March 25th, 2010
Boxing clever: A guide to grant funding for community radio
by Phil Korbel, Director, Radio Regen
A community radio station’s income will usually consist of a mix of:
- Grants
- Advertising and sponsorship and other commercial activities
- Local fundraising, in-kind and other donations
- Contracts for services
- LSC-funded training
In the first of our series on funding, we’re putting the spotlight on raising revenue with grants from public funds and trusts. Future coverage will look at other means of raising funds including on-air advertising, service delivery contracts and sponsorship of programmes or features.
Radio Regen
Radio Regen has been going since 1999 and – not without heartache, stress and ever-increasing grey hair – somehow we’ve pretty much stayed in the black. We’ve been able to consistently align what we do to a multiplicity of funding opportunities, getting the right advice, filling out the forms correctly and getting the money. Bids have failed, the cheques haven’t always come on time and there have been fraught Board meetings, but Saint Marconi (the patron saint of radio) has been good to us. So here’s a few points of advice that will hopefully help to ease some of your funding search pains.
Boxing clever
Funding a full time community radio station – like many other voluntary sector organisations today – is pretty difficult. There is no simple formula to funding success but good information gathering, connections, entrepreneurial flair and a logical approach to form filling must be top of the list. Most of all, you must know what you have to offer. We can’t expect our revenue to be handed to us on a plate but have to box clever and constantly refer back to what we are: a trusted intermediary for partners in the community; and what we’re not: simply a very small radio station. If we do that we are then connected to a very potent unique selling point and revenue should, with a bit of luck, follow.
The holy grail of core funding
Project funding is the easiest grant funding to get but unless you get your core costs – i.e. rent, bills, station manager’s wages – paid for your project will end up like a doughnut with a gaping great hole in the middle where those costs should be.
You need unrestricted funding for core costs – money that can be spent on anything for your station. Commercial funding is best for this with service delivery contracts a good second best. With grants, what core costs a funder may pay will vary and will need to be established.
Intelligence I
Not IQ but the knowledge of revenue opportunities. By ‘intelligence’ I also mean keeping a weather eye on policy developments and local initiatives. Magazines such as New Start and Regeneration & Renewal are useful starting points on policy and www.regen.net is a good web resource. You don’t need to swot like you’re about to go on Newsnight but it will equip you with the vocabulary that local mainstream agencies will be impressed with.
Intelligence II
Intelligence also refers to being able to corral the meagre information on community radio successes and apply it to your project. There is pitifully little research on community radio in the UK (yet) but try to lay your hands on any evaluations of community radio projects as a way of giving your claims of efficacy grounding. Perhaps we could start trading such reports on our forums here?
Connections
The flip side of the intelligence from paper-reading and web-surfing is the ‘who you know’ factor. Make connections with those who have knowledge of local, regional or national funding opportunities. Build links with local councillors, agency officers and voluntary sector organisations such as CVSs [Find your local one through NAVCA’s directory]. A healthy relationship with them is vital for any community radio group.
A logical approach to form filling
While it sounds blindingly obvious, when you are filling out a funding application, do read the guidance notes thoroughly, do everything you can to understand them and then apply them to the right sections of the form. If you are not prepared to put the time into this part of the process then it’s hardly worth considering the grant. If the process seems complex, most funders do provide an enquiries service. Crucially, if the funder asks you to tell them X, Y and Z, do just this, don’t merrily recount A, B & C just because it sounds better.
Outputs vs. infrastructure
Many funders or partners you engage with will seem to have an unnatural obsession with targets and outputs. They will demand that you not only achieve targets within their criteria but that you also provide evidence that you’ve done so (which reminds me – never forget to budget for extra admin for output monitoring). There are targets that you can reach – such as numbers of volunteers, training hours and numbers of groups engaged with – but there are other, probably more important ones, that you can’t lay claim to. These include higher GCSE grades, safer streets and world peace.
Community radio stations should create better communities and boost pride in neighbourhoods. They are also a means by which other agencies can boost GSCE grades and make the streets safer (OK, and have a pop at the world peace thing too). In other words your community radio station should be part of your local infrastructure – the means by which other people can improve their outputs – in the same way as roads and phone lines. And who asks infrastructure for outputs like those above?
The ability to marshal the above argument is nothing short of vital – especially with local councils and other mainstream agencies when they hit you with the ‘what targets will you deliver’ argument. A track record is very useful for this.
Matching yourself to potential funders
There are many organisations offering advice on funding. The CMA’s own website offers lists of funding sources (http://www.commedia.org.uk/membership/members-only/funding-sources/) and we’re providing a small list of funders linked to this article. All this data is of course public knowledge.
Much as it might seem difficult to get your hands on the money, there are many grant giving bodies and funds to approach, each with their own objectives. Key to successful grant applications is your ability to match your remit to that of the grant-maker. Most community radio stations will have multiple remits that can follow multiple funding opportunities such as community cohesion, youth work, regeneration, education, health and among others. Further, a core remit of, say, a youth station, might branch out its funding opportunities through, for example, inter-generational, green or crime projects.
Two points of warning here. One, don’t waste your time or the funder’s by applying to them if you do not fit their target; these are normally described on their website. Two, don’t go for bids that make you, and your community, do things that don’t fit with your values and aims.
Fit your service to a potential client’s needs and ‘pitch’ this. Your radio station is not a radio station. It is a method by which your partners and clients can establish a trusted, functional and interactive relationship with their communities. To most such organisations this is gold dust. This might be more relevant to the area of contracts for services but will certainly apply to local and regional grants.
Over to you
What are your thoughts and experiences on grant funding? Where did you win, where did you fall flat on your face, what are your top tips? It is YOUR feedback that will make this site worthwhile and without it we’ll see little progress in the community radio sector (see soon-to-be-written piece on the power of collaboration and pooled knowledge). Every community radio broadcaster I speak to (and that’s a fair few) brings something new to the table – even if they see themselves as absolute beginners.
