Dear Reader
Welcome to the new look Lincolnshire Community Foundation Newsletter.
Help us make this work. You want funding, we want to help you to get it. All you need to do is update your profile using the 'Update your profile' link at the bottom of this email.
If you have received this email in error please accept our apologies and use the 'unsubscribe' link also situated at the bottom of this email.
We are also interested to know what you think about our new e-bulletin. Did you find it interesting? Is there anything you would like to see in forthcoming issues? Please get in touch by emailing lincolnshirecf@btconnect.com, putting 'feedback' in the subject box to have your say.
Thank you
The end of an era:
Grassroots Grants to close in 2011
The small grants scheme closes in March 2011.
The days of government money for grassroots groups are at an end. So, how did we do? Who did we reach? Did we spend the money well? Sue Fortune, the UK’s leading grant maker (lauded by the Big Lottery) reports:
The £80 million fund was launched in 2008. Lincolnshire’s share was £911,000. We’ve awarded just over £593,000 so far to 216 voluntary groups in the County; average grant £2,745; 43% had never had any sort of grant aid before. So, we have reached right down to the coalface. Lots of applicants, 41%, needed face-to-face support to understand the system and fill in the forms. We’ve categorised the grants according to six broad themes:
-
community 32%
-
young people 26%
-
sport 26%
-
older people 7%
-
culture 6%,
-
the environment 3%.
The money was used for general running costs (rent, utilities, transport and volunteer expenses), volunteer training, free counselling sessions, community facilities, community activities like heritage, art and music; recycling, allotments, sports clubs (running costs, equipment, training, venue hire) and activities for young people. And, of course, the punters were very happy.
They liked the straightforward process, the fact that they could deal direct with a sympathetic fieldworker and the small scale (but big reach) of the programme: sensible grants to lean, volunteer-driven projects that make a BIG difference to local community life.
The dormant accounts scam
We’ve been trying to make some simple points to our bankers, Global Inc. I’ve told them:
We’re a grant maker. We build up pots of money. They, Global Inc., hold hundred of thousands of pounds of our money. Our grant pots help people and projects from the Humber to the Wash. One of the ways we build those pots is by converting dormant trusts (clogs for the workers) from narrow to general benefit (older people in Lincolnshire, say).
So Mr Banker, when a trust is legally transferred to us, with Charity Commission approval, we quite like to get hold of the cash and put it to good use.
Easy peasy? Mais non!
Not if it’s a dormant account. Then the bank writes it off, reallocating that money with extreme prejudice. They won’t even tell you how much is in the account (“what account?”). One of our cases, after 15 months obstruction, is with the ombudsman. I wrote to their people who wrote back to mine in Kafkaesque vein:
We admit our process is not perfect. But wait, David Cameron is setting up the BIG Society Bank. We will, therefore, once the legislation is drafted and enacted and we are legally forced to co-operate, send your dormant account (if indeed it exists) to Mr Cameron. Should you still want your money (if there is any), then you will have to apply, some time after 2013,
to Mr Cameron! At that time, we will review our protocols.
The BIG Society Bank needs a very BIG stick.
Looking after our migrant labour force* typical case notes
I’m a 20 year old Polish land worker living with my girlfriend and two more young couples in the Boston gangmaster’s 2 bedroom terraced house; we have a bathroom rota. We’ve been here two years. I earn the agricultural minimum of £4.83 an hour. After deductions (rent, travel and tax), that leaves £135 per 50 hour week. It’s tough but it’s better than home. Last week I slipped whilst loading carrots and chipped two of my front teeth. I worked on for three days but I just can’t stand the pain anymore. I need a Dentist urgently. What should I do?
First, I talked to some friends more fluent in English. Then we googled the NHS on the government web site. There are 10 Dentists listed within 15 miles of Boston. I have no car; public transport is scarce. Disaster: none of the dentists are taking on NHS patients. We call the local trust. They’re on permanent answer phone and my English lets me down. Next step: Accident & Emergency to beg some painkillers.
* circa 5% of the South Lincolnshire population is East European.
The user-friendly age!
We all know that public consultation is skewed, rushed and inadequate. Now we hear that customer interface too is pretty poor. The honourable “society of information technology managers” has analysed the top 20 (most traffic) statutory websites. The average score for user friendliness is a miserable 58% (source: webcredible). 40% of customers find government sites baffling, log off within seconds and phone the relevant Department direct, herding into the options corral. Now, obviously, the rationale for electronic customer interface isn’t to provide the best possible service to the public – more likely it’s to cut costs. But even that limited ambition is unmet: online provision costs the provider 39p; the cost of handling those 4 in 10 users who revert to phoning is £3.21 per call (source goss interactive).
Room for improvement.
Income generation
from Ian Pepperdine:
Dormant Trusts & Accounts
Ian has had success in courting archaic trusts (clogs for the workers), transferring their assets and converting dormant accounts. Though parting a banker from (what he regards as) his money is like removing leeches from a corpse.
We see great potential in “natural burials”. The time and conditions (changing attitudes, less space and the increasing cost of traditional burials and cremations) are ripe for us to enter the market. We have a trial site at Marton near Gainsborough where we’ve spent six months complying with a host of planning regulations – tree mapping, speed guns on the main road, testing water courses, stalking newts, sniffing out endangered species. The site, “celebration wood”, should be available for woodland burials late in 2010. After costs (to maintain the land and so on) about £450 a plot goes into our community grant pots: health, young people, environment, rural communities and civil society.
www.lincolnshirecf.co.uk
|
Payroll Giving
making every penny count
The working population of Lincolnshire is about 400,000. If everyone donated their spare pennies to charity (50p a month, £6 a year) we'd raise £2,400,000 every year to spend on our local communities. There'd be no need for grant aid from local authorities. A culture of customary giving is stable and self reliant. It should replace our dependency on grant aid, artificial targets and handouts.
Strap lines and mission statements:
Do we need to state the blindingly obvious at length?
Are we reassured that our local police are “working to make local communities more secure”? What else would we expect them to do? Provide counselling, run sports projects, write bids, set up charities? (actually they have to do all that as well!).
So the simplistic strap line isn’t all that helpful, though strap-hanging can be fun:
Just missing: Standen we deliver (removals)
Inappropriate: Thinking of dying? (funeral directors)
Baffling: Suffolk and juicy (poultry processor)
Jackanory: Taking people to places (bus firm)
Clever: Tired in Notts? Take a break – unwind. (road safety)
Any more classics?
Getting the
message across:
NEMUS is our Boston grassroots community project. Basically, it’s an interactive digital platform for citizens. It’s being developed by the Foundation (James and Ian) in partnership with the Media Trust, and driven by the communities of Boston (funded by) the department of communities and local government.
Our vision is to make information and services richer and more accessible, and in doing so to enable local communities whatever their social, cultural, political or economic circumstances, to share their own experience of essencial services in an innovative and mutually useful way. Our community partners in Boston, guided by our crack team of digital mentors will develop a portfolio of “digital-rich” media tools like audio podcasts, 3D graphical environments, videos, telephone applications, sign and interpretations.
Work should start in September 2010.
Contacts:
Lincolnshire Community Foundation
www.lincolnshirecf.co.uk
01529 305825
01529 307749
Director
Gordon Hunter
gordonhunter@email.com
Grant Manager
Sue Fortune sue.lincolnshire@btconnect.com
Eco Designer
James Murphy lordofhalo@gmail.com
Donor products
Ian Pepperdine ian.pepperdine@btinternet.com
Tweet
Alex Hunter alex@technosprout.com
Production
Lisa Yates lisa@whimwhamdesign.com
|
