when they leave us as part of their departure pack of information. We will also look into In Memoriam giving, but currently the Trustees are not comfortable with this development.

-Investment needed: promotion by existing staff online and in Centres as part of existing roles.

Grants (to increase from 28-33% of income) – FCM responsible

-Larger core cost applications to be completed at least once a month, building capacity to grow and develop through strengthening our core activities.

Investment needed: Consultant time per month 2 days @£250 per day. £6k per annum.

-Large number of smaller applications to trusts and foundations to bring in steady income (at least 10 generic per month and 5 applications for under 10k per annum). We have been advised that we should be sending our generic approaches as well as more tailored ones because this approach will bring in smaller amounts, but more regularly. We are careful to research around our larger grants very carefully so we have a higher hit rate and don’t waste time on grants we will not get.

Investment needed: Existing staff targets.

-Negotiate with main donors Children in Need and Big Lottery at end of current grants for increase in size of projects. Both have intimated they would be open to this – CIN in 2017, Big Lottery in 2019.

Investment needed: Existing staff targets.

Government Contracts (to reduce from 33-13% of income) – CEO responsible

-Focus on new opportunities with the NHS, which are growing. Need clear focus on understanding NHS priorities and developing plans for services we can run alongside them. In 2017-18 we did not submit a PDF application and we must make sure this does not happen again.

Investment needed: Existing staff targets.

-Work with local authorities to demonstrate how we help them comply with the SEND Reforms. We must ensure we understand the LA priorities and needs in delivering the reforms, and offer them work that helps them achieve their aims. We are a valued service in our communities and we are confident that if we lobby local government it is likely we will be able to retain some funding, as our service takes pressure off the local authority.

Investment needed: Existing staff targets.

Open Market (to increase from 21-33% of income) – CEO and GOM responsible

-Paid LTP sessions (vital to reduce large unfunded overheads) within the context of the 30 hour entitlement. We will likely continue to offer 15 free hours, with a 30 hour offer only for those who absolutely cannot share provision with other providers. Outside of these hours, families will have to pay an hourly rate for more support, including wraparound care, lunch club and an expanded holiday scheme offer. This means we will need to get into the habit of invoicing parents at the beginning of each month and ensuring they pay their bills. We must confirm hourly rates and any reductions or exemptions for families who cannot afford the service, and eligibility for these reductions. Careful consideration must be given to fees, since the actual cost to us of £19 per hour is high, and we do not want to look like we are overcharging our families.

The second reason why this is vital is because local authorities are not putting a cost on our services in some cases when writing EHCPs and so they expect our services for free. It is also difficult when trying to access 1:1 funding because we are being told that is our core offer and therefore we should not get any extra funding. A clear pricing structure means we can show what the price for 3:1, 2:1 and 1:1 is for our services.

Investment needed: In line with an existing need we will hire a finance officer who will manage the invoicing and collection of fees, and support in the development of a pricing structure that ensures families will only have to pay what they can afford. Existing staff and systems will work to document and introduce the change to service users. Apart from this no extra costs as this is a core service.

Organisational fit: This is our core work. The only difficulty is that charging is not something we have done before and so this is the only area where organizational fit may be questioned. However, research to date with families shows that they are supportive and are aware that all other nurseries charge fees, and that they would rather pay a contribution and still have services, than lose our services.

-Paid holiday playschemes (currently rate (£10 per day) far too low – needs to match market at least) are in high demand and there are opportunities to link up with other organisations to bring in more volunteers to bring down the overall costs in the holidays. These sessions would be playschemes, and therefore not have the same focus on EYFS targets as term time sessions. Average costs in the area are £20 per day – although there is a wide range of fees according to the level of support each child gets.

Investment needed: None extra.

Organisational fit: Our families need respite during the long holidays – especially summer holidays – and so we are committed to increasing our holiday playschemes.

-PaidPASS service including regular meetings, training, tools and individual support (can have higher profit) would be a service that mainstream nursery settings would buy in. We will have an annual fee that includes a package of support and also the option to come in for a few sessions where needed. This service should be affordable to settings and will also be attractive to Councils because it increases the specialist training their providers can access.

Investment needed: None at the moment as PASS already exists and is funded by Councils. If demand increases may need an extra staff member to run the service, but this should be covered by any fees.

Organisational fit: This is a key activity for us to build on, in line with our training offer and support for pathways to inclusion. Important we continue with this service.

-Paid Training Programme (currently key training is brought in from other providers, despite numerous requests for us to train others) We will develop our own materials and be able to offer training particularly to mainstream settings and local authorities – being careful not to deliver similar training to Parenting Special Children, who are a key partner. We will also develop a self-assessment tool that can be used by early years settings to assess their ability to support children with SEND, as this is a key gap identified nationally. RBC have suggested we consider getting involved in this which would build not only income (the tool would encourage settings to identify gaps in knowledge that could be addressed by our training), but also our reputation as a leader and innovator in the field. Please see Appendix 2 for the detailed plan for the training offer.