Yesterday Fundraising Central attended the One East Midlands ‘Shifting Sands’ Conference in Leicestershire.  It was great to see so many Voluntary and Community Sector organisations represented although the ‘efficiency measures’ continue to dominate conversation.

Some fairly controversial solutions to the funding crisis are being proposed, one of the ‘successful’ models described a Social Investment Bond. As part of the payment by results commissioning process, private investors were profiting from an adoption service for ‘difficult’ children. I’m still not sure how I feel about this? On one hand some of our most vulnerable children are being found, safe and loving homes with great parents and government isn’t wasting money on schemes that don’t work. On the other hand a private investor is gaining profit from the public purse off the back of some of our most vulnerable children? Or maybe my issue is with the fact that the current adoption services don’t work for 2000 children? Clearly the financial implications of home-finding are secondary to the moral obligation society has to provide a system that works in this example but are almost certainly being prioritised by politicians.

The role of Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) in distributing billions of EU Funding was described in another presentation. Two years on from the decision to abolish regional development agencies, and a subsequent letter from ministers Vince Cable and Eric Pickles to “civic and business leaders” inviting them to establish local enterprise partnerships, a new form of local governance has been created. England now has universal, designated (by government) coverage from 39 LEPs but don’t expect to get on the advisory board it’s an invitation only gig. The LEP’s or ‘Boys clubs’ as more than one speaker described them have a remit to support economic growth with the European Regional Development Fund. In the case of Voluntary and Community organisations the main strand they are need to address is Social Inclusion. The best advice was to demonstrate clearly the economic saving which can be achieved by your project or intervention although worryingly for a democratic process, it seemed in this bloggers opinion to be just as important to make friends of the board.

So in summary, if your government funding has been cut (despite a worrying disconnect between government and direct delivery) they are trying to propose alternatives, encouraging the sector to build relationships, work collaboratively and demonstrate measureable returns on investment to benefit both the sector and the economy.