Pick up the phone!

I've learnt a valuable lesson today.
I've just got off the phone with a funding officer from a local authority who've always supported us. He wanted to know why we'd not claimed a £400 grant for an event we wanted to enter last year. The reason why I'd not claimed it was because we'd never had notification and just assumed we'd not been successful. Water under the bridge and move on and all that.

When I explained that he said "oh come on, I'm not having that, you need to go back through your records and get the forms to me by tomorrow". I've always tried to run the charity in a professional and transparent way and taken this deeply personally. He gave me a talking to about needing to pick up the phone and ask, "that would be the professional thing to do".

I felt duly admonished and know I should do things like this but in my defence last year was tough on me. As well as some deeply personal stuff (which I won't go in to) I was working flat out running the charity and working 3 days a week in London for Think Local Act Personal. A year of working what were effectively 7 day weeks with few breaks, and long days too, took its toll on me.
It was also a really crazy summer where we were at a variety of different events, and then I was on family holiday at the time of the grants being announced).

I wasn't as professional as I should have been obviously and I will try better. In the end, just before Christmas, the trustees encouraged me to take a complete break and so I took 5 weeks off (and offline) to recover and charge my batteries.

I know my colleagues at this local authority are under a lot of stress and so I just assumed we weren't successful and that was that. It's not unusual for other departments to not reply to me after all. And things can sometimes get lost in the post.

He then told me a saying his grandma used to tell him "you know what Thought thought ? Thought he was following a wedding and ended up in a muck wagon" In other words don't make assumptions.
Likewise, he made an assumption about me and didn't know the full story.

He did sound very stressed and I can only assume they've got the auditors in, and I know how stressful that can be but now my stress levels are up, especially given the suggestion that we've blown our chances of any future funding.
It's also made me very cautious about applying again to be honest because I don't like going through experiences like this.

So today's lesson is, no matter how busy you are, and no matter how many work and personal plates you're spinning, always phone that grant officer. Of course that's easier said than done and I'm happy to report that I'm now working for the charity full-time so at least I've got a better chance of succeeding. And my mental health is a lot better too.

Onwards and upwards, I've learned a valuable lesson today.