1. BAND Local Sustainability Fund
Rita Liddell

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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.