Guest blog by Suraj Vadgama, Creator of Beehive, and Head of Digital at The Foundation
Seeking funding for your non-profit can be a time consuming, confusing, and an altogether painful affair. Think of it like trying to juggle a set of knives whilst blindfolded. There’s a high risk of failure, with a steep learning curve if you don’t know what you’re doing.
In fact recent reports and media have gone as far as saying that “independent funders were inhibiting the systemic change of social support in the UK by failing to collaborate as effectively as they might”.
Looking beyond the headlines, I’m excited and optimistic for the sector. To me this shows a conscientious movement to reimagine how funding takes place. And validates the design of Beehive — a web-based service we’ve developed for non-profits and funders to quickly and easily see if they are a good fit for each other before a funding application is submitted.
This is important because, through developing Beehive we’ve found that it’s often unclear who a funder’s customer is. Is it those they fund? Or the people and ecosystems they ultimately benefit? Maybe both?
This ‘fuzzy’ focus means that the funder/non-profit relationship can start too late into the funding process. Often when a substantial amount of work and effort writing an application has already been put in by a non-profit. It’s not very efficient, nor great customer service.
As the momentum for systemic change in funding increases it’s great to see fellow funders innovating with their approach, and engaging with their customers (non-profits) to deliver value at every stage. BeyondMe is a great example of this with their on-boarding calls, and we’re excited to be running a pilot with them to see how Beehive can support their customer (non-profit) engagement, and deepen the value they add.
P.S. Beehive is in early development, and I encourage you to check it out and let me know what you think on suraj@thefoundation.org.
To find out more about joining BeyondMe’s portfolio, dial into the next on-boarding call or see here for more info..
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