Behind the scenes this month, many of our conversations as a team have been about our move to a new digital system. As we explain in the Grantmaking section below, this upgrade is being managed by our umbrella organisation, UK Community Foundations, and is a process that most community foundations across the country are currently going through.

We are excited about what we have seen of the new system and how it will enable us to offer a significantly improved service to our applicants and grantholders, and our donors. The more progressive funding practices we are working towards need to be built on smooth, efficient administrative processes and this update to the system through which we manage our data and our relationships with community organisations, donors and other partners is long overdue. Once complete, we are hopeful that it will help us to make the process of applying quicker and more efficient, allow us to turn applications around more quickly, and provide better information to our partners.

We had hoped to be up and running on the new system by now but the process is taking considerably longer than we had anticipated. It is not yet clear when we will be fully operational on the new system. Whatever happens, we are committed to reopening our Small Grants application process by 11th November but please bear with us over the coming months as there may be further disruption to services. We will do our best to minimise the impact on applicants and we will of course share any updates as soon as we can.

We have lots going on besides the digital upgrade. Read on for information on the funds we currently have available, our recent online donor drop in event, upcoming events related to our work on food insecurity, and more.