A forum for open discussion on communities and local government policy.

Third Sector strategy

Communities and Local Government and many in the third sector share the same broad vision of prosperous and cohesive communities. In addressing our long term challenges we recognise a stronger partnership with the sector is necessary.

We are proud of what we already do to enable a healthy sector. But we can achieve more. In response to our Capability Review, we committed to publishing a strategy to set a framework for effective, on-going engagement with the third sector.

Our draft third sector strategy launched on 7 June sets out how we propose to improve our engagement with the sector by:

• improving how we work with the sector
• enabling the sector to be an effective local partner in place-shaping
• moving to a more strategic partnership and funding relationship with the sector
• supporting sustainable investment in community anchors

Now we want to hear from third sector organisations, local government and other stakeholders on our proposals in the strategy.

In short our question is:

How can Communities and Local Government improve engagement with the third sector?

The deadline for responses is 20 September 2007. We will then publish a final strategy in the Autumn.

So now its over to you!

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Smaller Organisations

Posted by David Futers on 11/08/2007 - 08:50

I belong to, and support the smaller organisations and believe that larger organisations with full time staff can fend for themselves.

Documentation states "90% of the sector is made up of small neighbourhood based community organisations" and goes on to say "strong local relationships between sector and local government are essential"

The Strategy states that "they expect the trend of indirect funding to continue"

Why I ask. Why not look to make direct funding available to smaller organisations.

As the smaller organisations make up the bulk of people in the sector should we not get 90% of the cake, or do we have to continue to pick up the crumbs from the funding table

Small organisations face a number of problems, the participants are in general in full time employment and have to earn money to pay taxes that fund this work, but more important they do not have the time to chase grant funding in a effective manner.

The work they do is valuable to the communities they serve so why not recognise this and have a more flexible way of assisting them with funding and also cut out the number of players taking their "administration" cut along the way.

This would help them to be more effective and to increase their capacity, happy volunteers tend to do more than disgruntled ones.

I have noticed local councils making new departments and new posts out of distribution of grant funding. Give them a tranch of money and they will develop a department to distribute it rather than looking at making the existing staff be more effective as would be done in the private sector.

Well thats my bitch, get this right and you will have a effective third sector, get it wrong and lots of smaller organisations will struggle and fall by the wayside

David Futers
Newbiggin by the Sea Sailing Club

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