BAND Local Sustainability Fund Rita Liddell

The Local Sustainability Fund Total fund of £20m Average award of £70k over 1 year Aims: Sustainability and resilience Effective processes and structures High quality services Work alongside business to develop volunteering opportunities 1 year funding to build capacity, skills and knowledge within the organisation with the aim of supporting organisations to: be stronger, more sustainable and more resilient have processes/structures in place to continually review and improve the way we work, forward plan and ensure ongoing success and relevance for our beneficiaries Be able to continue to provide vulnerable and disadvantaged people with high quality services Work alongside business to develop volunteering opportunities The fund mostly pays for building capacity within the organisation and bringing in external support (consultants) to deliver on your ‘project’. At BAND we have used the fund internally to ‘backfill’ posts, to free up time to learn new skills and ways of working, as well as bringing in consultants.

The LSF Diagnostic 57 questions Sustainability Market and opportunities Strategy and planning Track record and capability Quality and impact Before applying for the LSF we had to complete a ‘diagnostic’ tool, which gave an analysis of our strengths and weaknesses across 5 key areas. Our application had to demonstrate how it would address the challenges identified by our diagnostic report. Fortunately – the diagnostic did not throw up any unknown issues or nasty surprises. We had identified all of the challenges already – but what the fund has done is give us an opportunity to try to overcome them.

The Challenges Heavily reliant on statutory funding Proportion of income that comes from one source Lots of charity management experience – itty bitty business savvy impacting on our ability to diversify Lack of clear marketing strategy

Meeting the Challenges: Our Project Support for staff to learn new skills: Investigate and analyse the potential of income generation ideas Develop a business and growth plan Develop a marketing strategy Acquire Quality Standards Our main challenge was focussed around so much of our funding coming from statutory funding, and we need to diversify. Within that, we felt that we have a good track record of attracting grants to run projects and that our substantial challenge lies within securing core funding. We have a number of ideas about how we can ‘earn’ money – but no business skills to turn the ideas into a plan. The initial focus of our project is therefore about new ways of working. Learning how to become ‘business managers’ rather than charity managers. We are working with both a consultancy firm and with our local business partner (Barlow Andrews) on developing a range of new skills which include: Business modelling – to take an idea and investigate and analyse it’s potential as a sustainable business Financial modelling – including turning a profit for re-investment into BAND Consideration of organisational structures to support the charitable business model Market research (including competition analysis) Business and growth planning Marketing and communications Securing quality standards

Learning so far Capacity Clarity Communication Culture Ethical issues Thinking in a different way It sounds easy when you say it quickly – but it’s a lot of work and keeping the day job up to date at the same time as implementing the action plan is a juggling act Having absolute clarity about why and what is essential – it helps keep focussed and when the going gets tough having the ‘dream’ to come back to helps you to hold on. Remembering to build meaningful two way communication, which links back to capacity and allowing time for that to happen – with the steering group, with staff, with the Exec, with volunteers, with service users Some of the work involves looking at organisation culture – and there could be significant challenges, for example……. We are facing some ethical issues and will need to make decisions – give examples It’s not all new - some of it is more about thinking differently, applying what you already know in another way or learning to ask different questions So yes, there is a lot to do and it is challenging – but at the same time it is exciting and motivating! And whatever the outcome of the actual project is at the end, our learning will have been tremendous.