Venturesome

For a while, we've been wrestling with a cash flow problem. The EU grant, which is the bulk of the funding for Re-Orientations, only pays the last 30% after the entire project is finished and accounted for. This means that we have to spend quite a lot of money before we've got it. The main banks don't seem to understand how charities work, and have been singularly unhelpful. One banker actually said to me: "We can't lend to a charity. I mean - they don't make profits, you know!"

Luckily, we found out about Venturesome, which is a really terrific organisation working in just the way we need. Two of their people, Emilie and Rob, came to our office last week, and talked for two hours about the overall mission of the company, and the arts sector as a whole, as well as the particular project. And yesterday came the agreement to give the loan. A huge relief.

Emilie said that their internal meeting turned into a discussion about arts organisations in general, and ways in which they can develop through social enterprise etc. as the cuts in grant aid start to bite. We do need to start thinking like this.....