Tracey Walsh Interview #3: Passion and the personal touch

“Life Chances is a collaborative-giving model – and that’s absolutely essential. Why? Because the social needs are so vast and embedded, that they’re going to take a long time to tackle. For a donor to see any real meaningful change, that requires funding over a sustained period.

None of us have got the resources to tackle it effectively on our own. So it’s essential that donors work more collaboratively. We can only do that by working together. We need to pool resources to make real, meaningful change.

On the grant recipient side – the delivery side – they need a financial commitment over a sustained period. A lot of grant-making is one-off, ‘we’ll just do this for a year’.  That is great for that year, but it doesn’t offer stability. It doesn’t offer the opportunity to plan or be innovative because you don’t know where that next level of support is coming from.

It means we can say to the voluntary sector, ’we are going to offer you a grant of X over X amount of years’ and that gives them some level of stability. They can plan staff, they’re not distracted by constantly fundraising, which means, you get better quality of delivery,

So for me, taking that collaborative, strategic, long-term approach as we are with Life Chances, is a no brainer.

Corporates have significant sums to give away, and they do. They have generous budgets. So for me, it’s not about the lack of resource in the area, it’s just when it’s not coordinated, the impact is diluted and therefore the community is missing out.

Understanding front-line organisations

Local organisations that we fund say how much they value EECF’s responsiveness to their needs, especially during the pandemic, and now with cost of living crisis. But this has always been our ethos. It was natural and easy for us because initially we covered such a small geography (the Isle of Dogs), so if we didn’t know an organisation, their team personally or their trustees then you’d be pretty shocked! The challenge that we’ve had over the years is being able to maintain that. We recognise it’s essential if we want to award good grants and invest wisely.

Relationships are key

We have been asked on occasions to work beyond the East End, but for me, whilst I’m here, the answer is always no, because you can’t possibly know the whole of the East End. Our patch is big enough and the needs are huge.

That’s why having good communication with the voluntary sector, supporting them, making everything we do very personal, is so important. We don’t want to be a huge machine that are just opening grant funds, processing applications, not speaking to groups. We’re not a desk-based grant-maker. We’re an in-person grant-maker.

We want to have a relationship. It’s important on lots of different levels, but it’s really important for our grant-making. How can we make good decisions based on a piece of paper? Some groups employ fundraisers. They should be brilliant at filling out a form. Are they brilliant at the delivery side? Which is why we need to speak to them, visit them, engage with them. Use the East End grapevine! Once you know people, everyone’s very happy to offer you information!

And it’s been key to our success. We’re really invested in local people and we want them to be invested in us. And you can only do that if you’re out there, talking to people, and you’re passionate about what you do.”