Category Archives for "Mutuality"

2 Burngreave New Deal for Communities: A Case Study

Burngreave New Deal for Communities (BNDC) is a case study, to support my point in an earlier post about control.

Background Information

New Deal for Communities (NDC) was a national programme, founded in 1998. It provided financial support to 39 of the most disadvantaged areas in the UK, over a 10 year period.  They staggered the start dates somewhat and hence the 2010 final evaluation. I think this slightly pre-dates the closing of the ones with a later start-up.  Today NDC is long gone and largely forgotten, at least in the national debate.  I shall use the national evaluation in later posts to structure my argument.

Burngreave NDC ran from 2001 until 2011 and so was one of the later ones.  During the early years, I was involves as an active member of the Burngreave Community Action Forum (BCAF).  Then from 2003, I was not involved for some years because of an appointment to a demanding national post, based in Manchester.

Then around 2009, I rejoined the Board towards the end of its active life, until BNDC wound up in 2011.

Here is an extract from the executive summary of the final report.  It addresses NDC as a national programme:

Between 1999-2000 and 2007-08, the 39 NDC partnerships spent a total of £1.71bn on some 6,900 projects or interventions. A further £730m was levered in from other public, private and voluntary sector sources. They have developed, with partner agencies, a range of interventions, designed to support locally developed strategies that encompass the three place-related outcomes of crime and community safety, community and housing and the physical environment, and the three people-related outcome areas of health, education and worklessness.

Brief Evaluation

Burngreave it seems came third in terms of meeting the programme objectives, so don’t forget this when I criticise the programme.  At the time, the revenue spend of the programme in Burngreave improved the quality of life for many residents.  The question is whether these successes have been sustainable beyond the end of the programme.

This leads to my first comment.  The date of final assessment for the national programme is March 2010.  I have not so far found any more recent evaluation.  In May 2010, a new national government formed and the two parties in the coalition have shown no interest in New Deal.  An evaluation now, just three years later, might produce a very different picture.  Certainly by 2020, it will be interesting to ask whether New Deal had any lasting impact at all.

In my next post, I’ll outline my overall criticism of New Deal and then in future posts pick up some specific issues from the final evaluation.

Have you had any experience of NDC?  If so, what do you believe the impact has been on your neighbourhood today, three years down the road?

1 The Scope of Third Sector Organisations

We usually think about the three sectors; statutory, private and third sector organisations, from a national top-down perspective and so perhaps see a greater separation between them than we find in neighbourhoods.  All three sectors are part of the ecology of a healthy neighbourhood and so we need to understand how they interact and contribute to public well-being.

The diagram represents the three sectors, and the potential for interaction between them.  They can all play a vital role in a neighbourhood, providing jobs and social spaces where community can grow.

Third Sector Organisations

Third sector organisations (a) are not easy to define because people use the term to cover a ragbag of everything that is neither statutory nor private sector.  Personal contributions of time or money, eg through faith and community groups, grant aid and support for social aims through trading commonly fund third sector organisations.

Statutory Organisations

Statutory sector organisations (b), might be working for the local authority, the NHS or the police, for example.  National government may also be active through various schemes.

Grant Aided Community Organisations

There are not so many type (d) organisations these days, where statutory funding aids voluntary organisations.  This type of organisation has been very common over the last few decades but is not so common in an age of government cuts.  Some people criticise government funding as a contested use of tax-payers money.  For certain purposes it is vital for the welfare of our communities.  However, there are many issues where government funding supports local regeneration and vigorous debate about the implications of this approach is long overdue.

Private Sector Organisations

There will also be private sector organisations (c), from self-employed people and small businesses through to large companies and multinationals.  Where the latter are present in an area, they can be the source of many jobs.  Or else they may be present as branches of supermarkets or other chains.  A local trader might provide a vital service, at the heart of a neighbourhood and so, whilst clearly not third sector, is relevant when assessing the assets of an area, for example, a local café whose proprietor encourages community meetings.

Community Businesses

Community businesses are type (e) organisations, which aim to generate income for social aims through trade.  Other local businesses can become type e from the private sector side, for example by forming small business mutuals to support enterprise in a neighbourhood.

Development Trusts

Section (g) combines elements of all 3 sectors.  In the UK these are usually some sort of development trust.  They aim to develop an independent asset base within a neighbourhood.  In practice most seem to combine grants with trade and deployment of assets.  Some seem to be surviving the cuts and so perhaps the model has staying power.

In future posts I shall look in turn at the various types of organisation found in our communities.

1 Community Development in the Future

I’m a community development worker of over thirty years standing.  I’ve seen community development in the UK evolve over the decades and today I see it is undergoing a profound transformation.

It is a matter of life or death.  Many organisations that previously supported community development, eg local authorities and churches, no longer do so.  Funding for community development has never been so scarce; very few posts are advertised.  There has never been a career path for development workers and no professional standards. This means the wealth of experience held by practitioners is in danger of being lost.

Does community development have a future online?  I have no idea!  It is worth exploration and this website will do that.

If there is an online future, it can work only through close integration between online and real life communication.  Online communication cannot substitute locally for face-to-face meetings.  How do you integrate such fine-grained local relationships online?

There is a long term need in the UK to drag community development out of the control of local and national government.  I have had a ring side seat, watching politicians drain the life out of community development.  Community development needs to find its own resources and build networks independently of political control.  It is what happens in the United States and could happen in the UK too.  This is about independence from political control through funding.

We can support this online but it requires major changes to how we understand community development.  The focus must be on how we build local economies (not always geographically local) rather than funding for projects or workers.  If these local economies pool resources, they could purchase the developmental support they need.

In future posts I shall develop these ideas further.  We need a renewed vision of the future of our communities and that means going back to the roots to find a new way forward.

0 Mutuality: the Ecology of Third Sector Organisations

If we do not understand our organisations, how can we determine the purpose of their websites or structure their content?

Not all third sector organisations are mutuals but mutuality might help us understand nature of third sector organisations.

Typology

Third sector means various things to various people. Politically it has been re-named as the Big Society in recent years.  Sometimes the sector is called not-for-profit or the community or voluntary sector.  None of these are satisfactory but may be important for determining the purpose of websites.  The words we choose have implications for search engine optimisation, for example.

Various organisations may be part of the third sector.  How does each type, eg community groups, voluntary organisations, charities, social enterprises, mutuals, faith groups; relate to the sector and what is its socio-economic position? In time this will be a resource organisations can use to define their role and work out the purpose of their websites.

Position

Third sector implies there are at least two other sectors and their relationships need to be understood.  Their overlaps and boundaries are particularly interesting.  For example, is a self-employed web designer, specialising in the third sector, a part of the third sector or in the private sector?  What’s going on when a local authority applies for a grant to start a social enterprise?  These sectors are a model that helps us understand our society, the better we understand them, the better able we are to develop our websites.

Partnerships

For many third sector organisations, an up-to-date, relevant website is a big ask.  Is it possible for organisations to collaborate, especially where their vision for a local area is complementary?  Pooled resources might not only enhance online presence but also open up other opportunities for collaboration in real life.

Methods

Why mutuality? How is or could mutuality be expressed in various types of organisation?  What mutual methods might be possible online?  These will cover a range of activities including participative methodologies, community development and non-directive consultancy.