Why We Are Publishing Our Reasons for Saying No
Photo: stacked paper documents on a wooden desk in an office, moody lighting, via images.stockcake.com
Every year, thousands of UK charities submit applications to trusts and foundations. Most will be declined. Very few will ever learn why.
At the Fraser Thomson Foundation, we have been asking ourselves an uncomfortable question: if we expect the organisations we fund to account for every pound, every outcome and every shortfall, why do we account so little for our own decisions — particularly the decisions that end someone's application?
The Asymmetry We Rarely Name
The funding relationship is built on an unspoken imbalance. Applicants must disclose finances in forensic detail, produce theories of change, submit to due diligence and, increasingly, evidence their own organisational health. Funders, by contrast, publish what they choose to celebrate. The successful grants appear in annual reports; the unsuccessful ones vanish without trace.
This asymmetry would be defensible if it served applicants. It does not. A charity refused without explanation cannot learn. It cannot refine its approach, target more suitable funders, or understand whether its model itself is being questioned. Worse, opaque refusal feeds the suspicion — voiced repeatedly across the sector — that decisions rest on taste, connections or the caprice of a trustee meeting, rather than on any published criteria.
Sector commentators have made this critique for years. It has largely been absorbed, acknowledged and set aside. We think it deserves more than acknowledgment.
The Proposal: A Consent Ledger
We are proposing what we call a consent ledger. In plain terms: every grant decision, successful or not, is recorded in a publicly available, anonymised register. Alongside each refusal sits a category of reason — mission fit, geographic priority, capacity concerns, insufficient evidence of need, timing — and, where practicable, a short written summary of the panel's reasoning.
Anonymity matters. Small organisations operate in tight communities, and a named refusal could carry real reputational cost. The ledger is not about exposing applicants; it is about exposing us.
The objections are obvious, and we have heard them internally. Panels may write more cautiously. Trustees may feel their candour is chilled. There is a reputational risk in publishing a record that reads, at a glance, as a list of failures. Some funders will worry that refusal reasons, read out of context, will discourage applications from the very communities we most want to reach.
These are genuine concerns. But weigh them against what transparency offers. Applicants gain a map of what funders actually fund — not what their guidelines claim to fund. Sector researchers gain data on where money declines to go, which is often more revealing than where it lands. And funders themselves gain a discipline: it is remarkable how much sharper a rejection reason becomes when you know it will be read.
What We Owe the People Who Apply
There is a further argument, less often made. A declined application represents hours of unpaid labour by people working under real pressure — the part-time fundraiser at a village hall committee, the CEO of a refuge covering three roles. When we refuse that work silently, we treat it as costless. It is not. Publishing our reasons is, at minimum, a form of respect for effort we did not pay for.
We do not pretend the consent ledger is a complete answer. Transparency without changes to application design is just disclosure with extra steps. But accountability, like charity, should begin at home. If we are to ask Britain's community organisations to open their books to us, the least we can do is open ours.
