A new episode of the Civil Society Podcast has been published today, featuring an interview with Nicole Sykes, director of policy, comms and research at the Lloyds Bank Foundation.
In this episode, Sykes discusses the financial challenges facing small charities, the role of funders in supporting them and reasons to be optimistic about the years ahead.
You can listen to the interview now below or on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and Pocket Casts.
AI-generated transcript
Rob Preston:
Okay, hello Nicole. Good to see you, and thanks for agreeing to join us on the Civil Society Podcast. For those of you who are listening and perhaps don't know Nicole's work, Nicole was a director of Pro Bono Economics, now known as PBE for four and a half years and, at the start of this year, you moved to Lloyds Bank Foundation for England and Wales, where you're the director of policy, comms and research. So perhaps, could you start off by just telling us a little bit about the difference between those two roles and how you're finding your first few months at Lloyds Bank?
Nicole Sykes:
Yeah, absolutely. I'll start with the similarities, which is the work that we did at PBE around the Law Family Commission on Civil Society, a two-year project speaking to 800 people in the sector about their challenges, the changes that they wanted to see. I couldn't really have asked for a better grounding to then be able to move into a foundation where it has the resources to be able to answer some of those questions and is constantly asking itself how it can improve, how it can do better, how it can respond to the changes and the challenges that are facing our communities. So I really feel I was given a lot of tools for success.
And funnily enough, my small world, one of the first projects that was on my desk was a report by Future Governance Forum that Lloyds Bank Foundation was funding, but that I had fed into at Pro Bono Economics, so I felt like I was landing in in fairly similar territory, but I don't think you can be prepared to go from an organisation where I had a fundraising target that was really, really significant to moving into an organisation where you have the privilege of not having to worry about that income, and you can really focus on, how do we be excellent? How do we rise to the challenges of the moment? How can you spend the time building relationships with people in a way that serves communities?
So, yeah, the big difference for me is, is that switch in resource, the switch in ways of thinking. It definitely, being a funder, you definitely think in longer-term cycles, we're doing our nine-year strategy at the moment, which is just a concept that at my previous organisation, you know, we've been going for 15 years, but we'd only been substantial for four so that kind of long-term thinking was very different. But I guess the the other thing that stays the same is the awareness of what is happening in society, the deep connection into that, I get to spend a lot more time with charities and community-led groups on the ground. Now really kind of feeling and absorbing that, but the motivation and the sort of focus on, how can we strengthen civil society? How can we put communities in charge of their lives and their futures, really remains the same, and that's a great joy for me, right?
RP:
And in terms of some of the work you've been doing so far at Lloyds Bank Foundation, yeah, could you talk a little bit about that, about some of the projects you've been working on?
NS:
Absolutely. Two big headlines to focus on, I'm going to make it three. I take it back. So, first one is Lloyds Bank Foundation is coming to the end of its current strategy. Our current strategy ends in 2026 so as I mentioned, what is our plan for the next nine years? Now I'm really proud to work at a foundation that has changed and adapted over time. You know, the building of our organisational development support, the way that we support community-led organisations with unrestricted funding, the work that we do in places, how we link up with the bank to bring in volunteers and other resources. We've changed time and time again to be able to adapt to what the sector needs. And I think we'll go on to talk about this a bit, but we are really challenging ourselves in terms of what is the next leap forward. How do we, as a foundation, with all these resources, with all these connections, scale and grow the assets that we put in the hands of communities. So that's a really big question we're wrestling with.
The second thing is really related to that, so we are working with Lloyds Banking Group exploring a few different ways, particularly about how we might support philanthropists to give. We know that high net worth individuals have money to give and a real desire to give, but they don't always know where to start or how to do it in the most impactful way possible. And the great thing is it's what we've spent 40 years doing. So how can we create a join-up? So, Lloyds Bank has launched this great philanthropy circle that's bringing people together, that's convening around successes, and we're exploring how we can be of greater service to that. And then the third thing I'm sure many of your listeners and readers will be aware of the covenant launch that happened in, I think June, it feels a very long time ago now, because we're heading straight into party conference season, and we've had the break of the summer, but we were really pleased to be able to play a role in supporting government and civil society to come together. It felt like a big, energising moment. And I'm really struck by just how much activity is happening across different government departments, people coming together around how do we put communities in charge? How do we develop our neighbourhoods? How do we look at the impact economy and different ways of getting finance harnessed and aligned and into the places that it needs to be. So, yeah, I still feel really motivated and energised coming out of that.
RP:
Excellent. We'll definitely talk about a lot of those things you mentioned there a bit more later on. I just wanted to ask you about the financial resilience and the role of small charities report that you launched recently, so there were some interesting findings in that, I think so a lot of the charities, so 95% of the charities involved said they needed more funding to enable them to provide more financial wellbeing support to people. And a lot of the people, the members of the public who were surveyed for that report, talked very highly about how much they valued the charities that they work with, and that charities were a real source of support for them. So yeah, what were your reflections on that research?
NS:
So, the big headline figure from that was 4.2 million people had accessed the support of charities for help with their financial wellbeing over the last three years, and the vast majority of those people who had accessed charitable support said that it had really made a difference, and it didn't necessarily mean that they didn't have financial challenges. Still, we were surveying a group of people who are on lower incomes, but what they said was they knew that there would be someone to help them if they got into really challenging situations, they felt more in control, and that gave them a lot of confidence. It really supported their wellbeing. And we were really struck by just how many types of organisations were providing support with finances, whether that was homelessness organisations or refugee organisations, employability, health, all of these different organisations.
We know it in our hearts, but it's good to have it on paper, that memory of the important role that charities play in taking the whole person and providing those holistic supports. You can put all your charities in whatever buckets you like, but ultimately making sure that people can access financial resources, that they can get online to be able to use benefit calculators or navigate the benefit system, all of those different organisations playing a role in that financial resilience ecosystem. But yeah, I mean, we got to read all of the comments and testimonials that those charity users were saying about charities. And I think the number one word was great or brilliant or excellent. You know, the word cloud was significantly positive, a word cloud that perhaps the government would envy, and just really high approval scores, really high satisfaction, just a real testament to the sector and how much it's been able to achieve, transforming people's lives and their financial wellbeing.
RP:
It's great to have that endorsement from members of the public, but the narrative seems to be, and this is partly due to publications like ours and the stories we write, is that it's been a very difficult year for charities of all sizes. I think a lot of the stories we've written have been of very large charities restructuring and of smaller charities, unfortunately, closing altogether. I just wanted to see what your view is on that. Do you agree that is actually quite a tough time for charities, and smaller charities in particular?
NS:
I mean, look, charities are obviously working really hard to adapt to how the landscape is changing. It's always been one of our sectors strengths in terms of how adaptable and responsive charities are, I think we all wish that there was less to have to adapt to. But, yeah, look this year's challenges. You don't really need me to list them off, but I'll do it anyway, whether you're struggling with national insurance, whether you're looking at what was happening on the streets of London, and wondering how you respond to that deepening division, or that deepening division is already on your doorstep in terms of how some of your community is being treated, the pressures of local authorities, their funding, their reorganisation, and, of course, the lack of recovery that we're seeing in volunteering.
When I started at PBE, it was in the midst of Covid, and the first thing that I was working on was how the sector was struggling with isolation among its beneficiaries, and fundraising events often being illegal and closed charity shops. And you know, if you went sort of five, 10 years before that it would be the sector adapting to the change in government financing, moving much into more into contracts and grants, the consequences of austerity. So, charities have been adapting to quite a lot for quite a long time, and throughout all of that, if you look at the spread of organisations, and we do this with the sort of 600-odd community-led organisations that we support as well. Yes, some are struggling, many are okay, and some are doing great.
And you look at the evidence around the houses, I think the latest VCSE barometer out of Nottingham Trent showed a quarter thinking that their finances over the next three months would decline, another quarter saying that they'll go up, and about half saying that they'll probably be steady state. And those ratios have shifted a little bit in and out over the last five years, but there's always a core of organisations that are just cracking on and keeping their head just above water, some that are doing great, and some that are struggling. So yes, you could have, you could have a story about how difficult it is. And quite rightly, there are people who are seeing their jobs change, loss of income, in really difficult circumstances. But I do think it is also a story of resilience, of brilliant people serving their causes, and of those millions of lives that are being improved as well. This sector rises to the challenge again and again and again. We wish the challenges were smaller, but it's what we do best.
RP:
And just to just add another stat to that. So you talked about those charities that are closing, but there are also charities that are continuing, and some charities are actually doing quite well. There seems to be a record number of new charities as well opening. So it's it does seem to be a time in which people are keen to get involved and expand the sector and see it as a good time to launch charities.
NS:
I mean, you only have to sort of listen to the younger generation coming in as well, about the energy, you know. I see it from the philanthropy side as well, younger people with wealth who are just brimming with ideas, social entrepreneurs, how do we fix these things? How do we how do we make a difference? And I think that's, I think that's brilliant.
RP:
Yeah, absolutely. And just to zone in on some of the pressures you mentioned that charities are facing. Obviously, national insurance is one that we've written about a lot since last year when it was announced. I guess for the smallest charities, things like national insurance and the minimum wage rises aren't really something that will affect them as they don’t have staff, basically. But does that mean they're a little bit sheltered from these sorts of pressures that seem to be concerning a lot of the larger charities?
NS:
I mean, I think their pressures are different. You definitely see a much bigger concern around volunteering from smaller charities and not having enough volunteers to be able to do what they need to do, whereas that's much less of a concern if you're a larger organisation. We also see that, if you know, if you look at the NCVO Almanac, you see that there is less money going into smaller organisations overall. And of course, like with inflation, smaller charities do feel the knock-on consequences of things like NICs rises, because if they are buying in the support of someone or they're paying for a service or buying food, even for the people that they're serving, because those costs of wage rises and tax rises get passed through the supply chain. Ultimately, their costs have gone up as well, even if they're not as immediate on the balance sheet. So they definitely do experience that as well, although their experiences are slightly different.
RP:
That's interesting in terms of the sort of fundraising, I suppose, that small charities are struggling with. Is there is the reason for that? Do you think is because larger charities have been able to kind of invest more in their fundraising capabilities. And it's a bit more tricky for small charities to attract new donors and to maintain the donors they have?
NS:
Yeah, we know that's always the case. You know, if you are a small charity that has, no staff to five staff, whatever your numbers are, those individuals are always fulfilling a significant number of roles, right? You're wearing about 18 hats at once, but I will say at the same time, you do see some very small organisations that are pretty nifty, that are are digital first, and thinking about how they exist in that landscape. I'd love to see some research into that kind of 10,000 new charities, and how many, you know, compared with those registering 10 years ago, are thinking about the digital space and how they respond and work there. And there are certainly a number of examples of organisations that have started digital first and then definitely become medium good-sized, not good as in pejorative but like significantly sized, hefty organisations doing some pretty cool work. So, yeah, I mean, there's never, you can't you can't draw a ruler across all small charities and say they're all the same just like you can't for big organisations, there are great small organisations that are agile. There are great small organisations that are less agile. Many are deeply grounded in their communities, but not all. So, you know, there's a mixture of organisations within. You're talking about 120,000 organisations, right? So they're gonna have, they're gonna have some diversity.
RP:
We've also written a lot about grantmakers and funders such as Lloyds Bank, I suppose, in the in the last few years, and how they've seem to have received a lot more applications from charities for funding, and some of them have closed as a result of that, and pause their grantmaking as a result and reassess how they go about it. The theory behind that, that I've heard is that yes, as you've said about some smaller charities finding it difficult to get funding, We've obviously had the cost-of-living crisis, which has been made it difficult for members of the public to donate, and they've been turned to institutions, yeah, grantmaking institutions for that funding. Yeah. Is that something you've observed as well with, with the grant, with grantmakers and having those pressures, and I guess, yeah, what's Lloyds Bank's thoughts on that? I suppose, as well.
NS:
Yeah, I'd start with the big picture, which is that if you look at the data from 360 Giving or from ACF, you'll see that grantmaking trusts and foundations over the last five years are giving more than they ever have, and, as an organisation, we're in a position where we don't have an endowment to spend down or to pause in the way that some organisations have. We are given our annual fund from Lloyds Bank, and we get as much out of it as we can.
We have seen some, I'd say, moderate increases in applications, but not the kind of leaps that that we found overwhelming. So, to give you an example, we ran a fund for deaf and disabled people's organisations. Last year, we got 170 applications. This year we got 190 so it's not, you know, it's the same fund, the same group of people, we've done basically the same comms. It's a small increase, and we are very mindful that we're giving something like 40 or 50 grants. So we don't, you know, we keep an eye on that ratio in terms of how many people are spending time and getting rejected. We put lots of work up front to help organisations understand if they're eligible or not, including webinars, including easy read content, BSL, all the rest.
And I will also acknowledge that, obviously, as a foundation, we're very fortunate if we need extra capacity, we are able to access it in a way that not all foundations are, because we do have a bank. To 65,000 people that can volunteer with us. And we have a large team, because we are a relational funder. We, you know, we see a lot of the value that that we add being in how we connect and catalyse change within communities, how we bring people together. So, you know, we have some flex that others aren't. So yeah, we're lucky within that so I'd say, yeah, we've got a moderate increase. We are keeping an eye on it. We are doing our best to make sure that charitable time is not being wasted, but, but, but we've not. We've not experienced the same changes that some organisations have.
RP:
Okay, I think you mentioned earlier about local councils as well. Briefly, just interested to see how that's having an effect, because I've heard certain things. So obviously, I know a lot of councils have their own financial pressures, and that's having a knock-on effect for the charities they work with, I suppose, through contracting, but also properties that charities are leasing from councils. What have you seen in that regards to do with local councils?
NS:
Yeah, we've seen the same in terms of again, again, disparate approaches across the country, though, there are some councils that are in much worse states than others, and in those areas we are, we are very concerned about what the long term impacts of you know, the council's withdrawal will be in terms of early help, in terms of prevention, all of the kind of work that the charity sector would love to be able to spend more time doing to prevent problems before they arise. But I would say what's been quite interesting is we are seeing demand overall tick down just a little, you know, demand for services. I think you can see that in a really stark way, actually, in the VCSE sector barometer, this last quarter, only 8% of charities were telling us that they weren't expecting to meet demand.
Just to put that into context, last summer, it was a third. So that's you know, and I see it myself in the food bank that I volunteer with for the first time since 2020 month after month, we're starting to see demand peter off. We're having fewer people come through the doors, and now that's again, not everyone. I think if you're in the homelessness sector, I think if you're in the refugee sector, that is not your experience, but I do think it is creating some space for organisations to think differently about how they engage with local authorities and with other people within the system who can make change, whether that's police or education or health.
So we've started to hear some brilliant examples about how actually, reorganisation is starting to force some local authorities to think about how they engage with communities differently, and they're doing that from the start of their reorganisation. Process, rather than tacking it on the end, like, oh no, I forgot about the community. And we're also seeing some great examples of community led organisations engaging with people with lived experience and really investing in them. You know, care leavers in Enfield, supporting them to be able to speak to people with power and say, this is my experience, and this is how you can change your services. Lived experience group in Great Yarmouth, working on homelessness, doing the exact same thing, you know, coming together for the long term to drive change. And often, that's the kind of work that gets sacrificed during crisis. It's the kind of thing that takes huge amounts of relational investment and energy, and actually, we're just seeing some amazing examples of it around the country, and an openness from local authorities to engage with it.
Now also bear in mind that local authorities will be looking at legislation coming down the track, which is going to require them to be more participative and engage with their communities more so they are. They are kind of keeping one eye on what is going through the House of Commons, even if it's not a thing that they are thinking about all of the time as part of their kind of nature and makeup and going, oh, we should probably get ahead of this game as well. So, I tend to live on the optimistic end, and I am really inspired and optimistic as a result of some of the things I'm seeing around the country, of people getting involved, doors being opened, not everywhere, but, you know, some good examples that really kind of lift the conversation as well.
RP:
Okay, well, it's good to hear some optimism in that respect. I guess it's probably a good time to talk about the Labour government, and since that's came in last year, you did mention the covenant as well earlier on. That seems to be a focus of that is to improve relationships between public sector commissioners and charities and other community groups. As you say, there was the big launch, and that seems to be a very optimistic event where the sector felt like it was being taken seriously again, I suppose. What do you what's your view on what's happening now? And do you think we're going to see a real change, I suppose, for charities, in how they how they operate? Yes, is enough being done after the big launch that happened early this year?
NS:
I sort of look across what's happening across Whitehall and get really excited, if I'm honest, look on the on the covenant itself. I believe we are waiting for how that is going to be run, you know, like, what are some of the structures that are going to be put in place to enable that to live and to have some longevity? But a lot of Whitehall isn't waiting. It's been getting on with this from day one. So you have work going on in the Treasury in terms of how can you lever in different forms of capital to support children and young people and that money going through charities, but levering in more money in partnership because of the convening power that government has.
You look over towards the amazing stuff that's happening around the plan for neighbourhoods, I think that has moved at pace over the last year from, okay, we will continue with the Conservatives’ towns funds that's putting, you know, 10 million quid in the hands of each of 70 towns for the next 10 years, for people to decide what they do with that money, to now saying, okay, well, what can we do in 300 of the most deprived neighbourhoods across the country, and those neighbourhoods being not whole towns, but smaller places that are among the most deprived, that have the least social infrastructure, you're looking more like 7,000 to 8,000 people, that's not a huge number of streets, right? Like, that's an area that people can feel quite in control of. And actually, if you arrive in those places and say, hey, we've got 20 million quid, and you're empowered to spend it like that, that can be quite impactful.
And I'd love to see more of civil society, engaged and integrated with that work. You know, how do you tap into the amazing knowledge that community infrastructure organisations have to really be able to navigate make sure the right people are involved all the rest. But I think that's potentially quite exciting, and it is a long-term commitment to communities. You know, there's, there's all of these things which can be better, that can be more, that can go faster. I don't think the government has ever been told, yes, that's exactly the right amount of money, and that's exactly what we need and will never bother you again. But, but, yeah, I think there's some, there's some good work going on. It's not as joined up as I would like it to be. And in some ways, it doesn't matter if it's a bit messy, if all the work gets done, but you probably get it done, maybe more faster, and maybe a bit more with a bit more coherence, if it was more joined up. And I would, I would love to see philanthropy being a bigger part of that, I think it's really tricky for governments to work out how to navigate relationship with philanthropy, because if you're talking about high net worth individuals, you know, they have some pretty strong opinions about where their money might want to go. You don't want to be diverting money that is already being used to, you know, deliver change like, is like, what, what, what incremental efforts are you going to make? But I do know that there are wealthy people out there who are waiting to be asked and to be involved in in this stuff, whether it's prison reform or children and young people. So, that's a real education job, I think, across Whitehall, in terms of, how do you engage with these organisations that it's never engaged with before? How do you do it in a way that doesn't just make people cross and feel like they're being used for their wallets? It is a bit of an art. So I'd love to see more of the government thinking about philanthropy and the role that it can play as well.
RP:
Yeah, I think, yeah, as you mentioned, I think the high net worth individuals increasing that as a source of funding for the sector seems to be a recurring theme over the last few years, both through the government and I think the Charity Commission itself has used that as something that it's campaigned on as well. So that's been quite good to see. I think the government said it was going to launch a place based philanthropy strategy in the next few months. I guess it'll be interesting to see what that includes as well. The other thing I wanted to ask you about, I suppose, is the internally kind of the sector's relationship between, well, between different charities of different sizes. I suppose we have certainly written many times before about larger charities perhaps not treating some of the smaller charities they've partnered with as good as they could. We've also seen that some infrastructure bodies, nationally and locally, that support smaller charities have closed down or cut back. So is there more that the sector can do internally, I suppose, to support smaller charities in your view?
NS:
Well, I think we can always be better friends and better partners, no matter who we are and what we're doing. I wonder sometimes, you know, I've just made this move right from a medium sized charity, sort of two million pounds income, to then this organisation, which, which is interesting, because it has, you know, the 20 million pounds or so that it, that it has each year, but then is also so deeply related with Britain's biggest bank, which is massive, and so I see the, you know, I see, I think, quite a big extreme between a very large organisation and some of the very small organisations that we work with. And in some ways, one thing is that always comes back to purpose, right? Like, what is your shared purpose, and no matter, you know, if you are larger, you inevitably have a greater amount of power. So how do you approach that purpose and approach the partnerships that you can have around that partnership with others who share that purpose with you in the best way possible.
But also, if you are a larger organisation, what happens? Well, your policy and your regulatory requirements also tend to spiral, so you have more restraints over what you can do that can be really hard to understand, that can take ages to understand. And indeed, the person leading the partnership might not always understand them until they're actually like in the weeds of this thing. So I think it needs a joint purpose, but it also needs a huge amount of patience, and it needs a huge amount of capacity. And smaller organisations don't always have the capacity. Larger organisations don't always have the capacity to do partnership.
Well, I guess one of the things that I'm particularly thinking about at the moment, when we think about partnership between large organisations and smaller ones, is the role of place, and how place can be a bit of a leveller and a unifier, because you will care about it, and you will live in in your homes as like people as well as you know, servants of an organisation in whatever form. So a great example I saw a few weeks back was Newbury soup kitchen. Now you would call it a small organisation, just because of its income. But I would struggle to call it small in any other way, because it's like its reach, its ambition, its impact, is all massive, and they have really been able to harness local business in just the best way possible, which is we all care about Newbury, and we all see the homelessness problem in our area, and we all want it to improve, whether that is because we are local residents or because we're with local businesses. And you know, we need the high street to improve in order to be able to better sell our products and make a profit. And they've created this really cool business club where businesses are giving money, you know, once a quarter, just out of their profits, but they have engaged them so well in the work that the organisation is doing that, you know, I went to visit on the day that the oven broke, and within 20 minutes, they had an engineer from one of those companies coming down and fixing it for free. They're talking about opening up this amazing new space that they can work within, and they've had offers of carpets and painters and light fitters and electricians and plumbers and all the rest from the from the local community, and no one is sitting there saying, oh, yeah, well, my organisation is bigger than yours, and so we should be making decisions. I don't even think they have, like, strong partnership agreements, right, where you sit there and spell out all of the different terms. They're just united in wanting to make their place better, and they all feel empowered to be able to play a role in that. Yeah, there has to be a lesson.
And I think from you know, how do we share purpose? How do we do partnership really well? And ultimately, like, what is the power of place in some of these partnerships, to do it really well? Now, in the charity sector, we know that you have the added dynamic of you are competing for contracts. And so I was in Wales a few months back, hearing some of the really cool stuff that they are doing to try and improve that. So we convened, I think, something like 150 charities and commissioners across Wales, north to south, and we'd sort of gone in saying, okay, we want, maybe our hope is we will find one thing that we can shift around commissioning so that it is better for civil society organisations of all sizes, but it's Wales, so they are predominantly, really quite small. We came out with something like 40 actions, and none of them for us, right? They were people getting together and saying, like, okay, well, I'm going to bring these people together. And this is, you know, this is what we're going to set up. These are the meetings that we're going to have to make sure that we are coordinating. This is how we're going to put, you know, what we are trying to achieve through commissioning, and how we treat it as a tool to be able to achieve the outcomes that we all share. So maybe there's something that we can be learning from Wales as well, and how that can kind of stem down through the covenant to actually not just be about government and civil society working together, but government and disparate pieces of civil society working together as well.
RP:
Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah. Okay. And what about smaller charities themselves? From your experience, you said, so Lloyds Bank funds, you said it's about 600 partners at the moment.
NS:
Yeah, I should say some of them are big and some of them aren't charities. So there's a mix in there.
RP:
But yeah, so focusing on the smaller charities that you work with, is there anything that strikes you as something that that they could be doing, perhaps to help themselves a bit more at the moment? Is there any, anything that some charities are doing that you think, Oh, this is very clever. And perhaps if more charities did this, then that might, that might be beneficial.
NS:
I imagine that the last thing a small charity wants is to hear some funder spouting off as to what they should and could be doing better. So I'm not going to do that. What I will say is, before I joined Lloyds Bank Foundation, I had no idea of the scale of development support that they provide the organisations that, sorry, we provide the organisations that we work with. Not all organisations engage with it, but the vast majority of them do, and that's where we say, OK, not only will we give you the 25,000 pounds a year for three years, we will also invest, actually quite significantly, in the things that you need to be able to develop your organisation, because we're giving you money that's unrestricted. So you can use that to grow your capacity, but we can also help you with the long term. So whether that is you need a CRM, okay, we'll help you figure out which one, and we'll pay for it. You need a fundraising strategy? Great. We'll engage one of our very many fundraising consultants. Which one do you want? You want to figure out how you're going to adapt to this changing social media landscape? We've got people who can help with that.
And I am just blown away by like every story I hear about how much that has helped organisations. I will drop a spoiler. We're doing some really interesting impact work with charities to understand, actually, how has that made a concrete difference to those organisations. Financial growth and the numbers we're starting to see from that are really, really exciting. And you know, you take that down to an organisation level. We were hearing from Access Dorset, so disabled people's organisation down on the coast, we'd been supporting them with all of these different consultants. They now have an improved financial system in place, they now have a stronger staff and board team, so they're making new better decisions. And as a result, they've been able to launch some new programmes that they never thought that they would be able to, kind of, you know, reach the scale to be able to do. And ultimately, people are getting a better service. Beneficiaries are getting better outcomes, and ultimately, that's what it's all about, right? So if organisations are connected to us, or if they're connected to a grant funder that has, you know, that kind of grant plus offer, from what I'm seeing on the. Around if you have the capacity to engage in it, like make the most of every pound that's on offer, right? Because I've started to see how it really does change and transform organisations for the better, ultimately, so they can support more people to be in a good place.
RP:
Excellent. Okay, oh yeah. Thank you very much, Nicole, it's been really great to chat to you today. I think it's been quite an uplifting chat, really about the well, the importance of small charities, but also interesting to hear about the demand side of it, potentially kind of levelling off after some very difficult years during the cost-of-living crisis, and also some optimism about the future as well. It sounds like you've got some optimism about what could happen in the next few years under our current government. So be, yeah, be wonderful to see some positive changes for charities around the country. So yeah, really nice to speak to you. And thanks so much for your time.
NS:
Thanks for having me on.
