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An Evaluation of the South West Voluntary and Community Sector Infrastructure Early Spend Programme 2004

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It found that infrastructure and capacity building support for the voluntary and community sector (VCS) was crucial to the sector's ability to play a full part in service planning and delivery but that it was patchy in coverage and quality, and lacking in sustainable funding particularly at a local level. The CCR made recommendations for strengthening the capacity of the sector to deliver public services.

The Government established a budget of £93 million to be invested in the VCS to ensure that it has the capacity to participate in shaping and delivering high quality public services. Of that £93 million £6.25 million was made available nationally as "Early Spend" revenue funding to support the development of an infrastructure strategy for the VCS in England. Primarily the funding was aimed at supporting development work in local areas with very little or no VCS infrastructure. Nationally £1 million was invested in the Exemplar Fund to "develop ideas and proposals o­n building and sharing good practice, delivering support services in new and innovative ways and redesigning the way services are delivered to improve sustainability, efficiency and effectiveness." This fund was delivered nationally by the Active Communities Directorate, o­n behalf of the Home Office. In those regions where Early Spend was taken up, funding was to be distributed locally through the Government Offices (GO) of the regions.

Government Office for the South West (GOSW) was o­ne of the regions that decided to work with the Early Spend Programme. £500,000 was to be allocated to VCS organisations throughout the region to identify how the sector could work better together to support frontline service delivery organisation. Projects taking part in the programme had be completed and evaluated in 5 months. A further £100,000 was made available for a VCS infrastructure mapping exercise.

1.2 The Overall Aim of the Early Spend Programme

The Early Spend Programme in the South West was concerned with strengthening and improving existing infrastructure organisations and identifying and tackling ' gaps' in infrastructure. This was in line with the national criteria for the programme.

Eligible organisations needed to be legally constituted voluntary and community organisations who already worked in partnership with others or who were looking to work in partnership with other organisations such as the public sector, to build sustainability and gain commitment for future funds.

Specific consideration was given to projects where infrastructure organisations were developing programmes, which addressed at least o­ne of the following activities:

• Actual planned commitment of commissioners and funding agencies to invest in the sector, including match funding agreements with the Active Communities Directorate Programme.
• Awareness across the sector (at local, sub-regional or regional levels) of the need to pursue income generation.

The organisations funded needed to show:

• Examples of emerging good practice in collaboration and point working between infrastructure organisations
• Examples of good practice in collaboration and joint working between infrastructure organisations
• Examples of good practice in collaboration between the sector and funding agencies
• How the work funded benefited the sector
• Actual planned increases in the range and level of support given to frontline organisations to enable them to participate more effectively in service planning and delivery.

The criteria stated that because of this tight timescale there could not be an open bidding process. Instead GOSW intended to commission projects from amongst expressions of interest submitted by organisations with projects that were ready to start immediately. The expressions of interest were to be assessed by GOSW and then considered by a Regional Steering Group. The Regional Steering Group was made up initially of representatives of 11 organisations, this included representation from statutory bodies and members of the VCS who had a role to play in regional infrastructure support.

Successful applicants to this programme were to be treated as 'pilot projects' with no commitment to funding from the longer-term investment programme, now identified as the Main Spend 'ChangeUp' Programme. However, organisations were advised to consider the period of the Early Spend Programme as 'a chance to emerge as critical in developing the sector.'

Twenty o­ne organisations were funded through the Early Spend Programme in the South West to undertake a variety of projects such as developing a funding strategy for an emerging equalities organisation, the development of a regional network for organisations undertaking recycling work, developing databases, websites and mapping of infrastructure provision at a subregional level.

1.3 The Aims of the Evaluation and its methodology

The aims of the evaluation as laid out in the evaluation brief were to establish a baseline for evaluation with projects funded under the South West infrastructure Early Spend programme. It was hoped that the evaluation would identify:-

• Examples of good practice especially of working in collaboration and joint working between infrastructure organisations
• Show innovations of improvements in the capacity and skills of infrastructure organisations
• Innovative working and proven ways of solving issues by doing things differently
• Failure and problems in delivery
• Additional infrastructure resources and implications
• Value for money

The capacity of the evaluation to identify the above examples was dependent o­n the projects selected for funding having these aims as the outcomes of the projects to be funded.


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