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Hyndburn - Sustainability

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Until recently, Hyndburn Fair Share area had just under £12,000 remaining grant funding unallocated which raised the question of how to support the community and tackle the priorities with a relatively small amount left? (in comparison with the overall budget).

 

The Panel with guidance from us as Local Agent decided that it would be more productive to concentrate this funding on sustainability of existing projects rather than seek new bids which would be starting from scratch, though it was still difficult to see how the projects could utilise this amount to make a real sustainable impact and build on their work..

 

With this in mind, the Fair Share Trust Grants Manager and Support Officer at the Community Foundation for Merseyside, with the full support of the local panel, invited all of the funded projects in the area to submit an application for an addition to their existing grant to allow them to conduct their own small evaluation of the project. Following this, each group were awarded an additional amount (just under £2000) to carry out their evaluation.

 

The main reasoning was that this could be used as a marketing tool for the groups to sell their work, demonstrating the positive local impact to attract all forms of further support including volunteers, service users and of course additional funding. For example, one of the projects (Scaitcliffe Community Centre) will be using their Fair Share Trust evaluation to demonstrate how managing this grant and supporting the impact they have had in the local community helped them towards securing a BIG Lottery Reaching Communities grant for a further 5 years.

 

The groups’ own evaluations will also be available to us as Local Agent which can have an input into the overall local evaluation when considering original programme aims and the positive impact that Fair Share Trust funded work has had in addressing local need.

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