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South Wiltshire Funding Advice Service - a Statutory and Voluntary Sector Partnership
Introduction
Investment in funding advice linked to organisational development and capacity building can unlock significant investment for the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS). But resources for supporting this work are usually thinly stretched, especially in rural areas. This case study illustrates how Wiltshire Charities Information Bureau, Salisbury District Council and Salisbury & District Council for Voluntary Service pooled resources to provide a seamless service for their user organisations.
Background
Salisbury District Council, covering the City of Salisbury and outlying rural communities, has a total population of 114,675, some 40,000 of whom live in Salisbury itself. While just outside the top quartile of least deprived local authorities in the country overall, two wards in the City are among the 30% most deprived in England, presenting a twin challenge to community development of urban deprivation and rural isolation.
The context of voluntary sector funding is changing, and the District Council is seeking to ensure better knowledge and access to external funding. The Council saw an opportunity to use the second of these changes to support the development and fundraising efforts of community organisations. This coincided with funding from ChangeUp for Devizes based Charities Information Bureau (CiB), the County’s specialist funding advice agency, enabling it to carry out more face-to-face work. These different strands of work and thinking have been brought together as the new South Wiltshire Funding Advice Service.
The thinking behind the new service
The District Council, in common with many other funders, is seeking to align its funding of the VCS more closely with its own strategic priorities, which themselves reflect community priorities through the development of Parish plans. This change from less outcomes-driven grant funding presents challenges to the local sector, which, in a climate where funding is already tight, finds it particularly difficult to fund general activity not tied to a clear strategic goal of the Council.
The Council is also seeking additional resources and, like many others, decided to appoint an External Funding Officer. It saw an opportunity to lever in resources for the VCS as well as the Council by dividing the time of the new External Funding Officer, between funding advice for the VCS and external funding advice to Council departments.
CiB helps and advises groups and individuals on funding and charity law across six local areas within Wiltshire, Swindon and Bath & North East Somerset. Before the funding from ChangeUp, staffing levels limited the amount of face-to-face work which could be done, and two thirds of enquiries came by telephone or letter. With the appointment of two new part-time funding advisers, CiB has been able to extend its outreach work. In strategic terms, this has been an opportunity to learn about collaborative models for local delivery of funding advice to the VCS; CiB has found that each partnership it has built through this initiative has reflected the different situation in each area.
The third key player is Salisbury and District Council for Voluntary Service (CVS). The CVS employs a Development Worker, Debrah Biggs, whose role is to help community groups build their capacity and their organisations so that they can offer better services and continue to attract funding. But, as she says, that’s not where groups start: ‘They often know they need help, but sometimes can resist the advice we give as too daunting. They will approach the funding adviser just because they want the money’.
The incentive for the three organisations to collaborate was therefore clear. As Salisbury District Council’s Principal Community Development Officer Amber Skyring puts it: 'This is an opportunity to recognise that people come to the District Council for funding, and pull the pieces together so new and existing organisations can access further information/support and guidance through the CVS Group Development Worker, plus training, plus funding advice… often funding is the carrot that helps us build a relationship with organisations on wider issues such as policy development, robust management structures, training etc. We are trying to offer a seamless service to the community in partnership with CVS and CiB both for funding and development work’.
How the Service works
The service is based at the CVS, which is the hub for voluntary sector activity in the District. Organisations book in advance for twice weekly funding advice surgeries. These are covered by, the CiB Funding Adviser and, the Council’s External Funding Officer. Both work with a range of organisations, including smaller groups, and aim to provide a Background
Salisbury District Council, covering the City of Salisbury and outlying rural communities, has a total population of 114,675, some 40,000 of whom live in Salisbury itself. While just outside the top quartile of least deprived local authorities in the country overall, two wards in the City are among the 30% most deprived in England, presenting a twin challenge to community development of urban deprivation and rural isolation.
The context of voluntary sector funding is changing, and the District Council is seeking to ensure better knowledge and access to external funding. The Council saw an opportunity to use the second of these changes to support the development and fundraising efforts of community organisations. This coincided with funding from ChangeUp for Devizes based Charities Information Bureau (CiB), the County’s specialist funding advice agency, enabling it to carry out more face-to-face work. These different strands of work and thinking have been brought together as the new South Wiltshire Funding Advice Service.
The thinking behind the new service
The District Council, in common with many other funders, is seeking to align its funding of the VCS more closely with its own strategic priorities, which themselves reflect community priorities through the development of Parish plans. This change from less outcomes-driven grant funding presents challenges to the local sector, which, in a climate where funding is already tight, finds it particularly difficult to fund general activity not tied to a clear strategic goal of the Council.
The Council is also seeking additional resources and, like many others, decided to appoint an External Funding Officer. It saw an opportunity to lever in resources for the VCS as well as the Council by dividing the time of the new External Funding Officer, between funding advice for the VCS and external funding advice to Council departments.
CiB helps and advises groups and individuals on funding and charity law across six local areas within Wiltshire, Swindon and Bath & North East Somerset. Before the funding from ChangeUp, staffing levels limited the amount of face-to-face work which could be done, and two thirds of enquiries came by telephone or letter. With the appointment of two new part-time funding advisers, CiB has been able to extend its outreach work. In strategic terms, this has been an opportunity to learn about collaborative models for local delivery of funding advice to the VCS; CiB has found that each partnership it has built through this initiative has reflected the different situation in each area.
The third key player is Salisbury and District Council for Voluntary Service (CVS). The CVS employs a Development Worker, Debrah Biggs, whose role is to help community groups build their capacity and their organisations so that they can offer better services and continue to attract funding. But, as she says, that’s not where groups start: ‘They often know they need help, but sometimes can resist the advice we give as too daunting. They will approach the funding adviser just because they want the money’.
The incentive for the three organisations to collaborate was therefore clear. As Salisbury District Council’s Principal Community Development Officer Amber Skyring puts it: 'This is an opportunity to recognise that people come to the District Council for funding, and pull the pieces together so new and existing organisations can access further information/support and guidance through the CVS Group Development Worker, plus training, plus funding advice… often funding is the carrot that helps us build a relationship with organisations on wider issues such as policy development, robust management structures, training etc. We are trying to offer a seamless service to the community in partnership with CVS and CiB both for funding and development work’.
How the Service works
The service is based at the CVS, which is the hub for voluntary sector activity in the District. Organisations book in advance for twice weekly funding advice surgeries. These are covered by, the CiB Funding Adviser and, the Council’s External Funding Officer. Both work with a range of organisations, including smaller groups, and aim to provide a seamless service, including helping with funding applications and fundraising plans. Although their approaches are slightly different, both feel their role is to explore options with organisations and to facilitate them to do their own fundraising. The District Council’s Officer also sends weekly funding alerts which are sent to all CVS members, and also cascaded to others through their databases. They both follow up progress with their clients between one and three months later.
Where help is needed with organisational development, they refer to the CVS Group Development Worker. Because of the overlapping needs that are emerging from this work, the Salisbury partnership is becoming increasingly collaborative, says Debrah: ‘Half the organisations approach funding advice first, and then get referred on to me, and the circle keeps going. We try to share information and not duplicate. You need time to nurture groups and explain why they need policies; otherwise they don’t act on the advice. We are now starting to do joint visits, working in parallel from the first.’
What are the results?
Initially there was a low response to the advice sessions but there is evidence that this is improving. In the first year, the number of groups helped increased to at least 115. The opportunity the Service created to raise awareness of and participation in other training on fundraising issues offered by CiB and the South Wiltshire training Partnership has resulted in greater take up, especially by larger organisations.
Fundraising and community capacity building are slow work, so it’s early days to evaluate the success of the new Service. There’s a tension between the long-term nature of development work, the uncertainties of fundraising, and the need to judge whether the investment in the new part-time posts has paid off - the Service is currently a short-term contract.
At the time of writing, nearly £150,000 had been secured for the voluntary and community sector with another nine applications in the pipeline – though this is a minimum figure, as not all groups feed back on the success of their bids. There are other benefits: there is now a dedicated funding advice service for the District where there had been a significant gap since the demise of a lottery funded project some years ago; and putting this service together has improved the working relationships and understanding between the three partners.
Experience from elsewhere in the region and the country shows that a long term commitment which combines capacity building and organisational development with funding advice, available locally, appears to be highly productive, especially with disadvantaged groups and small to medium sized organisations.
Do’s and Don’ts
Do:
Build your local funding advice service with full awareness of your local context. CiB works across Wiltshire, Swindon and Bath & North East Somerset, where the different history of relationships between it and local agencies has tended to shape the nature of the collaboration in each area.
Don’t:
Expect quick results. Building the trust of voluntary and community organisations in a new service and new workers takes time. Building the capacity of community organisations takes years. And the amount of money raised as a direct result of funding advice does not bear a direct relationship to the effort invested. But it is clear from the experience of areas which have supported this work consistently that the resulting leverage of funds, contribution to the local economy and wider community benefits are considerable.
Contacts
Rosemary Hopgood, Charities Information Bureau
01380 729279
rosemary@cibwilts.org.uk
Amber Skyring, Salisbury District Council
01722 434568
askyring@salisbury.gov.uk
Gale Gould, Salisbury District Council
01722 434702
gagould@salisbury.gov.uk
Debrah Biggs, Salisbury and District CVS
01722 421747
debrah@salisbury-cvs.org.uk
For more case studies and background on the provision of funding advice to the VCS in the South West, see the research report 'Funding Advice for the Voluntary and Community Sectors, What Difference Does it Make?'
