Age Unlimited

The brave new Third Sector world

Rosie Farrer - 27.09.2011

P&L, cash flow forecast, business plan, interest creating statements, sales, business development. You'd be forgiven for thinking that I'm about to launch into a long post about the jargon associated with business start-ups. In fact I'm reflecting on the new world that Third Sector organisations are having to adapt to in order to survive.  

Traditionally, a charity wanting to develop a service is likely to look for grant funds from a trust, foundation, local authority or government department. There is often a particular programme or pot of funding awarded as a grant on a time limited basis. While this is still a valid way of securing money to develop or run services, there is an increasing recognition that charities need to diversify their funding streams in order to maximise their fundraising prowess and enhance their sustainability.

We have been exploring ways of doing this through the Age Unlimited programme. Over the last year we have been working with 10 projects to help them develop a service that is not only tested with users, but also with the potential purchasers of their service. Working with Unltd we have been encouraging participants to think about different kinds of purchasers and ways of selling their service -  moving from a grant funding model to a price per unit sales model.

Unltd has a long history of doing this with start-up social entrepreneurs. Through Age Unlimited it has been helping NESTA to develop a support package that not only helps organisations develop more innovative services that meet the needs of an ageing society, but also encourages organisations to think early on in the development cycle about how the service will eventually be funded.

Some examples of the projects we are working with:

• Grandparents Plus is developing a reward scheme that has, at its heart, grandparents as both the user and a paying customer by using a membership model.
• The Beth Johnson Foundation is currently grappling with pricing the peer coaching for later life courses that they have developed so they are at a realistic price to sell to housing associations and other interested customers but also have the potential of making revenue for the organisation.

You can read more about the other Age Unlimited projects here.

The projects we are supporting were partly selected based on their ability to adapt and their willingness during initial workshops to rethink how they might fund their service. Even so, they have required considerable support to change their mindsets from grant funding. This is not an easy thing for Third Sector organisations to get their head around. Forecasting and selling do not come naturally. They are not often competencies which charities recruit for and they often sit uncomfortably with the personal values of those that work in the sector.

While I don't endorse organisations making a buck or two off the needs of older people I think it is important to value public services realistically and ensure that the services charities and others develop are sustainable and viable. Too often a great service is binned because the organisation developing it doesn't have a sustainable funding model beyond the end of a bit of grant funding, and that is hugely wasteful. Good services should be realistically priced and tested in the market to see whether people or organisations value them. That way, they are able to fund themselves in the brave new world of public services.