Agenda item

Report of the Chief Grants Officer.

The Committee received the regular progress report of the Chief Grants Officer (CGO) and discussed the updates provided, together with a request to agree that the CBT enter the Lord Mayors Show 2017.

The CGO gave updates on the following:

The Work Continues

During the five year Strategic Review, the Trust’s everyday work continued with visits to see some of the 500+ charities being supported across Greater London.

Support for the LGBT sector

Further to the initiative delivered by the Trust in 2016 to determine the funding landscape and potential support needs of London’s LGBT sector, and after a well-attended seminar in August 2016, jointly hosted with Trust for London, organisations were asked to identify any needs, especially those which might be more strategic. As a result three outline proposals had been received which were strategic in nature and which had the potential to make a significant, positive, difference to the LGBT community in London. Officers would now assess these requests fully with the intention of bringing them to the May Committee for decision.

Stepping Stones

The Trust planned to launch the fourth round of Stepping Stones, its partnership programme with UBS, on March 20^th 2017.

Since the Fund was launched £2.2m had been shared between 49 organisations across 20 London boroughs. Most of the grants awarded so far funded work which was still underway although 10 organisations had completed their projects, accounting for a grant funding total of £368,000. Of these three had raised social investment to a total value of £16.05m, four reported they had a much clearer idea of the work they needed to deliver before they approached the market, and three had concluded that social investment was not for them. The latter outcome was not a sign of failure since the Stepping Stones Fund was designed to offer charities a safe space in which to examine repayable finance before they took on any sort of balance sheet liability.

The Cranfield Trust’s Capacity Building Programme, STRIVE.

The Cranfield Trust was launching its services for CBT grantees at a Livery Hall event on 9th March during which the Deputy Chairman would be saying a few words of welcome.  Infrastructure organisations from across London had been invited to the event along with Chief Executives of around 100 front line charities. There would also be a subsequent event towards the end of the programme to celebrate the achievements of participant organisations and future updates would be provided.

CBT’s Internal Financial Audit

During January 2017, the City of London Corporation Internal Audit team had conducted an audit review of CBT to assess the application and robustness of the checks undertaken, including financial stability, on grant funded applications prior to grant awards. They had also looked to determine whether monitoring arrangements were providing an adequate control of grant funded organisations progress against agreed milestones and assess the adequacy of the processes for reporting to Committee any unusual activity.

Following detailed testing and discussions with the CBT team, the internal audit had reported a green rating confirming that there were robust controls in place across the piece.  

The CBT Financial Assessment Process

In addition to the Internal Audit review and to demonstrate a commitment to maintaining the robust controls evidenced in that, a review of the financial appraisal process had also been undertaken by the Head of Charity and Social Investment Finance. The key focus was to ensure that processes in place were proportionate to the risks presented and value of the grant being requested and to ensure due diligence processes were undertaken.

The review had established that over recent years the practical application of processes had grown in complexity, becoming less efficient and adding to the time taken to turnaround an application. The Grants Officer was the individual closely involved with the applicant, gathering and assessing a wide variety of information, and so the decision had been taken, in consultation with the Deputy Chamberlain, to hand back the responsibility for undertaking the initial financial assessment to Grants Officers.

CBT Communications and Press coverage

Details of all communications activity against each of the key audiences was noted. Officers were asked to bring future coverage in a more concisely-presented format and as a stand-alone report.

Following the recommendations of the external review, Cheryl Chapman, Director of City Philanthropy, had now ceased as an employee of the Association of Charitable Foundations (ACF). Cheryl will be working in-house on a 12 month consultancy contract to further embed and extend the learning from the project.

Human Resources Update

Since the last Committee the CBT had said goodbye to Simrat Kaur-Gupta one of the Trust’s administrative officers.  Simrat was an excellent team member and had made a valuable contribution to the team. Marek Habrda, who was currently on a short-term temporary contract, had agreed to extend his time to cover this work whist the new strategy was finalised and resource needs were considered.

Kate Moralee, a newly recruited Grants Officer, was introduced.

Strategic Review Update

Following the Committee’s consideration of the first draft of the Trust’s 2018-2023 funding strategy, it had now been published on the Trust’s website inviting comment and critique.  The CGOC and Head of Strategic Review had been discussing the draft strategy with senior colleagues within the City of London Corporation (CoLC) and wider CoLC staff teams were being engaged through an internal communications campaign.  Members had also been consulted through a Members’ Breakfast held on 7 March 2017.

Externally, 9 Focus Groups had been scheduled during March 2017 to discuss the next strategy.  Links had also been made with Citizens UK and others to consider how to test the strategy, and the language in particular, with Londoners directly.

Lord Mayor’s Show 2017

It was proposed that the Trust took part in the Lord Mayor’s Show 2017.  With the work currently being undertaken on the 5 year Strategic Review, this would present an excellent opportunity to showcase the work of some of the groups funded. 

If agreed a full report, including detailed costings will be brought to the Committee in May 2017.

RESOLVED:

a)        That the report be noted, and

b)        That the CBT enter the Lord Mayors Show 2017