Henry Smith Charity is “very keen” to partner with other funders who work in similar areas, the charity’s chief executive, Anand Shukla, has said in a recent podcast interview.
In the latest episode of For Impact, the Charity podcast, interim CEO and charity consultant Felicia Willow and her co-host, Chris Pitt from the Benefact Group, explored “why major funders are pausing or altering their funding distributions”.
Shukla told Willow that Henry Smith Charity will announce new funding partnerships in the next few weeks.
He said: “This isn’t something that we did particularly, and I think is a fair criticism of the funding sector, that we should work more closely together.
“There are funders who encourage collaboration between organisations applying for funding.
“We could do that a bit more collaboratively. We are independent institutions of course and you have the usual issues there. But something that I’m very keen to work on this year is to develop many more collaborative partnerships with funders.”
Two parts of the charity’s new strategy will include capacity-building funding, or Funder Plus, revenue funding, and continuing to provide long-term core cost funding. It will also provide unrestricted funding to organisations.
In June 2024, it closed its funding programmes to prepare for its new funding strategy, which it is set to launch in 2025.
It gave out £55m in grants in 2024 while in 2023 it distributed £46m, according to the grantmaking data platform 360Giving.
Funders have a duty to maintain funding flow into the sector and when funders make adjustments, they should plan accordingly, Shukla said.
When it comes to artificial intelligence (AI), Shukla said there seem to be more AI-generated applications, which he supports because it levels the playing field for charities.
But Shukla said it might lead to a volume issue where applications go up while the amount of funding might not
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