Community Franchising Insights - Source of Funds

May 12, 2011 - 19:59 | by Geoff3589

In January-March 2011, the Cinnamon Network conducted research into Community Franchising. Several thousand Churches in the UK were contacted as well as franchisors/ees of 9 ‘ministries’. We had responses from 190 churches/ministries. Results are as follows:

Funding

Obviously the church is seen to be the main funding vehicle – 56% fund the Full Franchise* completely.  44% of Franchisees had obtained external funding – sometimes providing more funding than the church.

The sources of external funding in descending order of mentions were:

  1. Grant making trust/local charities
  2. Local authorities inc. Council, Police, etc
  3. Other Churches or Diocese
  4. Fundraising events/individuals
  5. Franchisor
  6. Local Businesses

Apart from Grant making trusts/local charities, the time taken to get money was 1-3 months. Grant making trusts/local charities took between 1-6 months.

In terms of ease of process, if Easy = 1, OK = 2 and Difficult = 3, the ease of process to get money from the above is:

1.0          Franchisor
1.7          Fundraising events/individuals
1.7          Local Businesses
1.8          Local authorities inc. Council, Police, etc
1.9          Grant making  trust/local charities
2.0          Other Churches or Diocese

Only a few Franchisors help out with funding due to their limited capacity and even then the amounts of grant are small. A lot of franchisees have attracted support of a number on individuals in the church who share their vision. Surprisingly, obtaining monies from local authorities was faster and easier than trusts and churches.

One can also assume that local fundraising efforts e.g. with individuals, events, charities and businesses also help link the franchise with the community, raise the profile of the church and help the community realise church relevance.

It appears that if external funding is needed then the franchisee should approach a range of funders but most of these would be local.

*The Full Franchises reported on were; Christians Against Poverty, Street Pastors, Black Boys Can, Care Confidential, The Lighthouse Group, Romance Academy and Trussell Trust Foodbanks.