Sustaining your organisation through income solely derived from grants may become more difficult to do as, despite being a large slice of the income for many voluntary and community organisations, the number of grant programmes has fallen.
Funders are generally reluctant to make grants for long periods of time, and there is a tendency for grant funders to want to fund innovation, rather than maintaining a service. This has lead to a tendency for voluntary and community organisations to be project-based, rather than to plan long-term, sustainable programmes of activities and services.
Grant funders may support the same organisation for a number of years – especially if things have gone well - more usually, however, the grants are not for the same activity year after year.
