Missed our latest webinar? Hear from the experts on the Aviva Broker Community Fund 2024

Lily Power: The purpose of today's session is to look at this programme for brokers, exploring what it is, how it works, this year's two focus themes and, the key actions and dates that you need to take part. For this session, we're planning on having some time at the end, leaving plenty of time for questions, so you should be able to see the, Q&A box at the bottom of the screen. So do feel free to raise any questions at any point, and we'll get to those at the end.

The session is being recorded, you may have heard that in your in your speakers at the same point I just did. So, I hope that's OK with everybody. We want to record it so that you can listen back, share it with your colleagues, and we can let as many people as possible, join and hear about the Aviva Broker Community fund today.

So I'm Lily, I work in Broker Marketing at Aviva, managing our Aviva Brand initiatives such as the Aviva Broker Community Fund. Also on the call with me are Helen Bridge, our Sustainability Manager at Aviva and Anna Jones from Crowdfunder, Partnerships Manager. Between us, we should be able to cover all of the questions you may have and give you the support that you need to complete a great entry into this year's Broker Community Fund. And, hopefully give you tools and support to give a local cause that you support a real boost this year.

Firstly, if we go to the next slide, please Anna. Thank you.

We want to take a look at what is the Aviva Broker Community Fund. So, some of you may be more familiar than others, but just to recap and to follow on from that video that we've seen, this is a programme run by Aviva whereby brokers can win funding for a local charity or good cause that's making a difference in your local area. It's evolved since we first launched it to brokers in 2010, and it gets bigger every year. But its focus remains on helping brokers to champion the causes that you care about. It's aligned to our Aviva GI broker strategy and our Aviva sustainability ambitions, because we want to champion our brokers through our partnerships. We want to be able to support brokers to go even further for your customers, and even further for the communities in which you live and serve. So hopefully raising your profile as part of that as well.

And from a sustainability point of view, the community fund exists to tackle some of the UK's biggest societal challenges. So the aim is that we collectively help, to build stronger and more resilient communities across the UK.

So since 2010, we have given away over 1.9 million pounds of funding just to broker-supported, broker-backed causes. Over 400 brokers have successfully secured funding, and that support with funding grants in that time, so impacting thousands of individuals in the communities directly and indirectly each year. If we just go to the next slide as well, we'll have a little look at what this year's programme looks like. You've already seen probably a little bit about the programme and the fact that it's already open - it's open now for your entries and you have until the 31st of October to submit your application. There's a new prize pot to be won this year. We've expanded the programme to give you and your causes even more ways to secure funding. And of course, just like seeing in that video at the start of this call, we'll be announcing and celebrating the winners at this year's Broker Awards celebration event, which will take place in March and that's where we'll be, giving out that funding.

So in terms of this year's funding, there's 28 awards to be won, ranging from five thousand, up to twenty thousand pounds. And new to this year, all projects that entered, will have the opportunity to secure additional match funding from Aviva as part of the Aviva Community Fund. All of those that, meet the criteria and that go through with their entries, submitted.

We've got the key dates there. So as I've said it's open now until the 31st of October. We'll be announcing finalists on the 18th of November. We'll talk a little bit about the, crowdfunding opportunity and the match funding that then is available. And that finale event where the winners are announced and awarded in March 2025.

So importantly, I think for many of us on this call and some of the questions that we've been seeing, the thing we want to get to is - which causes can be entered and how do we go about doing that?

So I think if we flick to the next slide. Thank you, Anna.

So any cause that's making a difference on a local level, and there's some criteria around that, but any local small community cause can be entered. The submissions will be moderated against two focus themes for this year. You can see those there, financial well being and climate action. And there's lots of examples of causes that fit under those themes from an organisational level or it might be that the cause you want to put forward, has a particular project that they're supporting that might be aligned to one or both of those themes.

The great thing about this year's programme is that through the application, you'll be able to complete the registration and the application form in collaboration with the project. So you can both feed into, telling your story and talking to those themes. So from a broker point of view, you don't need to be the expert in all things that goes on at that particular project, so you can do that together.

But as ever, through the Broker Community Fund, our judges will be looking to identify the brokers who are really passionate about the causes, and wanting to support them and going over and above to champion the communities and making a difference locally.

So hopefully you'll see it like a role for you to sort of start off that application form, invite your cause into that application to complete it alongside, and tell your story about the project you want to put forward.

So thinking about these themes in a little bit more detail, I'm going to pass over to Helen to have a little look at those themes and a give some examples of projects that might be considered.

 

Helen Bridge: Thank you, Lily and welcome everybody. I will try not to monopolise too much of your time, keen to get your questions and help you through the process.

But as Lily's mentioned, we've got these two core themes and they are very much tied to our wider sustainability ambition. I think we can all agree these are pretty significant societal issues and that we can all resonate with them in some way, shape or form, either as individuals or as part of our own communities. But also, they are quite significant risks for our businesses as well. So it's important that we're addressing these across a range of areas of need. I'll touch in a minute on some of the specific options. I think again, keen to highlight how broad these areas are.

But at a very top level, when we talk about financial well being in an Aviva context, what we're really looking at is the things that contribute to wider financial resilience in communities and across society. So that could be financial education, social mobility and inclusion projects, employability schemes, potentially even community infrastructure projects, enabling people to get to work or access to the skills they need to support a more financially independent future.

Onn the climate side, again, very broad - but it's not just about bigger climate adaptation projects, but it could be things like protecting and restoring nature on our doorstep, or supporting things like the energy transition, so how are we helping our communities shift to more renewable, ethical energy sources over the coming years? I think we can all relate to increasing energy prices, and that's causing all sorts of, wider social issues and impacting financial well being as a result, so just a bit of context there.

Anna, if you wanna flick on to the next slide.

There's quite a lot on here. I'm not going to go through the detail of it, but what I wanted to highlight really was, the breadth of projects that potentially could fit into this. There's some bullet points on this page. This isn't an exhaustive list. Financial wellbeing comes in many shapes and forms, and we're really keen to work with communities that understand the issues in their local area and their local context and are able to apply some creative thinking, potentially, to help address some of those needs.

So, like I've said, it could be things like helping particular groups with digital skills so that they can access the resources they need to live more independently. We obviously have an existing relationship with the Citizens Advice Bureau. But many don't tend to realise that the Citizens Advice Bureau is a federation of teeny tiny charities all over the country, and they depend on fundraising and grants in order to support their local communities across a huge variety of needs, but very much around debt management, financial resilience at the moment. 

The other bit that I think we've all seen as well, which is important to highlight that this is a factor in financial wellbeing, is the unfortunate rise in food banks and things like baby banks and hygiene banks. I think there's one in every town and village now - they are equally there, helping people through times of real difficulty and helping them to sort of perhaps plan and reorganise themselves so that they can go into the next season, and certainly with more confidence.

As I said, there's lots on there. There's lots of scope within that theme and I welcome ideas and suggestions and am happy to field some of those in the Q&A session shortly. 

If we flick onto climate action again, sorry, Anna, thank you. 

Again, just a huge range of different projects that might be able to contribute to climate action. So, as I said, it's not just about those big infrastructure projects as big kind of globally scaled, planting exercises and carbon sequestration. But there's so many things we can do at a really small scale in our communities.

From citizen science projects within schools, we've seen loads of climate classrooms and forest schools that have popped up, helping to educate young children to appreciate and protect nature around them.

We've had flood prevention projects. So how are we preparing communities in the event that they might be flooded, through to simply just giving people access to nature and green spaces.

So, if you imagine, in certainly lots of urban environments, there are huge swathes of society that don't have ready access. So are we working with groups that might enable that or help them, to get out into nature? And that obviously has a huge, wellbeing impact as well.

Again, there's so much scope within this, and we see so many amazing projects come through the platform, really novel, creative ideas.

But then there's also the sort of simple, tried and tested activities that we know can make a difference at a local and on a national scale. I'm going to pause there and take a breath.

So I think, as Lily said, please put your questions into the Q&A box.

I think we'll be moderating those, but yeah, happy to take your questions. And if you've got a project or a cause in mind it'd be great to hear about it and see how we can help support it. 

 

Lily Power: Perfect. Thank you.

Yeah, Anna, just while people are thinking of questions and, I know we've had some pre-submitted as well, so if we can, bring those back into the mix.

But I'm conscious I said we'd talk on the match funding point. So, Helen, I don't know whether it's worth - do you want to talk a little bit about the Aviva match funding? Because that's new to the Aviva Broker Community Fund this year, so can you just let us know how that works?

 

Helen Bridge: Yeah, so match funding.

The match funding element is actually part of our wider general Aviva Community Fund programme. So the way that programme works and every broker application that is approved will automatically be approved for the wider programme as well.

And what that is essentially, is a fundraising platform.

So if you can imagine, like a JustGiving site when you're going out and doing your big bike ride for charity, it's the community organisation version of that, and we'll help them set up, I say we - royal we - Crowdfunder, and the experts over there will help coach wherever possible, how to set up a fundraising campaign.

Understanding your networks how to get the message out there using social media to your advantage is, just some of the stuff that we can support with. But essentially, when you launch that fundraising page, every donation you receive from the general public, we will also match from the general Aviva Community Fund up to £250 per donation, up to a maximum of £50,000.

So there's a huge potential there to really double the impact of any donations you're already receiving. And that's all on top of the potential, quite sizable grants through the broker fund as well. 

 

Lily Power: Perfect. Thank you.

This is, as I say, the Broker Community Fund has grown every year in sort of the different ways that it offers support to brokers and to the community causes. And the match funding is brilliant. That's an amazing addition to this year's programme. So thank you for talking through that.

Anna, do you wanna let us know any questions that have come in or any that people have submitted in advance that we can hopefully answer?

Anna Jones. Absolutely. I'll start with a few that were submitted in advance.

So the first one is, if you applied to the fund last year and were awarded the funds, are you able to reapply this year?

 

Lily Power. Shall I take that? Yeah, absolutely. There's nothing stopping anybody, from reapplying if they've been successful previously or not successful. So, yeah, we encourage applications to come in. It would be great to see, if you want to put in the same cause as before or if it's a new cause, either option is fine.

It would be great to see, some additional projects coming in, but there's absolutely nothing stopping you from putting in a cause again.

And we have had, brokers who have won multiple years in the Broker Community Fund doing both of those. So, we know that these community causes and charities have lots of different projects year on year and need that support.

So, absolutely. If it's something you're passionate about, this is why the Broker Community Fund is here to help you to support them.

 

Anna Jones: The next question has just come in. We are looking to help support a local CIO, which was set up in November 2023. Is there a start-up established date applicable?

Helen, you're unmuting.

 

Helen Bridge: I will take that one. So essentially, we asked that organisations have been established for 12 months at the point of the which they launched their fundraising page.

So I think in the broker fund, we're aiming for December. Lily might correct me on the dates on that one.

The reason for that is really, usually so we can access public records just to perform some basic financial due diligence checks. So it might be if they haven't been uploaded yet, we might just need to work with the charity to provide some of that data to confirm due diligence.

 

Anna Jones: You touched upon this in the slides, but it would be good to sort of reiterate. One of the questions came in that was - will entries for local charities be considered if there's no sustainable angle or no financial support being provided? I.e. If the charity is promoting mental health issues only, for example. 

 

Helen Bridge: It's a tricky one. Obviously we'd love to support every cause. We're in this job because we want to do good and help support our communities. We do have some strategic criteria that we want all of the causes to align to.

I would say, just think through how you're articulating the impact. If you do want to submit a cause that focuses in that way because I think especially things like mental health, they impact our finances, our finances could be impacted by mental health as well.

Likewise, climate change is causing some real, wider physical, mental health issues as well. So just maybe think, think a bit creatively about how that particular outreach is going to help in a particular area. It's a bit of a wooly answer.

 

Anna Jones: The next question - if I am not successful in getting shortlisted as a finalist for a broker award, can I still access the funding through the Aviva Community Fund?

 

Helen Bridge: You can, again as long as you meet all of the minimum requirements. So the thematic criteria does apply to that as well.

But yes, if you aren't successful in receiving a grant, but you have already been approved, then you can go on and use all the resources and opportunities available through the main fund.

 

Lily Power: Including the match funding. Yeah, great.

 

Anna Jones: The next question is about the financial criteria. So as part of the financial wellbeing programme, would this include projects that support deprived communities to access wellbeing support? The charity we would like to put forward deliver a community wellbeing programme at local venues, including money, mindset and budgeting and a variety of other well-being topics.

 

Helen Bridge: Shall I take that one? I would say yes.

I think the key things there are you're addressing a need in a particular group. So if you're helping people who might not otherwise have the means to access that support, and we know that it's going to have knock-on impact, and it's including additional support around budgeting and money management then, yes, I'd say that's a great fit for the projects.

 

Anna Jones: The next question is, the organisation I am looking to put forward is a sailing club, which is not for profit but is not registered. and is a sailing club operating under its constitution. Would they still be able to apply?

 

Helen Bridge: I guess it depends on what they're applying for.

So any, non-profit organisation can apply. There's a list in the criteria of all the different types of organisations that are eligible, at a very high level. And then I guess it's then down to what the nature of the project is, it would depend on how well that aligns with the themes. So it's not an outright no, but it very much depends on what you're trying to achieve and the outcomes you're seeking from the funding.

 

Lily Power: We want as many of them to be put forward as possible. And that's where, opening up the application form this year for you to be able to invite somebody from the programme into that as well, so that you can complete that together should hopefully be of benefit because, as Helen says, thinking creatively about how those projects and the impact of that project might fit into those themes, and working on that together is the best way to be able to, make sure that you're sort of aligning to that criteria.

So we absolutely want you to be able to put forward the causes that you are championing and already involved and invested in. So use the application and have a look through the resources that are there to think about what project then might be able to fit into this.

 

Anna Jones: Another question about the funding. Can it cover core costs?

 

Helen Bridge: Yes, to an extent.

So there's core costs of running a project. So if you need rent and utilities to cover the delivery of a particular project that's captured within that project cost, if you like. But if you are supporting an organisation that is explicitly set up to address financial wellbeing or to take action on climate change then we would accept general fundraising because their entire purpose supports one or both of our themes, so yes. 

 

Anna Jones: OK, someone's also asked for guidance on how to successfully apply. I know that you've covered lots of it today, but maybe there's some things that you can signpost people to. 

 

Lily Power: Definitely. Yeah, there's lots of resources that exist already on Aviva Broker. There's a dedicated support page specifically around the Aviva Broker Community Fund, which has got a link to this year's guide. It's got a lot of the information about those themes, what makes a great entry, thinking about how you tell your story.

So I'd definitely say, have a look at that in the first instance. There's also, when you get through to the application on the Aviva Community Fund crowdfunder website, there's more resources on there as well. So we can put some of those in the chat, actually, so that you've got direct links to those. So yeah, great to have a little look through all of that before you start your application.

The good thing about the application as well, though, is that you can save it as you go. So if you want to start that registration off, having a look at the registration form and the criteria, you can come back to it, saving it and then submitting it at a point where you sort of feel happy.

Also, when you do submit it, if our moderation team at Crowdfunder read through it and think you're sort of narrowly missing the criteria, they will come back and advise and sort of help you think about how you might want to add into that application or sort of expand on it more.

So there are people behind the scenes also that will help you, should you need it - but you have to press submit first. Is that right, Helen?

 

Helen Bridge: Yes, we won't see it until it's been submitted. Don't think it's a once and done. As I said, we can start a dialogue to, just help draw out some of the pertinent points if we, like you said, if we feel it's close, or there's an opportunity that we can see that maybe hasn't been articulated, we will ask pointed questions I think is fair to say, to try and draw that out and make the application more robust.

 

Anna Jones: We have covered most of the questions. There's probably one more question that I could give to you.

So can I add any charity into the Broker Community Fund?

 

Helen Bridge: No, is the short answer. So the fund is intended to support the smaller end of the charity sector, or the charitable sector I should say. We have an income threshold on the organisations that's set at 2 million pounds, which, if you look across the sector, that's 99% of charitable organisations have an income under 2 million pounds.

Also, we will take an average over three years if they're just tipping over that slightly when we look at their annual reports, so don't be put off by it straight away because we know that some organisations might receive a windfall or a legacy that just tips them over for one year. But then they drop back down again so we do try to take that into account. 

Lily Power: And Anna, I think we've got a question in the chat. Have you asked that one already, or is that something new that's come in?

Anna Jones: We have spoken about that question before.

Lily Power: Perfect, thank you. OK, I was just going to pop some resources in the chat so that they're here in the first instance to look at, and the broker guide, let's get a link to that.

OK well, if that's all of the questions, then hopefully we've answered all of those and, you're sort of raring to go and have a look at the resources that are on Aviva Broker and Crowdfunder.

We really hope to see lots of applications coming in to sort of share the ways that you're supporting those community causes.

And of course, if you've got more questions, or you think of something else as it comes up, then do get in touch with us either via your Aviva sales manager or our comfundemail address is also on the broker guide so I'll pop that in the in the chat as well so that you've got that.

But yes, get in touch and we look forward to seeing those stories. So good luck with your entry, and, fingers crossed for that this year.

 

Helen Bridge: Good luck.

 

Lily Power: Thank you, everybody.