Transcript The Role of the voluntary sector in stimulating regional

Welcome from Mark Richardson
• The Big Lottery Fund has given a grant to Cornwall
Voluntary Sector Forum and its partners to help
prepare charities, social enterprises and other
community groups for the start of its Building Better
Opportunities ESF grant programme under the next
round of European structural funding.
• Today’s launch marks the beginning of that process
of support.
My overview
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Domestics for the day
How the event will operate
Explaining our role as the PDF organisation
Setting the Context:
– Local context, big picture stuff in brief
– Achieving transformational change
– The need for partnership working and collaboration
• Launching our new website pages
• Encouraging people to engage
The three core objectives of our
PDF support to you are to:
1. Ensure widespread awareness of the ESF
opportunities available locally (in Cornwall and the
Isles of Scilly) through the ‘opt in’ arrangements
with the Big Lottery Fund. To help you to be fully
informed of requirements, risks and the
responsibilities involved, and give you the
opportunity to discuss the priorities and local
need as set out by our Local Enterprise
Partnership.
Our PDF support (continued)..
2. Provide administrative support to develop positive
working relationships between organisations in
Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly which will hopefully
lead to good quality applications to the main Big
Lottery ESF programme from 2015.
3. Provide a publicly advertised contact for local
organisations to find out more about Better
Opportunities, fielding queries, maintaining a
database and facilitating events. As part of this to
be a source of knowledge about the area, ESF
investment priorities and stakeholders.
Setting the context
• Setting the Context:
– From Objective 5b through to Convergence
– Austerity and public sector cuts e.g. Cornwall Council’s
plan for £196m of savings
– Achieving transformational change
– The need for partnership working and collaboration
– Other parts of the programme and other offers from the
Big Lottery
Key resources to help you
• New web pages at: http://newopportunities.cornwallvsf.org/
• Expression of Interest form
– Brokering partnerships
– Understanding capacity building needs
• Programme of support workshops
http://new-opportunities.cornwallvsf.org/
Support Workshops (Phase 1)
• Provisional Capacity Building Workshop
Themes
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New to ESF
Business Planning
Co-production / co design
Risk Management
Partnership / collaboration (Basic & Advanced workshop
sessions)
– Costing delivery
– Measuring Impact
Delivery Workshops (Phase 2)
• Exploring the 'Lead Partner' role
• 2x workshops for each grant programme
areas
• Meet the other ‘Opt-ins’ – DWP and SFA
All these workshop events are subject to change and
may for example be combined into longer sessions to
make it more convenient for participants, so keep
looking at our materials for a further update.
New Opportunities
How to Build Partnerships and
Consortia
Mark Richardson
Specialist VCSE Advisor
Cornwall VSF
http://www.cornwallvsf.org
Exercise: Expectations
• What are your expectations for this session?
• What do you want to get out of this morning?
Content
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Partnerships vs collaboration
Pros and cons of Partnerships
Adding value
Types of Partnership
Governance
Performance Management
Lessons from Alliance Contracting
Building partnerships into bids
Big Lottery support
Partnership vs collaboration
• Collaboration as an ‘umbrella’ term
• Partnerships are formal.
• Partnerships are typically underpinned by a
written agreement which sets out their scope
and terms of operation
• Partnerships typically mean something in law,
e.g. Limited Liability Partnership
Exercise: What are the pros and cons of
partnership working
Advantages
Disadvantages
Pros and cons
Advantages
• Extra capacity
• Choice for users
• Specialisms
• ‘Free’ / additional
resources
• Collective intelligence
and knowledge
• Geographical reach
Disadvantages
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Time consuming
Complexity
Conflict
Risk
Less money for delivery?
Adding value
• Where is it?
• Can you explain it?
• Can you measure it?
• Is it relevant?
• Is it sufficient?
Is the pain worth the gain?
What value does your organisation bring to a
partnership? (Feedback)
Types of Partnership
Three main models:
• Accountable body (holds funds, doesn’t deliver, has agreements
with others for delivery, management role, e.g. Learning
Partnership)
• Lead provider (holds funds, delivers, has a supply chain that
deliver specialist services or in bits of geography where there is a
gap, e.g. Working Links)
• Super provider (new entity, sub-contracts delivery, maybe
subcontracts management and backoffice, e.g. Safer and Stronger
Consortium)
Exercise: What are the pros and cons of each approach?
Exercise: What are the functions of
partnership governance?
• Name the main functions…
Governance
• What are the functions of partnership
governance?
– Communication
– Relationships and trust
– Knowledge of users and their needs
– Is it working? Performance management
– Risk and reputation management
– Troubleshooting and problem solving
Governance (continued)
• What are the levels of governance within
partnerships?
– Strategic
– Operational
• How are these linked in your model?
• What are the roles of users within your
governance approach (co-production)
Performance Management
• How do you currently manage performance
within your organisations?
• How would you adapt these approaches to
manage the performance of external
partners?
• What role should performance management
play within your partnership governance
arrangements?
Lessons from Alliance
Contracting
• Involving an external broker / facilitator
• Disclosure of:
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What each partner wants to get out of the partnership
What is the ‘common ground’ for the partnership?
What is the added value each partner brings to the table
What each partner sees as their risks and issues
What are the real costs for each partner (open book)
• Common agreement which shares risks and includes
softer issues above (i.e. is more than just a legalistic
agreement)
• Steering group with all partner attendance
Building Partnerships into bids
In your bid(s), you should make sure that:
• You can clearly explain any partnership arrangements
• You can explain the ‘pathway’ taken by users through partners
• You can articulate the added value which partnerships bring to the
contract
• You can offset the perceived risks of partnership working by explaining
your approach to:
– Performance management
– Governance
– Other risks (e.g. skills and capacity of weakest link)
• You can demonstrate user involvement and co-production / co-design
• You can explain the legacy arising from successful partnership
Big Lottery support
• Make use of the opportunity to access a
development grant to building your
partnership, if it is offered
• The Lottery plans to provide a Partnership
Agreement template – again, use this as
basis for your partnership(s). Look at the
wording this uses and the material it covers –
this will give you a clue about what the Lottery
regards as important.
Resources
• Alliance contracting, see
http://lhalliances.org.uk
• ACEVO Consortia Support,
http://consortiasupport.org.uk
• Social Enterprise Focus, see
http://www.socialenterprisefocus.com
• VSF see http://www.cornwallvsf.org