HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! Following our seasonal and New Year break, we’re back in the office now until Friday 19th December 2025.
As usual for our first post of the year, we’ll be summarising our progress against the targets we set at the start of 2024 and setting out our plans and priorities for the year ahead.
2024 was a transitional year for GRIN in which we narrowed our focus to (1) developing the daily grants bulletin we send out at 8.30 each morning and (2) the monthly Grants Database updates circulated on the first Monday of each month. We stopped providing many of the services we had offered in previous years and, instead, referred enquiries to a list of consultants and consultancies that provide similar services.
We became a subscriber-focused social enterprise. This means that, although we responded to requests from non-subscribers for a free consultation and/or information on grant opportunities, the information we were able to provide was limited and often consisted of signposting to other agencies.
In January 2024 we said we would:
o Introduce a GRIN Micro-Awards scheme: this monthly scheme, ringfenced to subscribers, started in March 2024. We made 10 donations of £250 during the year to a range of voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise organisations (VCFSE), stretching from South West England to the Orkney Islands.
In 2025 we plan to continue the GRIN Micro-Award scheme. The recipient of the first donation of £250 will be announced on Friday 28th March 2025.
o Not take on any new commissions or additional pro bono commitments due to our limited capacity: we ceased offering an array of services and concentrated on providing information on grant opportunities and resources through a daily grants bulletin and monthly grants database to subscribers. Any enquiries for other services were referred to either an infrastructure support agency or a list of consultants and consultancies that could offer a broader range of services.
In 2025 we will continue to focus our advice and information on grant opportunities to our subscriber base. We will not be taking on any pro-bono or commissioned work.
o Produce a daily grants bulletin: we increased the number of funding programmes featured in the daily bulletin. This now consists of detailed information on 3 national grant schemes and 1 local grant programme. During 2024, we produced around 230 daily bulletins featuring approximately 860 grant opportunities.
In 2025 we will continue to send out a daily grants bulletin at 8.30 each morning featuring 3 national and 1 local grant programme, together with a link to a daily website article.
o Develop and improve the monthly GRIN Grants Database: all the grant schemes featured in the daily bulletin are added to our Grants Database. An updated version is sent out to database subscribers on the first working Monday of each month. In 2024 we circulated 11 database updates (we don’t send an update out at the start of January). Database subscription included the daily grants bulletin and opportunities for subscribers to request additional detailed information about grant opportunities.
In 2025 we will continue to develop the Grants Database. Database subscribers will continue to receive the daily grants bulletin as part of their subscription and can request a prospect search for grant opportunities. This is where we will aim to send a list of around 5-10 good grant prospects to support specific services and projects. More information about prospect searches is provided below.
o Publish a daily news item on our website: the daily website postings tend to cover a broader spectrum of subjects, including the occasional grant opportunity. Subscribers and non-subscribers are welcome to use the website posting to promote job or trustee opportunities, or simply to advertise their services. Each website posting is often read by several thousand individuals active in the not-for-profit sector.
In 2025 we will continue to post a news item on our website and offer agencies the opportunity to publicise job and training opportunities, trustee vacancies or any other aspect of their services they’d like to promote.
o Provide Grant Prospect Searches for Database subscribers: the prospect searches we’d scheduled during 2024 were often buffeted by requests from agencies facing a funding crisis, meaning that many of the scheduled searches were deferred.
This is an area we want to focus on in 2025. In particular, unless the circumstances are exceptional, we will not allow urgent or crisis requests to jump the queue. Instead, we’ll refer such requests to other support or infrastructure agencies. This will enable us to work through the scheduled prospect searches in a systematic and ordered manner.
o Publish regular blogs by invited contributors: we were delighted that the Philanthropy Advisor, author and university lecturer, Emma Beeston of the Emma Beeston Consultancy, continue to provide regular blogs offering an insight into the world of philanthropy and giving.
In 2025 we hope to continue to feature Emma’s excellent and insightful blogs. We’re always interested in receiving new articles from anyone who would like to write about the VCFSE sector. If you’d like to provide an article that directly relates to the voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise sector, please email Paul or Dominie at info@grin.coop.
o Assess grant applications for grant-making organisations: during 2024 we assessed grant applications for a number of grant programmes.
In 2025 we aim to continue assessing grant applications for grant-making organisations.
o Social media postings: finding time to post on social media proved challenging. We had previously stopped posting on ‘X’ (formerly Twitter) and in 2024 we closed our account. Facebook postings tended to be made when we had time, but were often piecemeal.
Having closed our ‘X’ account in 2024, we will be reviewing whether to continue with our Facebook page in 2025 or find other, more suitable, social media platforms. In the meantime, Facebook postings are likely to be intermittent as posts on social media will not be one of our priorities.
o Pricing structure – we’re committed to maintaining the following price structure until 2030:
o Daily Grants Bulletin – £15 per year for an individual subscriber or £25 per year for multiple subscribers from the same organisation (which can include volunteers and trustees). Organisations that would like to try out the daily bulletins can continue to sign up for a free 2-week trial.
o Monthly Grants Database – £60 for a 12-month period or £100 for a 24-month period. Both subscription rates include the daily grant bulletins.
2025 is shaping up to be another challenging year for the voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise sector. We don’t expect the new government to be in a position financially to make any significant investment in the sector and we anticipate existing established grant programmes will be forced to place further constraints on their grant-making due to overwhelming demand. However, we hope to use our daily grants bulletin and Grants Database to identify grant opportunities that are both more familiar and perhaps a little more niche and not widely known.
Please get in touch with either Dominie or Paul by email at info@grin.coop or phone 07387 377043 if you have any questions or would like to discuss any of the services detailed above.
With our best wishes for the year ahead.
Paul and Dominie
GRIN (Grants o Resources o Information o News)
GRIN SW LLP
Company No. OC374833
Phone: 07387 377043
Email: info@grin.coop
Web: www.grin.coop
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/grin.coop
