Why funding a community organisation can help
It is possible to pay a community organisation to carry out some engagement activity as part of your project.
There will be times when working with someone from the community will be more beneficial than delivering the engagement in-house.
This could help you to reach certain communities and target people that you might be interested to hear from.
Working in this way can:
- give you access to communities where we do not have existing relationships
- help develop new relationships which can be used for future work
- promote innovation and creativity – working with the community in different ways to achieve a desired outcome
- help you hear from voices we would not otherwise reach
What do you need to do?
It’s very important to decide what type of insight you need for your project and set clear objectives. What you want to achieve will dictate whether you need to work with a community organisation or not.
If you do need specialist support, you will need to be very clear about what you want a community organisation to achieve for you.
What are you going to ask them to do? Is there flexibility or creativity in how and what is delivered?
Prepare your brief
You will need to develop a specification to explain what services you need and the outcomes you expect. This can be used to brief organisations about what you want, as well as judge whether your aims were achieved at the end.
More about developing a specification and procuring a community organisation
Set a budget
Having a healthy budget will encourage a range of organisations to express an interest in working with you.
It is important that you budget sufficiently so that organisations can cover their own costs as well as the activities you are funding them to deliver. This needs to be balanced with ensuring social value and value for money.
Very small organisations may need some funding before they can carry out any engagement activity for your project – to cover their own costs – so bear this in mind.
Identify an organisation to work with
You will need to work with your engagement team to research which local organisations have the experience and reach to deliver your activity.
Contact your borough engagement team
Consider approaching organisations early to get them interested in working with you. They can help you to understand if your budget and timescales are realistic.
Consider timescales
If you are funding external organisations, it can take around six months from kick off to completion.
You’ll need at least a month to procure one or multiple organisations. The procurement process includes:
- preparing a specification
- sharing with organisations
- giving space for them to ask questions and submit bids
- reviewing bids
- onboarding successful organisations
More about procuring a community organisation to support your project
Carrying out activity
Undertaking your engagement activity will also take time, whether it is a one-off event or a series of focus groups.
Reporting
Once engagement is complete, and depending on what you are asking the community organisation to do, they may need to set time aside to analyse and share their findings with you.