The Million Pound Donors Report 2012 - University of Kent

DONOR CASE STUDY:
FRAN PERRIN
Fran Perrin is founder and trustee, together with her
husband William, of the Indigo Trust, which is one of
The Sainsbury Family Charitable Trusts. The Trust
has assets of over £7 million and funds technologydriven
projects to bring about social change, largely in
African countries, by focusing mainly on innovation,
transparency and citizen empowerment.
“Very unusually, I grew up with an early awareness of
philanthropy as the wider family has eighteen charitable
trusts and foundations, so from a young age I had a sense of
the importance of giving. As a teenager I wasn’t actively
involved in the family foundations, but I was aware of my
parents’ values and that had a huge impact. It was always
clear to me that giving was a responsibility.
I was just starting at University when I set up the Indigo
Trust so I didn’t have a very clear focus or a strategy on how
I wanted to make an impact. Getting Indigo up and
running quickly was greatly helped by the excellent
administrative office shared by all the Sainsbury family
foundations. This gave me access to a superb range of
professionals with skills in policy, research, grant making
and the technicalities of charity law. As I was funding
Indigo myself I did not have to fundraise, but realised I
needed to understand the grantee perspective. So I
volunteered with several charities who have to fight a
constant fundraising battle - it is very important that
philanthropists see the other side of grant making.
From the start I was attracted to issues and causes that find
it harder to produce glossy appeals – I’ve always been
attracted to things where it’s harder to raise money, or for
core budget items. The temptation for funders can be just
to fund the interesting project - but if you trust the charity
and their approach then building capacity and
sustainability in that charity through a developing
relationship can have huge long term benefits.
Initially I was quite reactive - there are so many problems
and extraordinary charities tackling them that I struggled
to find focus and just responded to proposals that we
received. I started to become frustrated that my approach
was too scattergun and I struggled to predict which grants
would be successful and why. I realised that in my
professional life, working in the civil service and in policy
think tanks I’d always trained or studied for every job I’d
ever done. That’s what I needed to do to be a strategic
philanthropist. I wanted it to be more than just a hobby, so
I decided to stop making grants (though we honoured all
our existing commitments) and not to continue until I had
the MIllIon PoUnd donors rePort 2012
a clear strategy. It’s taken me time to learn to be more
strategic and to focus on one sector, but now I can be more
of an informed donor and hopefully have a deeper impact.
As a result of attending The Philanthropy Workshop, run
by the Institute for Philanthropy, I realised that what I
really care about - and what I’m really interested in - is the
use of information technology for transparency and social
change. I was inspired by reading the mission statements
of major donors like the Omidyar network and that
informed my own emerging strategy.
I didn’t want to repeat past mistakes, so I began with a
two-year strategy making lots of micro-grants in different
areas and fields, before evaluating what worked best. I
wanted to find out things like: were we more effective in
Kenya than in Ghana? Was core funding or project funding
more effective? What had the most impact? And what was
the most satisfying? – And I do think that last point is
important for donors. We’re three-quarters of the way
through that process now, and we’re still giving fairly small
grants. Our average grant size is £10,000, with an annual
budget of £750,000, so we’re working with a lot of
organisations! We’re starting to get a really good sense of
where we can have the most impact, who we will fund at a
higher level and who we might recommend on to other
funders.
It feels so exciting to be finally making the right grants,
particularly because we’re proving that the strategy works
and that funding at this level is still valuable. We work with
a lot of very small organisations so this can be a very big bit
of their budget. We also had a sense about technology and
innovation in Africa, that it was worth fostering a tech-y,
grassroots industry that would have a lot of positive
offshoots. For example, we fund innovation hubs in Kenya,
nigeria and Uganda, which support and mentor a lot of
transparency and anti-corruption projects. We thought this
would work, though we knew it was quite high-risk, but the
evidence suggests that it is working very well, and that’s
very satisfying.
For me, philanthropy is an opportunity to support social
change and innovation. I’m always very clear that the ideas
and the change don’t come from me - I’m just fortunate
enough to support some extraordinary individuals and
projects. At the Indigo Trust we believe that if people are
supported to access, create and share information then
they will be able to make a positive change to their lives
and communities.
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