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Report of a seminar held on Friday 8th October 2004 at The Meeting Place, Drummond Street, London NW1
This seminar, organised by the Committee for Conflict Transformation Support (CCTS), was attended by 21 people and facilitated by Alan Pleydell and Michael Randle. The seminar began with brief presentations from two speakers: Juliet Prager from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust (JRCT) and Bridget Walker from Responding to Conflict (RTC). [Papers by the two speakers had been circulated in advance, and are reproduced in this issue.]
A funder’s perspective
In her presentation, Juliet Prager spent some time encouraging funding applicants to ‘know your funder’. Funders are all different, so it is important to know what approach a particular funder prefers, and to behave accordingly, if you want to maximise your chances of success. Some funders respond well to polished presentations, which they expect to be tailored to dovetail with their interests; others (and JRCT is one such) prefer a more straightforward explanation of the applicant’s objectives.
To illustrate this point, Juliet described a funding application to JRCT that, initially, didn’t go down too well – a slick video presentation from a smartly-suited young American with an expensive laptop computer. During the meeting, Juliet remembered having heard about the work of his organisation in Africa: how, with very limited money, they had arranged a successful sports tournament for children in a poor and conflict-ridden community. When the chairs that had been hired for the audience were stolen overnight, the organisation faced a huge (and unpayable) bill to replace them. It transpired that the people who were supposed to be guarding the chairs had sold them piecemeal to households in the local area. The organisers went door to door, explaining what had happened, and managed to recover all the chairs at no financial cost. The young man was initially embarrassed to be reminded of this incident, but it impressed JRCT much more than the slick presentation had done.
Funders also differ in how they routinely get to know applicants. For some, formal relationship-building events (wining and dining) are the norm, while others prefer to get to know applicants in less formal ways. In either case it is important to know how the funding organisation makes its decisions, and where key responsibilities lie. In JRCT, for example, the trustees are the sole decision-makers; in other organisations, workers’ recommendations hold more sway.
Clearly, applicants need to know what types of work interest a particular funder, and what their funding criteria are, or they are likely to waste time and effort making unsuitable applications. JRCT attempts to be as open as possible about their criteria, and to publicise who they are funding (though in some sensitive cases such openness may not be appropriate). It is also important to understand, and have some compatibility with, the funder’s value base. For example, although JRCT funds non-Quakers, it is unlikely to fund a strongly right-wing organisation, or one that discriminates against minority groups.
Juliet stressed the importance, once an application for funding has been granted, for regular contact and information exchange with the funding organisation. They need to be well informed about progress, problems or changes in the work they are funding. It can be hard for a grantee to talk about problems, for fear of being judged and found lacking. However, Juliet argued that funders are more likely to stay engaged if they are kept in the picture, and can generally make allowances when problems arise in order to increase the likelihood that their spending is effective.
Funders are also dependent on their grantees to keep them up-to-date with developments in the broader social and political context in which they are working. Juliet explained that funders find it harder, often impossible, to find out what is going on from organisations they don’t fund - and misunderstandings can easily occur. She recalled a conversation in which she had expressed a casual interest in the use of IT in Scotland as a tool for tackling poverty and economic justice. Two weeks later she received a funding application for IT in Scotland!
Although social change can take place rapidly, it more often happens slowly, so that a significant change takes a long time. This needs to be recognised by funders and applicants alike: applications should not attempt to promise more than they can deliver in the short-term, and funders need to be willing to commit suitable long-term funding for strategic change projects.
Although the relationship between funders and applicants is not an equal one, in Juliet’s view there is a mutual dependency. Honesty and openness on both sides, and the willingness to be flexible, can help to make the relationship successful.
A grant-seeker’s perspective
Bridget Walker began by reminding the audience that conflict transformation is not well understood outside the expert group – and suggested that, as a group, we are not very good at explaining ourselves to outsiders. She recalled a supporter saying to her: ‘You [conflict transformation practitioners] have the reputation for being fluffy – but I know that you are rigorous’. In her view rigour and ‘fluffiness’ [a softer, more empathetic approach] are not opposites – and both are valuable.
Funders who are used to supporting fixed-term projects often find both the long-term nature of conflict transformation and the complexity of the relationships typically involved in such work hard to deal with. RTC, for example, runs courses and undertakes consultancy as well as being involved in conflict transformation work, both alone and in relationships with many external groups and projects internationally. It sometimes finds itself in the role of both grantee and funder where it is taking a lead role in raising money for collaborative projects.
Bridget looked briefly at the factors that influence how funders allocate grants, pointing out that donor policies tend to change over time, influenced by the local political and economic climate. World events focus attention on different countries and cause funders’ priorities to change. And new initiatives such as the millennium development goals also require cases to be re-presented to fit the new agenda. The ‘war against terror’ has prompted governments in particular to release a lot of new money for peace-building initiatives, although its use is often constrained by conditions that fail to recognise how conflict transformation is done - for example by proscribing any work with rebel groups, especially if they have ever borne arms.
Another major change affecting funding is what Bridget calls the ‘new managerialism’ – an increasing focus on measurement, strategic planning, logical framework analysis and information gathering. Bridget expressed the fear that, rather than being seen as the useful tools that they undoubtedly are, these mechanisms are increasingly governing funding, leaving no room for flexibility or responsiveness to changing circumstances. ‘Management’ words such as aim, objective, indicator, output and impact are pushing aside the more subjective but nevertheless essential vocabulary of social change – words like hope, despair, courage, suspicion, trust and struggle. In the words of Edward Said, this displacement tends ‘... to divide, deploy, schematise, tabulate, index and record everything in sight (and out of sight) ... and above all to transmute living reality into the stuff of texts ...’(1).
There is a danger, too, that information gathering can become an objective in itself, and a fear that although reports are required by funders, they will not necessarily be given the attention that they deserve, or that would justify the effort that has been put into writing them. Similarly impact assessment – which should be a supportive enquiry into whether and how the project is making a difference (who benefits and loses, what would be the effect of failure and what can be done to mitigate against it) – can become instead a search for weaknesses. Under such scrutiny, admitting failure can be doubly difficult – risking disapproval as well as jeopardising future funding.
Nevertheless, mistakes are inevitable, and can be learned from and translated into growth and success in an environment of trust and respect. Bridget explored some models of support that would be more likely to engender such an environment. These include:
· shared vision and values - more likely to be found with grant making trusts, such as Quaker organisations, than with Government funders;
· long term relationships - building mutual understanding between funder and grantee;
· continuity of staffing - this assists in relationship-building but is hard to attain, with staff moves and restructuring common in both charities and government agencies;
· flexibility when circumstances change - also assisted by continuity;
· honesty - difficult without trust;
· accountability - not just financially but in terms of the underlying objectives;
· learning - not only individually but as an organisation.
The presentations were followed by a brief interlude of discussion in small ‘buzz groups’ and a plenary discussion session. In the afternoon discussion continued in three groups (two of them led by one of the speakers, the third by Kate Cargin, who is responsible for fundraising at Friends House), and concluded with a report-back plenary session. Plenary and group discussions are summarised together below:
Issues of measurement
Several participants felt that the increased focus on the definition and measurement of success criteria was making it harder to get funding for Conflict Transformation, particularly from Government (and other, similarly bureaucratic) funding agencies, because of the difficulty of predicting outcomes when working in volatile conflict areas.
The long-term nature of most conflict transformation work also creates problems, especially given the short-term nature of most funding. The results of our work may be visible too late to ensure continued funding. For example, one participant talked about some training and capacity-building of local NGOs in Afghanistan. The work was funded for two years, at the end of which there was little visible evidence of impact, and the funding was not renewed. The local NGOs felt considerably let down, trust was eroded and scepticism engendered. Looking back some years later, it was possible to see that the work had indeed been successful, because the people involved in the training had become very influential for peace.
On the other hand, the requirement to account for the money allocated, and to show that it was well spent, was seen to be completely understandable. Several people stressed the need, therefore, to find some way of demonstrating intermediate steps towards the long-term objective. Having a funder who is well-informed about the work you are doing, and who has recognised the likely timescales, is clearly helpful here.
Several participants commented on the difficulty of finding adequate ‘hard’ criteria for assessing the achievements of conflict transformation work. If, for example, your objective is to improve relations between two groups, it is not clear what you can measure to adequately reflect progress. It is important to be able to show not just that positive change has occurred, but that negative change has not.
Opinions were mixed about the receptiveness of funders to subjective assessments of success. In one participant’s view, effective evaluation is founded in effective initial assessment and planning - which then informs the way in which the entire project is implemented and monitored. With the correct groundwork, he was sure that soft targets could be included in this. Another participant agreed that if the problems of measurement were openly discussed at the time of the funding application, a way forward could be agreed. Others had found funders less and less prepared to consider ‘soft’ targets.
One funder suggested that some of the difficulty could be said to be with the fundraisers, who sometimes have ‘impossibly high goals’. In their view, more realistic criteria for success are needed.
It was suggested that the ‘ new managerialism’ among funders may lead to an insistence on measurable forms of accountability and achievement at the cost of reflecting reality in complex, ambiguous and delicate scenarios. The need to measure can ‘take over’ from the real objectives of a project, so that you end up measuring activity rather than outputs. One example given was that of an inner city regeneration project. You can count how many people you train and who gain employment as a result, but if those people then move out of the area you will have a falsely positive assessment of what has been achieved by way of regeneration. [On the other hand, there is a net gain, because those people have benefited from the training.]
Many of those present felt that some things were very difficult, if not impossible to measure but nevertheless were valuable. In their view, while rigorous measurement gives an essential framework, it is not enough by itself: the softer, more intuitive evaluation is also needed, and is often fundamental to a project’s success. Bridget argued that there should still be room for faith and for hope (which she described as a ‘revolutionary duty’(2) ). It may be hard to find evidence for Margaret Mead’s dictum that ‘a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world’ but we need to believe that it is so. Others backed her up, arguing that people are in general too fatalistic: the combined actions of each one of us determine the future.
One person commented that reporting back to funders is often more effective face-to-face than on paper: quicker for the funder to assimilate as well as strengthening the relationship. It is particularly unfortunate, therefore, that one side effect of the growing role of management is that it becomes harder to speak to people, even by phone (they are too busy in meetings, one participant supposed).
The unequal relationship
There was some discussion about the relationship between funders and fundraisers: does the funder always holds all the power or is there potential equality?
Although it was generally agreed that the relationship was inevitably unequal, there was little argument with the fact that some funders are much better than others at valuing the organisations that they fund. JRCT (and other funding bodies represented at the meeting) do manage to have relationships with applicants that are mutually respectful and helpful as well as rigorous. (One participant said that JRCT in particular had ‘spoiled’ him for other funders by raising his expectations of honesty and openness to a level that other funders did not live up to!)
It was disappointing that the more demanding funders were not present at the seminar. One participant questioned what this said about their attitude to peace. The pessimists assumed that there was little or no interest; but there were also optimists who suggested that their non-attendance might indicate that these funders were too busy working for peace to be able to attend. Unfortunately, Government funders were perceived to be in this troublesome category by a number of participants. One participant complained that DfID frequently rearranged or cancelled meetings at short notice; another spoke of a project having had 6 or 7 different DfID grant officers in three years.
One person suggested that much business-based funding is narrow-minded and egotistical – with the funders frequently requiring their name to appear on all project materials. But at least one participant felt that this attitude was pejorative. One should not expect ego and dishonesty; on the contrary, business funders may bring with them a refreshingly different view of the world.
It was recognised that there can be relationship problems even between funders. The GCPF, for example, is a partnership of three UK government departments (MoD, FO and DfID) with widely differing attitudes and approaches.
It was felt that applicants don’t always realise or fully utilise funders’ expertise: they may have more than money to give. Their expertise is unlikely to be exploited unless both funders and funded put work into the relationship throughout the life of the project. The best chance of synergy is when there is a settled, long-term relationship that spans a number of projects, though it was recognised that such relationships present problems for new players, and can mitigate against novel approaches.
In any case, it is worth remembering that the power is not all one way. Funders need practitioners in order to realise their objectives.
Covering the costs of core activities
While it was accepted that effort spent formulating, discussing, explaining and justifying a proposed project is generally well-spent, making the resulting work more systematic and better thought out, such effort is not often acknowledged by funders, and is seldom allowed for in grants.
Indeed, most participants experienced difficulties in getting funding for the whole range of core activities, including project administration, fund-raising itself (which could be regarded as a key project activity, involving educating funders and public), information gathering and reporting (especially as the demands for detailed reporting increase). The burden on small organisations is particularly acute. One participant recalled that Comic Relief does sometimes make an allowance in the budget for reporting, but this is rare.
The more bureaucratic Western funders become, the more hands money generally has to pass through before it reaches the end-recipient; this, too, increases the administrative overhead, and in a way that is difficult to cover. The Global Green Grants fund, mentioned in Bridget’s paper, goes some way to addressing this problem, by linking projects with large funders through a network of regional advisors.
Travel, too, can be difficult to get funding for. It was suggested that the Internet has, to some extent, brought people closer together globally, replacing the need for travel. But others felt that there was no substitute for the support and solidarity that could be gained by providing a safe physical environment in which people can meet and discuss the awful circumstances that they suffer at home. Some felt that, because the Internet was a tool of the rich, it provided yet another means of disadvantaging the poor. But one participant had the opposite experience, and described how Jubilee 2000 had found the Internet a very effective conduit of information to groups in poor rural areas of the global South. And another person commented that the Internet gave NGOs in the global South a much more direct link with US or European funders than they have previously enjoyed, cutting out the need for intermediaries. (Where would that leave US and European NGOs, someone wondered? Maybe they would finally put more effort into righting wrongs closer to home?)
In the experience of several participants it is easier to get core funding from US funders than from their European counterparts, although it was not clear why this should be so.
Particular funding difficulties for conflict transformation
It has already been noted that funding tends to be short-term (varying from 1 to 4 years in general), while most conflict transformation takes much longer. This makes funding harder to obtain, because it is harder to demonstrate short-term results.
One person argued that we should expect conflict transformation to be relatively under-funded currently because it is a new area of work - only recognised by the EU some 10 years ago. As the profile of our work is raised, funders are likely to allocate more money to it – as well as to adapt the current log-frames to fit better with conflict transformation work.
Another participant’s experience was that it is easier to get funding through American or European embassies in the country where the work is to be done than through the ‘home’ government. DfID and the Global Conflict Prevention Fund both distribute funding in this way.
One problem for conflict transformation work is that peace is a politically loaded word. For example, while various US organisations might be prepared to fund peace, they tend to see it in terms of pacification. In a struggle for justice it may be necessary to challenge the status quo rather than bow down to it. It can be hard to find funding for this more radical approach. As evidence of the political nature of conflict transformation, the meeting was reminded that, under Charity Commission rules, promoting peace is not a sufficient reason for charitable status, whereas defence of the realm is. [Sadly, no-one asks for an evaluation or cost-benefit analysis of a war.]
The effect of the ‘war on terror’ is huge – and though it has generated additional funding, it often excludes funding applications for projects involving dissident groups who have at any stage used force. This rules out a great deal of meaningful conflict transformation work (as well as being blind to the historically common transformation from terrorist to freedom fighter to government minister, as demonstrated in South Africa, Israel and Northern Ireland, for example). Bridget argued that this reactionary backlash is nothing new. She remembered the headline ‘Blood Money’ in the Daily Mail in the 1970s, criticising expenditure on anti-racist action because it involved South African liberation movements.
The distorting effect of funding
While those who spoke greatly respected the commitment of local partners with whom they worked, more than one participant expressed the fear that competition for funding can distort attitudes and objectives, especially in regions where money is short and NGO work is one of the few growth industries. Participants described a spectrum of distortion ranging from the ‘tweaking’ of genuine applications to better fit the funder’s priorities, through applications from organisations that may do good work but put too much focus on income generation, to the totally unscrupulous ‘creaming off’ of funding by ‘brass plate’ NGOs that do little other than applying for money. It can be hard for funders to distinguish between these - particularly without local knowledge.
Even the most scrupulous fundraiser faces ethical dilemmas: is their prime objective to get the money or to tell the truth? Juliet’s paper refers to the many applications to JRCT that head straight for the refusal pile because their cases are distorted to fit the applicants’ perceptions of what JRCT might fund.
One person commented that the mushrooming of the NGO ‘business’ in many countries had almost supplanted the notion of voluntary action. This is more evident in some countries than others: in Bosnia, for example, there is very little unfunded activity, whereas in Croatia voluntarism is very much alive.
During group work, Juliet raised a story in that day’s Guardian(3) about a family of 6 South African children orphaned by Aids, being raised by the 11 year old (eldest) child. The story explained that the government is not paying the family the welfare grant to which they are entitled, but that a local charity offers some support. How, Juliet wondered, did participants react to this story? If they wanted to help the family, would they send money direct, or via a local charity? Or, would they prefer to fund work campaigning for welfare benefits, or researching to prevent AIDS, for example? Some group members feared that the local charity might end up receiving more money than it could possibly spend effectively; or that other, equally deserving, causes might suffer financially; even that a sudden influx of money might increase the level of conflict locally. But it is clear that some people respond with their heart more readily than with their head. For them a particular child, or family, is a more likely trigger for giving. Fundraisers need to be prepared to use different strategies to reach this group.
Increasing the funding for conflict transformation
There was some discussion about possible ways of expanding the funding pool for Conflict Transformation. It was noted that funders are more inclined to fund Human Rights work, and yet peace is at the heart of both human rights and conflict transformation. Development work, too, often has a peace element. JRCT is inviting known peace funders to come together to talk and act as a group, in the hope of increasing awareness and funding.
One of the problems is that charitable trusts often have a very specific agenda, often dictated by the personal views of the founder of the trust, or the person in honour of whose life and aspirations the trust has been founded. This limits the scope for movement.
It was suggested that, in general, funders prefer to hear from practitioners or beneficiaries than to meet fundraisers. There is a dilemma here, in that if funders require well worked out applications, applicants will naturally tend to professionalise their fundraising activity. This issue has some impact on the way that NGOs fit fund-raising into their organisational structure. Nonviolent Peaceforce, for example, is moving away from having a central fundraising department and towards locating fundraisers with each project. Their justification for the change is that so much of their money comes from sources local to the project, so it might bring additional benefits.
Some of the larger funders seem not to be interested in small grant requests. Undoubtedly there are efficiencies of scale for them, but the end effect tends to be that they outsource the problem of managing smaller applicants. It was suggested that one way round this dilemma would be for organisations forming consortia in order to bid for funding. This would not only make it easier to deal with funders who only want to make large grants, but would also bring benefits in sharing experience and expertise among applicants. Against this approach is the level of competition between organisations, as well as the likely reluctance of a funder to deal with a group application rather than to discuss specific projects.
The way forward?
Is it possible to construct a strategy for improving the effectiveness of existing funding relationships and for addressing the currently perceived drawbacks? The general feeling seemed to be that CCTS as a group had no spare capacity to work on such a strategy, and were satisfied to have aired the issues at this seminar. It was suggested that BOND (British and Overseas NGOs for Development) or the Peace and Security Liaison Group may be better fora for such work.
Participants:
Kat Barton
Email:
kat@wri-irg.org
Kate Cargin
Email:
katec@quaker.org.uk
Donna Copnall
Email:
donna@copnall.demon.co.uk
Oliver Cumming
Email:
ocumming@saferworld.org.uk
Clive Fowle
Diana Francis
Email:
diana@ dianashouse.freeserve.co.uk
Carolyn Hayman
Email:
carolyn@peacedirect.org
Alan Hunter
Email:
a.hunter@coventry.ac.uk
Rachel Julian
Email:
rjulian@nonviolentpeaceforce.org
John Lewis
Email:
lewislynet@aol.com
Carrie di Memmo
Email:
carriedim@quaker.org.uk
Rhona Miller
Email:
rmiller@c-r.org
Mohamed Osman
Email:
osmanm@unaids.org
Alan Pleydell
Email:
alanp@quaker.org.uk
Juliet Prager
Email:
juliet@jrct.org.uk
Michael Randle
Email:
michaelrandle@blueyonder.org.uk
Andrew Rigby
Email:
a.rigby@coventry.ac.uk
Anne Rogers
Email:
anne@hollylawn.org
Susan Seymour
Email:
susanseymour@softhome.net
Imran Tyabji
Email: imran@tyabji.co.uk
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