Learnings and Takeaways: Crisis leadership, management and emergency fundraising

My previous employer, and the arts venue that I’ve been lucky to have been one of the custodians for, albeit briefly, Streatham Space Project , announced its closure in March 2025. Whilst I'd no longer worked there since September 2024, and these are absolutely and only my own views, I’ve kept in close contact with some trustees and interim management to support where I can. This has been an emotional moment. On other happy news, I've started a new (part-time) job (more on that soon), so this is a good time for me to pocket my reflections and look forwards, so thanks in advance and welcome to my brain-dump.

1) We’re very good at expressing our gratitude at the end

As expected, there’s been a flurry of messages of sadness, gratitude, expressing the positive difference SSP made. They are all so appreciated. And of course, there’s a distinction between these valued words and the building blocks that it actually takes to turn around challenges (financial or otherwise) or to sustain an organisation. But these valued words carry weight…

We also love to express our gratitude to an individual when they leave a job, or sometimes sadly, passed away. Similarly, we reach out with our congratulations when a big appointment or announcement happens. This wonderful.

2) How we check in and support each other 

I found that I most needed someone to check in on me, encouragement, kind words about my work, not at the start or end, but in the middle when things are messy. So, going into the future, within my capacity, I will check in/cheer on the sector colleague or organisation that has been quiet for a while, who didn’t attend the annual conference, etc. Often, that’s when it will mean the most, and I encourage you to do the same.

Or even so, when crossing paths with someone you know at a press night, conference, party, networking event, just really listen to their answer on “how are you/what you’ve been up to”.  And if time/priorities/headspace allow, offer to go to a quieter corner and let conversation to go deeper.

Earlier in my career, and also when I was younger, I used to assume if people “are going through a difficult time” that we would hide ourselves and not see anyone. But as I have grown  I've learned that’s not the case for everyone and we often have to carry on, as the world doesn’t stop. Just because someone showed up, doesn’t mean they wouldn’t value someone really listening to how they really are, and in a world where lining up diaries is hard, sometimes these occasions are the easiest and most effective way for me to catch up with people.

2) On emergency fundraising/appeal to trust and foundations

I emailed so many funders with “urgent” in the subject line, not expecting much, but I didn’t want to only wish I’d done that.

Three funders who have a clear website and application process with waiting times for a decision of 4+ months wrote back, within 48 hours. They were willing to discuss our application and all welcomed an expedited process promising a decision within 1-2 weeks (which they did). One of the three was successful. I was surprised at the flexibility when I was always taught to read the website, follow the procedure. This all gave me hope whilst working through everything else.  Should we only be willing to be flexible in such a way at the very serious crisis point? I don’t have the answers...I guess I'm mainly sharing for fellow fundraisers to know sometimes this approach can work.

Of course, I also learned that the timing has to be really considered for any “real emergency talk”. When things get tough for any organisation, if you go ahead with emergency fundraising 'too early' before it’s actually at an emergency point you risk jeopardising any 'business as usual' funding applications, partnerships, work etc.

When things have gotten to this point, in my experience the best thing to do is just to be honest. Aside from generally the landscape being tough, if you had been too optimistic with your forecast, tell the funder that, they’d much rather hear it. Obviously, if things do work out at the end (I very much hope they do), people will have remembered, and it may impact your reputation and how your financial management is perceived. So it’s important to weigh things up. If you’ve genuinely identified you’ve only got a few months of running costs left, and the prospect of future income coming in is not certain, then I would advise any leader to have an honest conversation, sometimes 1-to-1 chats, with board members to really explain what’s happening.  

3) Being entrepreneurial, diversifying income streams is so important, but that doesn’t replace lost income… at least not immediately…

If income from trusts and foundations income is reducing, for a non-regularly funded, and already precarious organisation, that doesn’t just mean work gets very challenging. If that income can't be replaced, the responsible thing is to try and stop expenditure, and the biggest expenditure is of course staff. In previous artist development roles, when artists sadly didn't get funding, I would suggest considering not do the project for now.  This is a similar situation and it made me really reflect on what are the responsible ways to run a non-regularly funded company. Do you have staff on permanent contracts so they keep generating income to keep their post or only hire staff when funding has come through? What if you're testing things out - we all really need those periods to grow. Does this also depend on the level of the organisation's financial reserves? No answer but again just some thoughts.

4) On prioritisation

We always have to prioritise. I was fortunate that SSP still supported my development and I went to Future Arts Centres, Society of London Theatre & UK Theatre conferences and London Borough of Lambeth events. There I chewed everyone’s ear off to hire our space, planted seeds for future funding bids, but I know full well, it probably won’t come to fruition for some time. I had an immediate short fall for the financial year to meet, if I focussed on solving that instead of planting the future seeds, I’d find myself in exactly the same place in a few months time. I’ve given so many examples of meeting multiple priorities and deadlines at recent job interviews so I know this stuff, but the truth is, there comes a point where we just can’t do everything, so I just want to make sure I put it out here.

Natalie Chan, Arts Producer and Fundraiser