1. Investing in what matters to communities
Going local
The way we fund
How we fund
Context is king
Formulating What next…
Good Morning – Matt Poole SHRGM at the Big Lottery Fund
We’re going to be sharing with you our thinking, learning and key themes around future grant making in Birmingham and the Black Country
Joined by Sue and Steph – local managers – but before I hand over to them, I just wanted to introduce you to the Big Lottery Fund and how we are currently operating in the Midlands…
Going Local – change from management in operational centres to local teams / patches – new staff posts working where they live (end to end grant process). Explain what a patch is (Birmingham and Solihull / Black Country)
The way we fund – as well as recruiting a team of people who work locally we have also changed the way we Fund, reduced processes and structures in order to remove barriers to people applying – our focus is on building relationships, less paper / applications and more conversations, and greater focus on providing better customer service (their pace, quick decisions, improved feedback)
How we fund – National Lottery Awards for All, Reaching Communities and Partnership Funding
Context is king – your voice your vision – funding decisions made by better understanding of what’s happening locally, what else is going on, gaps, funding, assets, duplication
Formulating What next… Since April we have been focused on developing our understanding of local patches and our priorities for each patch. We have been armed with the report Tina outlined earlier ‘Communities Uncovered’ but also been considering:
What we have already funded
What stakeholders are telling us
Local assets / opportunities to build-upon
Initial observations (what we’re noticing)
What others are already doing
This is leading us to the creation of patch action plans / strategies, which will include - Key themes or areas of potential investment
It’s these initial observations that Steph and Sue are going to share with you…

2. Black Country – what we have noticed
Raising aspirations
Supporting connections
Investing in people led approaches
Raising aspirations
Common thread arising from Stakeholder conversations is lack of aspiration
On a community level, hard to engage people in consultations, lack confidence, low social mobility, isolation.
Less consistent within voluntary and community sector, local can be very local and create barriers, slow in response to change, lack vision in some cases, which could be capacity or skills based.
Each locality is different and how the sector responds is very different, from the sector considered gaps are as a result of changes to funding from CCG’s, which has left counselling, community transport and other health services vulnerable. Isolation and loneliness has been flagged as an issue across all areas.
Supporting connections
There does appear to be a rising trend in voluntary and community organisations starting to connect, often with more structure. VCS’s are active in facilitating many of these. Example is the One Walsall organising the local area forums, SCVO’s involvement in bringing organisations together which has led to a collaboration of voluntary sector health organisations in Sandwell in Communities in Sync.
There are gaps in some of these need more input and support to kick start than others. For example in Sandwell there is a strong complement of children and youth-focused community groups and not-for-profit organisations but the majority of them are small and localised and struggle to find opportunities to collaborate. There is the potential role of funders in investing in this very initial pre-work to allow these conversations to grow , in order to share learning, connections and raise aspirations.
Investing in people led approaches
Despite my comments around lacking aspirations there are pockets across the black country of participatory led approaches in collaborating with communities to improve lives and areas. All of these I’m aware of are at a very early stage and as a funder there can be more of an inherent risk in supporting an approach rather than a fully formed project as there may be more flexibility in final outcomes and outputs. However there is a need for us to listen and learn about a diversity of approaches to tackling tricky social issues.  There are also community led venues in the Black Country which are also focusing on assets and asset transfer where we are following the conversation, and example of this is in Darlaston where there is likely to be involvement of multiple funders for the community to transfer the town centre which we’d be interested in talking further with any interested funders.

3. Birmingham – what we have noticed
Places:
Largest community funder
Available support and infrastructure to groups
Some local working – PINCH, Locality, Birmingham Community Matters
Themes:
Young people and mental wellbeing
Building Connections (volume of application – focused on isolation and older people)
Significant investment in Domestic Violence

4. We’re ‘up for it’
Keen to work in collaboration in order to maximise the impact of our funding
Host ‘chat and challenge’ conversations locally around key themes / priorities / places
Explore the potential for joined up grant-making
Provide funding / match funding / signpost
Share learning, evaluations and our understanding of ‘what works’
We’re up for it… including talking to you about what ‘it’ is! (which I think is the next session!)