A new grantmaker has revealed its plans to expand its grant programmes, to help charities make better use of technology. 

The Transform Foundation has said it wants to support more charities to develop their digital presence. It will expand its website grant programme, launch a pilot social media marketing project and set up a technology volunteer programme.  

The foundation was set up at the end of 2015 by David Melville, who has headed the legal teams at Argos and Amazon, Diviya Gosranai, head of Messrs Hoare Trustees, and Smutri Sriram, chief executive of an ethical manufacturer. 

Melville told Civil Society News that they set up the foundation with financial backing from major donors, who wish to remain anonymous, because the sector is “behind in terms of its capacity to soak up the benefits [of new technology]”.

A key part of the foundation’s ethos is a focus on gathering data from its programmes to demonstrate its impact. 

“What they [philanthropists] were looking for was to try to find a way to put funds into the charity sector in a way which would create the ability to draw data as a consequence of those funds having gone into a charity which would demonstrate incremental benefit flowing form the use of technology,” Melville said.

Last year it ran a pilot offering £18,000 grants to help charities with incomes between £500,000 and £10m redevelop their website in partnership with Raising IT.

It now plans to scale up this programme, has just launched a second grant programme to help charities with social media and plans to launch a programme to match volunteers from technology firms with small charities in need of support.  

Pilot programme 

It launched its website grant programme last year with corporate partner Raising IT.

Before it launched it was gifted some shares by website development company Raising IT to help get it set up. 

“We were endowed upfront with a gift of shares from Raising IT,” Melville said and hopes and “that we will get gifts of shares from other donors as well”. 

He said: “It allowed us then to make those shares available to investors who were only interested in investing in a charity and weren’t interested in investing in a commercial organisation like Raising IT.”

Melville said that having researched the market Raising IT were the only supplier capable of providing the service it needed. 

“We struggled to find companies that would give us the data mining capacity to give us the evidence that we would need to go back to the founders,” he said.

Around 20 charities were awarded grants of £18,000 part of the pilot programme last year and between them they have raised £1.3m from their new websites. 

Charities apply online for a grant to cover the costs of designing and building a new website using Raising IT. Grantees have to meet the ongoing hosting and support costs of the website. 

When the trustees decide to make a grant they “three-way agreement” between the foundation the grantee and Raising IT. “Then we put them in the hands of Raising IT,” Melville said. 

Criticism 

Melville says he is aware that some charities have been disappointed when they are not awarded a grant. 

But he stressed that the foundation only has limited resources so it has to be convinced “that they are going to be able to benefit”. 

“We work to make sure that the limited amount of grants available go to those charities that we believe are absolutely committed to sticking with and making the digital transformation work,” he said.  

Trustees are currently in the process of reviewing the first year and Melville said that its willingness to continue with Raising IT long-term is “dependent on the effectiveness” and the impact the new website make for the grantees. 

Melville said he thinks the foundation can support about 100 new website grants this year. 

Next steps 

Last week Transform launched a new programme offering charities £5,000 grants to develop Facebook advertising campaigns with Farewill, a legacy fundraising company. 

Under the new scheme Transform will offer five grants to charities to build a legacy fundraising campaign on Facebook. If successful the foundation hopes to roll this out more widely. 

Melville is also trying to set up a volunteer matching scheme by the end of the year. He said he wants to “tap in to what corporates are doing with their CSR agenda” and find a way to provide small charities with “access to an individual with digital skills help them move forward”. 

Currently the foundation has no paid staff. A grants partnership manager has been seconded from Raising IT to support the day-to-day running of the organisation and Melville hopes to take them on permanently this year.