Ripples Story: “Trust in a crisis”

In this article, Kerry Whitehead-Dymond, The Rank Foundation’s Grants Administration Manager, reflects on how trust shaped our response during the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis.

Since I started working at The Rank Foundation almost nine years ago, there is never a day that goes by where I’m not learning more about the social sector.

I’ve seen trends and changing needs in funding applications, but that doesn’t mean that one size fits all. When beginning new place-based programmes and immersing ourselves into a new community, we see that each area has different aspirations, and we do our best to shape our support to benefit the organisations that know their area best.

Responding to the Network

While Rank has always adapted and responded to change, the pandemic reinforced the need to act at pace when circumstances demand it. We paused longer-term plans to respond to the immediate crisis, supporting organisations facing unprecedented levels of demand for their services. Within 2 weeks, funds were repurposed and an emergency fund was open to the Network, with payments being conducted every week.

As you all know, we emerged from one crisis, only to be thrust into another: cost-of-living. Network members told us about their experience of the cost-of-living crisis, which combined increased demand, increased costs, and a more challenging fundraising environment. We trusted what they told us and knew we had to respond to immediate need.

We created the Cost-of-Living Grants Programme in early 2023 through which we awarded a total of almost £1.5 million to 130 Network Members using a mutual trust-based model of grantmaking. In order to act swiftly and repurpose funds to meet this new challenge, we had to be transparent about:

• Addressing immediate need, not long-term need. Gone were the usual application questions around 3-year strategies and financial independence.

• This was going to be a competitive programme, meaning not everyone that applied would be successful. This meant that we needed to ask questions that had a clear marking metric and could be administered as objectively as possible.

• Turnaround must be quick without compromising the integrity of the applications process. It was about 3 months from inception to award.

• If this was a programme to meet immediate need, how were we going to expect recipients to report? We surveyed 6 months after the award to gauge where organisations were as a result of the grant, the challenges they still faced and what they still needed from us.

Throughout this process, we were reading through applications, sending out awards and, a couple of observations were emerging.

• Organisations only requested what they needed, rather than the maximum offer of £25,000. Not only did this show how astute applicants are with their finances and operations but, in doing this, we were able to award more organisations. At the end of the programme, we were able to award almost 200 grants within the space of three months with the average award amounting to £16,000 for the larger grants programme.

• Grantees felt comfortable communicating a change of circumstances with us because they trusted us to not penalise them for events beyond their control.

• Grantees from both programmes understood that, while funds can only go so far, networking opportunities, training provisions and webinars might equip them for long-term resilience.

Throughout my time at The Rank Foundation, although we observe and pick up on trends or changes in the third sector, we do our best to listen to the needs of the Network and act on them. When the Network tells us how to use our resources and funds, we trust that they know best what will benefit them and the communities they cherish.

What the Network needs might change slowly or quickly depending on the climate but in knowing that we can’t do what we do without them and by responding to that change we are rewarded with reciprocal trust and honesty.

What our cost of living grant recipients said:

“This grant helped us to pay key staff members and keep our service going.”

“It gave staff a much-needed sense of security and took some of the intense pressure off.”

Read the full latest issue of Rank Ripples magazine