The GRIN office is now closed until Monday 10th January 2022 as we take our annual 3-week break over Xmas and the New Year.
Here’s a short summary of the year from our perspective:
We started the year on Monday 11 January and, over the following 12 months up to today, have sent out 300 grant bulletins, providing details of between 600 and 700 grant programmes.
Each bulletin takes around 3 hours to research and write up, and we spend an additional hour – normally between 2am and 3am – preparing a news item for the GRIN website.
So, in total, that’s around 1,200 hours we spend preparing the daily grant bulletins for circulation (by way of comparison, a 37 hour week consists of around 2,000 hours per year).
We know from the many emails we receive from subscribers that the bulletins have helped them secure often vital resources, which is ultimately the purpose of the service. We haven’t added up how much grant funding the bulletins have helped subscribers procure during 2021, but we estimate it to be well over £1 million.
During 2021 we’ve also provided pro bono advice to over 100 organisations. Requests for advice have come from very local, South West England based organisations to agencies working as far afield as Australia, India and South Africa, and have covered a multitude of topics, from a regenerative food and farming project to grant opportunities for a mobile pregnancy advice service.
We’ve also regularly featured excellent blogs by Sarah Taragon and Stephen Woollett of Clarity CIC, and Emma Beeston of the Emma Beeston Consultancy, and we’re looking forward to continuing these in 2022, alongside a new contributor (details to be revealed in early 2022!).
But most of all, we’d like to thank all of you for your continued support and the marvellous work you’ve been doing during an incredibly difficult time for UK and worldwide communities. The not-for-profit sector continues to amaze and inspire us with its resilience, creativity and compassion. We’re going to need you in 2022, so please keep up the great work!
Dominie and Paul
GRIN SW LLP