We do not make investments where a philanthropic corporate donation is received by a non-for-profit organisation. An application for an investment must relate to a sponsorship, i.e. where funds, goods or services are provided in exchange for certain rights or benefits.
We are not able to make multi-year investments due to the nature of our funding arrangement. However, we feel our one-off investments should incentivise new relationships and help get them off the ground.
We need to ensure we have a high level of confidence in the organisations to which we make investments and how the money would be managed. We believe the best way of doing this is to only make investments to organisations which have a strong level of governance requirements.
We are strong advocates for good governance, but we recognise that the CIC framework is an increasingly popular one through which benefit can be delivered to communities. We are therefore keen to support CICs which enter into collaborative sponsorships with business organisations. However, similar to some major funders, we need to see evidence of the additional scrutiny that unconnected members to the organisations would provide.
As you may imagine, with increasing pressures on investment across all sectors and with our vision being for a Scotland where culture and business thrive, we need to ensure that the Fund supports as many sponsorships as possible. Analysis shows that the average Fund investment request is £8,000, so we can still support organisations at the right level.
By unrelated, we mean not married to each other; not in a relationship with each other; not living together at the same address; or not related by blood.
Not-for-profit organisations and their business sponsors have the potential to learn a great deal from each other and achieve mutually beneficial objectives. While we recognise that straightforward, traditional sponsorships are of value, we believe that a collaborative approach can generate much greater value.
This might be, for example, a tech company providing in-kind support to a museum where they’re collaborating on a digital project to showcase their services; an orchestra being sponsored to commission and record a new piece of music to feature as part of an ESG climate-focused campaign for a financial services company; or a local family firm sponsoring a performance at a community hub to drive customer engagement and brand awareness through a mutually beneficial joint marketing campaign.
