The last decade has seen the emergence of a range of initiatives and networks to support and develop voluntary and community sector organisations. Our own work highlights the complex and extensive needs of the sector.
Economic challenges and a change in the UK government have led to a sudden need for all involved to reconsider and re-prioritise approaches to supporting organisational development.
In order to help inform debate, we commissioned Professor Diana Leat to consider these challenges and how funders and the sector itself might respond to them.
Some of the main points follow:
- Funders will always have to make political and pragmatic decisions about how to support capacity. They should begin by considering
- whether ‘strengthening the sector’ is central to their mission or a means to an end.
- The new funding and policy environment tends to be focused on doing more with less. There are differing views about whether this is a temporary crisis or ‘the new normal’.
- Social problems rarely if ever belong to any one sector. This suggests that ‘one-sector’ responses may not be able to take sufficient account of wider changes, and so fail.
- Adopting a systems approach might give a better – if more complicated and changeable – account of what’s going on, what might be done, where to intervene, and who should be involved in those interventions.
- Developing resilience would also help organisations to respond better to changing circumstances.
- Promoting collaboration, improvisation (using existing resources in new ways) and bricolage (combining resources in new ways) are essential in an environment of reduced funding.
- Funders should also remember that they have knowledge, power and resources that can support grant-holders in ways other than simply through grant-making.
Please contact us if you have any comments or questions.