Business Growth & Fundraising Strategy 2021 - 2024

We are Mind!

Open, experienced, unstoppable, together.

We’re here to fight for mental health

We connect minds. We support minds. We change minds. For support. For respect. For you.

Business Growth & Fundraising Strategy

(April 2021 – March 2024)

Contents

1. Purpose of the Plan - page 1

2. Current Income - page 1

3. A Flexible Organisation - page 2

4. Future Priorities - page 3

5. Core Funding - page 3

6. Evaluation and Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) - page 5

7. Income - page 6

8. Trusts and Foundations - page 7

9. Self-Generated - page 8

10. Action Plan - page 12

1.Purpose of the Plan

Cwm Taf Morgannwg Mind (CTMM) has grown to become a significant deliverer of mental health services within Merthyr Tydfil, Rhondda Cynon Taf and Bridgend areas, with an income of £1.4 million. The majority of this income (70%) is from statutory public sector contracts and with little income for ‘core’ funding. Other income derived from charitable trusts (20%), and trading (training and counselling), together with some income through public donation (10%).

The purpose of this plan is to set out pathway to help the organisation diversify its funding base and build a more secure core that allows the organisation to be flexible to future project delivery opportunities and funding availability.

The charity expects to sustain and achieve income through four key funding activities, including:

1. Public Sector Commissioning

2. Grant, Trusts and Foundations

3. Commercial Enterprise

4. Fundraising

2.Current Income

Table 1 below lists the current income secured together with information on the amounts and due end date. Income from donations grew significantly in 2020, to almost £75k from under £15k in previous years, this demonstrates the huge potential for donations as an income stream and one, that with investment should yield healthy returns.

Current services are show below:

It is clear that some services are secured until 2021 with contracts from Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board (CTMUHB) with some longer-term grant funds.

CTM Mind is successful at winning tenders to deliver services and has a track record of delivering them successfully and has built a strong portfolio of projects in this way. Projects are now themed into three key areas:

1.Mental Health Prevention Services

2.Housing, Homelessness and Recovery Services

3.Commercial and Fundraising Services

Key strengths for winning tenders include:

1. Pro-active engagement, strategic awareness, and local intelligence

2. Dedicated resources to write tender applications – accepting support from Mind Nationals Bid Development Team where appropriate.

3. Mind service design methodology

4. Theory of change methodology –measuring our impact

5. Robust organisational strategy, fundraising plan, policies and procedures

However, CTM Mind is more than a collection of projects, and to ensure it remains a fundable service and provides value for money it must be greater than the sum of its parts. Therefore, the core function needs to add more value than simply management of the tenders and projects. This has multiple benefits:

1. A core that provides a service/ added value can attract funding

2. Securing funds for core work will reduce the costs of future tenders thus making them more competitive

3. Showing how the core adds value to projects will help ensure management costs are covered by funders

4. Demonstrating how projects link via the core will help demonstrate the need for each project if it/they can be shown to help complete a larger package of support. So, showing a pathway through the

organisation, where the core is the link between each service for example

• Was is cost effective to deliver? (was it profitable/ did it use additional resources / Did it cover all internal costs)

• How did it impact upon other services / did it add value to other areas of work?

• Does the project address current organisational priorities? (Table 2)

3.A Flexible Organisation

Having secured a large income there is a danger that the organisation seeks to maintain this and continually seeking to fund large initiatives. This will become time consuming (especially where new funders need to be found for each service) and risks delivering services which are perhaps not actually the best for service users and meeting local need.

To help manage this the following is suggested:

That there are clear criteria for why a project/ initiative is to be started or continues (1) Evaluations of project also focus on the future need of the work and how it should evolve The organisation is not afraid to shrink in size or finish a project

Exit strategies for projects that are built into initiatives are genuine and not written purely to satisfy a funder’s requirement

(1)– criteria for project continuation.

How successful was the delivery?

Is the need still there?

4.Future Priorities

All activities delivered by CTM Mind must fit within the table below:

What activity / why is this needed

Staying well: Support people likely to develop mental health problems, to stay well.

Primary Care and Prevention services –significant demand on NHS as well as offering alternatives to clinical interventions.

Empowering choice: Empower people who experience a mental health problem to make informed choices about how they live and recover

Improving services and support: Ensure people get the right services and support at the right time to help their recovery and enable them to live with their mental health problem

Enabling social participation: Open the doors to people with experience of mental health problems participating fully in society

Removing inequality of opportunity: Gain equality of treatment for people who experience both mental health and other forms of discrimination

Organisational excellence: Make the most of our assets by building a culture of excellence.

5. Core Funding

The ‘Core’ has two elements. The essential services: those that are seen to be the services that lie at the heart of the organisation and that would be unlikely to exist if you were not there. The core functions; the activities that service the organisation.

Recovery and Resilience services – enabling people to make choices and engage in recovery-based projects.

Robust project output and outcome monitoring and evaluation measures which enable us to measure impact.

A range of engagement initiatives which enable people to participate in our project activities and more.

To support the Mind policy and campaigns work by providing evidence of project impact and local needs.

To sustain the Mind Quality Mark (MQM) and other quality measures whilst contributing positively to Mind and the Mind Network.

a. What are the essential core services?

Governance, Management, Mind Affiliation, Human Resources, Financial Management, Marketing and Communications, Quality Assurance (MQM), Monitoring and Evaluation, Information Technology (IT), Administration, Accommodation and Utilities.

Table 2: CTMM priorities

b. Funding the core

1. Generated new income – counselling and training; potential to develop and expand these. This will have minimal impact on staff as the work is outsourced to a third party. They could also be tasked with promoting in new areas on an enhanced commission rate.

2. There are functions of the core that can be made into fundable projects; and/or included as elements of bids. Therefore, they are not added to the management element of the budget, but an additional element. Evaluation and monitoring being the main one.

3. Evaluation and importantly learning and acting upon the learning can become the focus of funding bids; thus, supplementing the core, but without being an application for core funding.

a. Developing an evaluation along the Asset Based Community Development model and integrating Social Return on Investment would have real benefits. It would provide a positive way of evaluating a service and learning to build new ones.

b. A selling point could be to evaluate the organisations as a whole rather than the individual elements. A case could be put together to demonstrate why that would be of great value.

c. Learning and showing how people use the organisation, tracking their moveme through the support would be beneficial as this would demonstrate how people are helped at different stages

4. Funders such as Henry Smith Charity, Tudor Trust and Garfield Weston will fund core functions. These bids will be helped by being able to demonstrate how the core adds value to the projects that are run.

c. Full Cost Recovery (FCR)

The Full Cost Recovery model of the organisation need to be robust to demonstrate to funders that the core contribution being asked for is needed.

Staff time on each project compared to all staff time in the organisation is a common and widely accepted methodology, for example, this can include core staff time as a percentage split in order to cover all associated costs.

A problem with FCR models can be that projects become very costly when the on costs are added in. This is especially the case where there are few projects and as such, they bare a high proportion of the organisations costs. Being able to reduce the core costs is always going to be beneficial; this can include:

• Securing funding for core elements such as training, evaluation, marketing

• Putting core functions as separate cost elements in applications (especially with Lottery) to take them out of the generic ‘core’ cost.

Even where funders will not pay full cost recovery; it is worth including the cost to the organisation as a match funding contribution you are making.

6.Evaluation and Asset Based Community Development (ABCD)

With the recent growth in the service and changes in delivery a review of the service would be beneficial not only to understand the impact on service users but also to demonstrate to funders the needs of the community.

Social Return on Investment (SROI)

An evaluation that uses element of the SROI model would be very beneficial. Of most value would be the engagement of service users in the evaluation process and determining the value of the benefits of each service (and also any negative impacts of the work). The elements of an SROI study that would be of most value are:

• Identify the outcomes (not just those defined by the project)

• Find a way to measure or generate indicators for the outcomes

• Give a monetary value to the outcome. It is this element that can be very revealing as the relative value of the outcomes are defined and therefore which is the most important/beneficial

A full SORI study, whilst having some merit would be more costs, and labour intensive. The aspect of the study which will be of most value to CTM Mind is understanding the benefit and value of the outcomes of the work, i.e. using your Theory of Change Methodology to inform your annual impact report.

Asset Based Community Development

This approach is used by the lottery, and therefore likely that other funders will follow. Some other funders have also been using this methodology for some years. The approach seeks to identify the communities’ strengths and work with these to address its needs and differs from the previous needs based approach which concentrated on the communities problems alone.

This approach works well with the SROI approach by building services on the outcomes that have the greatest value to service users. It does not need be a complex of long piece of work; simply to list the strengths of the organisation and those it works with. This can help identify future work for funding bids.

a. Contract and Service Level Agreements (SLA’s)

CTM Mind has an excellent track record in securing tenders from Local Authorise and the University Health Board (UHB). There is likely to be increased competition for future contracts, and also opportunities to deliver services in new areas; especially as there is a good track record to build upon in Merthyr Tydfil and Rhondda Cynon Taf. Some things to consider include:

• Whether formalising partnerships with potential competitors is to be considered – particularly when the external commissioning environment changes.

• What other Mind’s and local Charities to collaborate with – giving specific attention to those neighboring Local Minds and other local Mental Health Charities.

• Are contracts delivered to make money or to enhance overall service. If the former is the work best placed under a trading arm.

• Any contingency plan if a key contract is failed to be secured and the impact this would have on the rest of the services –what would happen if Cwm Taf Morgannwg UHB contracts were lost?

The negative of contracts is that they are commissioned by a third party (CTMUHB or Local Government) and therefore may not necessarily be the service you want to deliver at that time and you may become hugely dependent on these contracts and the loss of them could be catastrophic, resulting in major sustainability challenges for the future.

b. National Lottery Community Fund (NLCF)

NLCF offers substantial funding opportunities through the People and Places programme; with grants up to £500,000 and more than one being able to be held at any one time. The new programme has put an emphasis on three elements;

1) being connected

2) building on strengths

3) community involvement

A challenge this presents is demonstrating to the lottery that the need has come from the community you work with, and not a project idea presented to a community. Consultation and real engagement with the community is necessary for a strong bid to be submitted. The SROI and ABCD approach discussed above are useful tools to demonstrate to the Lottery how projects have come about.

The other change that is important is the focus on working to the communities’ strengths and using these strengths to help tackle the problem the community wants to address.

An application to NLCF for around £300k over 3 years to fund what CTM Mind see as the essential services would be a good strategy. This would be work that you have good connections within the community for and can demonstrate and evidence a clear need. Within the bid you can include evaluation etc to focus as much as possible on the core service and core functions of the organisation. Allow 12 months from start to finish for the application process.

c. Awards for All

Now a larger grant is available (£10k) it has got more competitive, however a straightforward ‘project’ that addresses the points in the guidance should be funded. A grant every 18 months should be a realistic target, and as it is such an easy form worth the time invested in completing it.

Other opportunities from NLCF will are in the Heritage Programme.

The more specific applications can be and therefore tailored to a funder the stronger they will be. As the organisation has a range of service areas from young to old and to address different issues identifying a number of suitable funders should not be a problem.

Building relationships with funders will improve success rates; one approach is to contact funders before making an application to simply tell them about the work you are doing and that in the future you plan to be making an application; visit them to visit or to ask for more information.

One problem, especially with smaller grants, is making them meaningful to the funder. They are unlikely to want to contribute a small part of a large project. Therefore, ways to make their money meaningful can be to:

a) Add value to existing work, perhaps adding something that the initial grant did not buy or address a need that has arisen since the project started.

b) Paying for additional sessions or several activities. If you can say that the main project covers the core costs and that all the grant money will go to frontline services.

The table in the appendix identifies some suitable funding opportunities. Now the income is over £1 million a number of funders will no long consider funding the organisation. Splitting the organisation to have a trading arm could address this problem.

Structure

With an income of over £1 million, a number of large funders such as Tudor Trust/ Henry Smith Charity (who are major supporters of mental health work) will not/ are very unlikely to fund the organisation. Other smaller trusts also have an arbitrary cut off of £1 million, the most significant of these being Lloyds bank Foundation who are very strict on this cut off threshold. This is based on turnover and not related to profit, so although the organisation

may have a large turnover there may not necessarily be large profit / surplus alongside this.

A possible way to reduce the turnover would be to create a wholly owned trading subsidiary this would be a company limited by shares with, CTMM as the only share holder. Under this legal entity you could deliver contracts for the Health Board etc, with only the surplus then being returned to the charitable body. This also have the advantage of removing some risk from the charity in delivering some very large contracts.

On the negative; there will be some more administrative costs in producing a second set of accounts, insurance, some legal costs in transferring staff between the organisations, but these should not be significant. There may be an issue in that we become a new organisation with no trading record which may impact upon commissioners, but we will be able to demonstrate that the staff/ management are still in place to give confidence in the ability to deliver.

Use of grants

It will be useful to segmentize the organisations services – which are funded by grants, which by contracts and which by core Grants can be sought to complement some of the contracts CTMM are delivering. This may add value to the work of the contract which will be favourable to the commissioning body and offer better value to the provider of the grant. These grants could be used to help more people access commissioned service for example or promoting them to an underrepresented group.

They can also be used for pilot work to test ideas and projects prior to any commissioning this will provide evidence of ability to deliver. They can cover cost/ contribute towards costs of core services – but some contribution from CTMM may be necessary due to the levels of reserves or by using designated funds.

• Build on existing grants – for example building on the suicide awareness grant

• For all full cost recovery needs to be used to provide costs for core.

8.1 Need

It would be helpful to have a list of projects that would like to be funded so that when a grant opportunity arises an application can quickly be put together.

A consistent way of identifying need within the community is needed, to ensure the services are addressing the local need.

CTMM uses a range of mental health, psychological and wellbeing strategies to influence and inform its work, local need can be identified through statistical data available through the Mind national consultations, Office of National Statistics, Wales Index for Multiple Deprivation, NHS Wales and Public Health Wales – this type of data enables us to analyse need, use this evidence and for planning new funding arrangements.

9. Self-Generated

Counselling and training are the current source of income. Training is sub-contracted out and income split 50:50 with the trainer.

There is the potential to commission the trainer to promote the training in new areas and attract more customers, some enhancement of pay for each new client could also then be introduced. Depending upon the area of delivery and topics of training this work maybe best placed under a separate trading arm. This will be more necessary if delivering out of your area of benefit and training away from Mental health topics (Primary Trading Principles)

A consideration with a trading arm is how close the relationship with the owning charity is. Do you want people to know it is Mind delivering the work, or would it be better if it was not associated with you?

Co-owned Mind Training Program – delivered in partnership with Mind whereby 50% of the income generated stays with the Local Mind. This needs to be explored further with Mind as part of the national sustainability plans between Mind and the Mind Network.

Commercial Development Options.

Mocha Mind (Wellbeing / drop-in Coffee Shop)

Establishing a coffee shop is a possible new venture for CTMM, this would serve several purposes:

1. Generate unrestricted income

2. Provide training opportunities and work skills for people

3. Raise awareness of CTMM

4. Provide a local information hub

Initial set up costs should be obtainable via grants, however a robust business case to demonstrate the viability of the café will be needed. There are 2 options a) to purchase an existing coffee shop/ café b) establish one from scratch. The former is restricted by the availability of suitable café in our area of benefit, and the latter has more risk in setting up an unknown business.

Key will be finding the right premises that is large enough to fulfil the needs for the enterprise and that has the footfall to make it work.

Another possible approach to developing Mocha Mind could include a partnership with a local Registered Social Landlord with commercial property lets, negotiating social return on investment for their tenants, potentially resulting in ‘pepper corn’ or reduced rental rates which in turn has a positive impact on profits.

Property

With substantial reserves, or using designated funds, an investment in property to generate a stable income is a model used by many other Local Minds, and this also can sit alongside the Homelessness support services. A grant for purchase is unlikely, however it may be possible through the Welsh Government Facilities Activities Programme

(possibly combining the café with rental property). A mortgage or outright property are the most likely purchase options (this could again be an enterprise moved under a trading arm); 5%-10% are typical annual returns on the purchase price.

Individual Giving

Donors/ potential donors in these categories can be identified in a number of ways:

Prospects:

• People engaging with social media

• People attending events.

• Service recipients

• Volunteers

New ways to build the engagement with project will be key to developing a larger funding base; this could be through a newsletter, more community events, more active social media. A further effective means to for volunteers/ ambassadors to advocate the organisation to their peer groups, for example, positively using Tom James, Ambassador, and his profile in the Welsh Rugby World for introductions to local RFC’s.

This diagram is the principle behind developing any giving campaign. The idea being to engage people as prospects then nurture the relationship to become a bigger donor. The majority will remain as prospects or one-off donors, but by encouraging a few to increase their donations a sizeable income base could be developed over time.

First time givers

• Who has supported fundraisers on JustGiving / Charity Checkout?

• Set up a register of donors.

• Look for small one-off donations.

o Consider text donate / collection tins

o Should be quick and easy

o Ideally these need to capture peoples contact details

• Check GDPR limitations to follow up contact!

• Thank donors, tell them the impact the funding has had, offer opportunity to fund another initiative.

• The website needs to explain the impact of the work and how donations could be spent – people like to be able to compare donation amounts to see where the best value is:

Regular givers

• Contacted to be thanked and or asked if they would like more involvement

Digital fundraising

To be successful, digital fundraising relies on three things:

1. how many people you engage with,

2. the conversion rate (how many donate) and;

3. how much they give.

CTMM needs to build upon each of these areas to significantly increase its online funding capacity. How many people are engages will relate closely to the development of prospects listed above; the wider the audience the greater potential catchment for donations. Branding and consistent messaging are important to ensure people are seeing/ hearing the right message.

Increasing the conversion rate can be achieved in several ways; getting people to ask their networks rather than Mind asking –such peer fundraising is more successful and influential, having stories from people who have donated to say why they gave. There also needs to be more compelling information on why people should give and the difference it will make. Encouraging people to share when they make a donation. An annual target of campaign can help people feel they are contributing to a bigger piece of work and therefore their money will help make a difference.

Some case studies or individual stories will be good to have on the website to make a personal connection to the impact of the work – people generally give more to an “identifiable victim” than a large group- this is because a donation can seem insignificant and unable to help many people but would make a difference to a single person.

To increase the amount people donate, they need to have a benchmark to give against, this could be their previous donation, a target

amount to raise, or an indication of how different sized donations will be used. Legacies and Donations

2020 was a very successful year for giving with over £75k being raised. This has been largely on the back of the #ItTakesBallsToTalk and suicide awareness work. It is a good example of what is possible for the organisation, and the achievements in this year were without much promotion from the organisation – the charity is considered to lead the way on suicide prevention within the locality and this should be sustained and developed.

This work should now be built upon to substantially grow the donations from the public. A separate digital / individual donor strategy is to be developed.

There is the issue of people understanding the difference between Mind (national) and CTM Mind and donating to the national body not the local one, we need to ensure that people donating clearly understand the difference and where their money is invested, i.e. locally or nationally. We see ourselves as part of a wider Mind Network and that all money into the movement as a good thing. Donations to Mind National often help fund the work of the network via its internal grants programme, therefore reinvesting back to the network.

All donations from the public need a solid marketing and promotional base. Have a clear message of the difference we make and how people can donate. Actions can range from simply adding email footers to all communications that ask people to donate through to more complex and involved fundraising campaigns.

Currently although there is a donate button, that quickly takes someone to a giving page, there is no information about the impact of the work; what difference a donation could make to someone. If giving is to become a more significant part of the funding package this information needs to be provided.

Analytics

To better understand donations and how people use the website, data from an analytics package, like google analytics would be valuable to understand. In developing the online giving these analytics are really important to analysis to understand what impact changes to the website/ promotions are having.

When making changes, it is advised to do them one at a time to learn what is effective. It would be useful if data from this was reported quarterly to show how the changes to the website and promotion is making an impact.

Actions

1. Development of legacy/donor pack- This should contain the basic information about how to make a gift, who to contact, and what difference a gift could make where possible include quotes from someone that has made a gift already (the peer-topeer element is important in the success of such campaigns).

2. Have information on the website about where a donation would be spent; people want to know that their money will make a difference, eg £40 will provide an hours counselling. You could offer a ‘menu’ of services people could donate towards.

3. Link on Facebook page to donation site

4. Email footers on all communications

5. Develop elevator Pitch to succinctly say what you do, the impact, the problem you face and what people can do to help; the format below:

• You know how......(put work in context)

• Well my organisation ( NAME) provides.....

• But a problem we face is......... / But people find it very hard to.........

• To solve this / To overcome this we...... which will..............improve people live, / help them to do / increase their independence

• You could help us by............

Ongoing reminders are one of the best ways to run legacy campaigns. Reminders on all publications, emails etc to identify way in which people can give. However, you must also have the supplementary information for people who express an interest.

Community Fundraising

Community fundraising activities are included under individual giving. This can include anything from selling raffle tickets to car boot sales to sponsored events. Although this will secure funds, it will be resource intensive, managing and organising volunteers, making sure messages are true to Mind values, but it is a good way at engaging people with the charity for the first time with a view to pushing them up the donor pyramid to become a larger donor. Activities like sponsored walk, to gain names of sponsors, or raffle tickets who can at a later point be contacted and asked for further help (as long as GDPR rules are followed).

What is achievable?

This depends on the resource that you want to invest! And how pro-actively you want to seek donors.

Setting a target, however small, will give an incentive to start developing this income. If it is left to chance then there are very unlikely to be positive gains made as no one will be responsible for making things happen

There is no reason that community fundraising could not become a volunteer project; if carefully planned this could make a small funding application; combining it with marketing and promotion of the service whilst building volunteer skills. 11

The money given from donations can be incidental to the publicity and promotion of the service that the work brings. The investment in the activities may be seen as more valuable for the spreading of a message, gaining new volunteers or promoting a service than the money that is raised.

Marketing, Communication and Promotion

Marketing and promotion are vital for successful fundraising from the community, but also help with other funding. The more a name is seen/ heard the more trust people have about it. A plan is needed to identify the audiences for fundraising, how they will be contacted, the messages and what will success look like.

Audiences include:

• Social media followers – messaging will be different for each type

• Past donors

• Volunteers

• Fundraisers

• Service users

• Website visitors

Messages will include:

• Find out more about our work and how you can support us by visiting

• Thank you for your support, you have help us to achieve…..

• Find out more about our services at…

• Will you join our next fundraising challenge

• Help us raise XXX to deliver XXX project

10. Action Plan

The plan focuses on developing a strong core service and enhancing commissioned services. The core services should also include a mechanism that helps steer people through the support offered. This is important as it will prevent CTM Mind being a collection of services.

Demonstrating how services relate and interact shows the added value of each service element and how important each part is to the whole.

• Secure funding to sustain core services;

• Secure smaller grants that add value or enhance contracts; this will improve the service and demonstrate to future commissioners your effectiveness at leveraging in additional funding).

(action plan attached as Appendix on next