There are “really deep systemic issues” about where and how grantmakers fund charities, sector leaders told delegates at an event in London yesterday.

Speaking during a question and answer panel at the think tank NPC’s annual conference in London yesterday, Fozia Irfan, director of impact and influence at BBC Children in Need, responded to a question about funders pausing their grantmaking programmes. 

She said that while frontline charities were feeling the financial crunch, funders are “stuck between a rock and a hard place as well”.

She said: “I think there are really deep systemic issues about where we fund and how we fund which have led us to this point.”

She told delegates that BBC Children in Need could only fund about one in 10 applications it received, saying: “Sometimes it feels like we’re not grantmakers, we’re grant deniers.”

Irfan said that funders should “role model” collaboration, adding that there was “no issue that funders can solve by themselves”. 

She said: “Rather than pointing the finger to the charity sector and saying that they should be collaborating, I think there’s a question and challenge there for us as funders. Are we collaborating effectively? Are we making the best use of our platform, our resources?”

In response to a question about how charities themselves can collaborate to achieve change, Peter Wanless, the outgoing chief executive of the NSPCC, said: “It’s about identifying the common outcomes, the shared sense of purpose and then bringing real lived experience into the room.”

The panellists were also asked about what the route to improvement was like as the sector deals with the fallout from the various challenges of recent years.

Beatrice Butsana-Sita, chief executive of the British Red Cross, said that when she speaks with funders or major donors, she always tries to illustrate the impact of what the charity is doing. 

She said: “There is money in the world. You’ve just got to be able to speak to the right one and get them over the fence.”

Irfan said that in the past 10 years, the sector had seen greater social change than she would have ever expected to see in her lifetime, but said: “My worry is how much of that was led by institutional philanthropy or institutional charities? 

“How do we need to evolve to become part of those really radical, powerful social movements? Because otherwise we risk being left behind.”

David Knott, chief executive of the National Lottery Community Fund, added that as a funder, his organisation had a “duty and responsibility to use some of what we see to engage in systems change. 

“I think that’s about actually bringing out the voices and experiences that people have to try to influence that system.”