Delivering Change in a Shifting Landscape:
Future challenges and opportunities for the VCSE
and its partners
Update on Events and Emerging Themes
June 2017
The BCT VSCE Futures Programme 2016-2018
• Engagement with the sector, funders and policy makers to identify
issues and actions
• Commission and publication of though provoking opinion pieces on
relevant and topical issues
• 5 small projects through each of the original Trust partners supported
Process
• Phase 1 – Initial Engagement and Design Sept- Dec 2016
• Phase 2 – Engagement and Opinion Pieces Jan – June 2017
• Phase 3 – Reflection on findings – July to October
• Phase 4 – Focused engagement on developing proposals
Oct 17 - March 18
• Phase 5 – Setting the Agenda April - June 2018
Overall Framing of the Futures Project
To create the enabling environment that delivers the best outcomes for
the people and places the VCSE sector works with:
What specific actions can:
• the sector take?
• policy makers take?
• funders take?
The conversation so far….
• Initial Sector wide Workshop
• Ballymoney Community
Resource Centre
• Community Arts Partnership
• CO3 Conference
• Fermanagh Trust
• NWCN and Hollywell Trust
• Rural Community Network
• BCT Grantee event
• NI Trusts Group Today!
• Development Trusts NI
• Early Years
• NICVA
• WRDA
• Public Sector Group
• ACF Conference
October Workshop
Opportunities and concerns for the sector locally
Key Questions:
Participants asked to generate their key questions about the
future – these were categorised into 4 themes.
October Workshop:
Theme 1: Resources, finances and structures
• How can we encourage groups to share – there is so much
focus on our own targets and objectives?
• How to become less competitive - more collaborative?
• Is the sector too dependent on government funding?
October Workshop:
Theme 2: Contextual challenges
• How can the sector retain independence?
• Is the third sector a social movement or a service provider?
• If the future of voluntary action requires more volunteers, is
this a challenge?
October Workshop:
Theme 3: The sector’s perceptions of itself and other sectors
• How do we get the NI Executive to value the sector in a meaningful way?
• How can the 3rd sector work better with the private sector to deliver social
good?
• Does this society believe that an independent sector is a good and
necessary thing?
• How can the third sector hold the state to account when there is such a
dependent relationship / funding. How can state decisions be challenged
(without fear)?
October Workshop:
Theme 4: Impact and services
• What future for those organisations without capacity to
compete for large government contracts?
• Future - Is further “professionalisation” necessary for
sustainability?
• How can we encourage boards to be pro-active about
change when it has been risk averse behavior that has
enabled organisations to survive?
C03 Pre-Conference Survey – Key Challenges
Feb 2017
Further cuts in funding
Increased demand of services with less income
Political uncertainty locally
CO3 Conference
Premise and questions for participants:
To create the enabling environment that delivers the best
outcomes for the people and places the VCSE sector works
with:
What specific actions can:
• the sector take?
• policy makers take?
• funders take?
CO3 Conference
Sector actions:
• Information and Communication – Promote what the sector does and
the impact it makes
• Collaboration and co-operation – less competition
• Finance and efficiency – more collaboration and be more selffinancing
CO3 Conference:
Policy maker actions:
• Work in partnership with the sector to co-design policies and
programmes
• Adopt new funding / contracting models
• A different approach to bureaucracy
• Have contingency plans for uncertainty
Co3 Conference
Funder actions
• Encourage collaboration and co-operation
• Work together with the sector
• Work with other funders
• Focus on the right outcomes
• Adopt different funding models
• Reduce bureaucracy
BCT Grantees Workshop March 2017
Sector actions:
• Create and harness new energy and action – not more process
• Make the Concordat work
• Promote its value – use social enterprise as a means to widen
awareness of the sector
• Demonstrate
• Advocate jointly
• Strengthen its reputation.
BCT Grantees Workshop March 2017
Policy maker actions:
• Create new mechanisms for participation in policy shaping– e.g. Civic
Forum and/or constitutional convention
• Link outcomes to need, programmes and policy
• Be responsive to public needs and co-design programmes with VCSE
sector
• Create a sector champion.
BCT Grantees Workshop March 2017:
Funder actions
• Government funders – more focus on outcomes not outputs
• Government – understand what the sector does and how it works
• Longer term funding
• Grant loan hybrids – to transition from grant dependency
• More collaboration between funders
• Government – have realistic levels of bureaucracy.
Fermanagh Trust
Issues:
• Statutorisation of community development
• Charity registration
• Collaboration
• Need to be engaged in community planning
• The need to sustain impact – statutories to learn from good
projects
Fermanagh Trust
Sector actions:
• Organisations to challenges selves re aims
• Regain independence
• Ask for threshold for charity registration
• Challenge short term models
• Challenge lack of flexibility in funding
• Lobby re tendering rules
Fermanagh Trust
Policy maker actions:
• Make space for direct liaison btw small groups and policy
makers
• Change mindset of one size fits all
• Work in a multi-collaborative way
• Be less risk- and innovation-averse
Fermanagh Trust
Funder actions:
• Learn from good practice on ground
• Reduce bureaucracy, take risks
• Understand difference between urban and rural
• Link between funding and community to identify needs
• Remove funding bias towards statutory partners
• Invest in independent measurement of outcomes
• Remove possibility of conflict between commissioning and delivering
Flavour of themes emerging to date
• Need a shared understanding of how the sector is defined:
• What is the sector?
• Why does it matter?
• How to promote it?
Emergent Themes
How can the VCSE sector achieve the best outcomes?
• Through co-design and co-production; through advocacy
and challenge
Collaboration is required at different levels
• inter-sectoral and intra-sectoral
Other emergent themes
• Recognition of the independence and interdependence of the
VCSE sector and other players – and the potential tensions
between these – is required
• More participative structures for influencing policy required
• Need for more sustainable funding models
• Desire for reduced bureaucracy associated with funding.