Funds & Figures and Strategic Funding

Not long back from a meeting about making better funding applications, held in a rather swish new village hall at Long Clawson, further into the Vale of Belvoir.
Run by a group called Funds & Figures, part of Voluntary Action South Leicestershire from Market Harborough, we were taken through the various aspects of good financial management for voluntary groups and then introduced to different sources of funding, benefits, monitoring, rationale and pretty much anything else one could think of.
I didn't think I would but I learned a lot. In fact it's a great shame other ValeFest committee members hadn't been free to attend. Once ValeFest is in funds we should perhaps consider asking Funds & Figures to run something similar specifically for us; I'm sure we'd all benefit from their considerable experience and common sense approach.
For me the evening served to crystalise the difficulties ValeFest has experienced in terms of availability and access to unrestricted funds; monies that can be allocated to general admin and core costs and not just to budgets for specific projects.
They're out there, they do exist and ValeFest wants some of them!!