The cost of living crisis: how are funders responding?

With pressures intensifying, particularly with energy price caps for households estimated to rise a staggering 70-80% in the Autumn, there is a clear need to step up collective efforts to mitigate the risks to London’s communities. We know that many of our members are putting measures in place already but we’re keen to better understand the practical steps being taken as well as explore the longer-term considerations being made about the future funding landscape in London.  

If you are a funder, we need eight minutes of your time to complete our short, anonymous survey, which asks you about: 

• the impact of the cost of living crisis on grantees’ ability to deliver 
• how you are responding to mitigate the impact of the crisis on communities 
• the impact of the cost of living crisis on your overall approach and strategy 

Your insights will be used to inform a series of activities in the autumn (more on this below) and how we at London Funders can help you respond to the crisis. 

We’ve heard your increasing concern about the impact on staff burnout, recruitment challenges, and the sharp rises in delivery costs facing groups. Some of you have told us you’re offering uplifts to multi-year grant agreements and offering more flexibility so that organisations can reprofile their costs and direct their resources where they are needed most. Others of you are working with local charities to provide more grants to individuals in hardship, or offering new funding programmes to try and meet increased demand – for example around debt and advice. 

Based on the work you’ve shared with us already, and the results of the survey above, we’ll be bringing you together in a focused Cost of Living week between 28 September - 5 October. This will be a chance for us to share the latest insights from London’s communities, as well as providing space for funders to connect with others to share ideas about potential action.  If you are already undertaking work to respond to the cost of living crisis and would like to share this during the week, please let us know. This will then be followed by an action-focused summit, delivered jointly with the Cost of Living Alliance, more on this soon. 

In the meantime, we are keeping our resource hub up to date with everything we’re seeing and hearing that can help you respond to the crisis.