London Funders' project groups are always a great chance for informal exchange of news and ideas. Minutes of each meeting are available on our website.
This group met very recently, when the main topic was migration and how it affects London. Jill Rutter, Senior Research Fellow, Migration, Equalities and Citizenship at the Institute for Public Policy and Research gave the group an authoritative and absorbing update on the statistics and some of the real implications of these, helping us to read the data more carefully (and counterbalance the negative messages generally found in the media). Her presentation offered many challenges to funders. Notes of the meeting will be on London Funders' website soon along with her presentation, and we will alert our members when these are posted.
Tanzeem Ahmed and Clare Whiting from Olmec continued the group’s investigation into work to help refugee professionals into employment. They are concerned with the various fields of engineering and operate a website which allows engineers to register their details and availability – but they also aim to offer work experience opportunities and open days with potential employers to give extra assistance to professionals in fields where being out of work for any length of time can quickly leave you uncompetitive.
They have kindly left us CDs of Olmec’s excellent “Guide to Equality and Diversity in the Third Sector”. We would be happy to post a copy to any member of London Funders interested to see it – perhaps before recommending it to funded organisations.
We also heard about the way London Voluntary Service Council’s PEACe project on employment law and HR for black and minority ethnic and refugee groups has expanded into offering face-to-face support and has translated its useful resource material into French and Somali.
The next meeting will take place from 10am to 12 noon on Wednesday 26 November at London Funders, agenda to be announced shortly. If you would like to register for this meeting or join this group or please contact Belinda.
This group last met on 1 October and had an absorbing discussion based on presentations about projects which offer ICT support to voluntary and community organisations – and how funders can make a significant difference to the capacity of the VCS by supporting work which offers expert but user-friendly help to the many groups that struggle with computer use.
- Kate White from Superhighways, based in Kingston upon Thames and also serving neighbouring boroughs, spoke about the services her organisation offers and also described its own journey to improved sustainability
- Jenny Field from The City Bridge Trust presented a case study which showed how the Trust has identified IT needs in the sector and chosen to address these principally through supporting specialist resources that can be made widely available across the sector
- Terry Stokes from London Advice Services Alliance explained the circuit rider model for ICT support has served many organisations well in London and also gave a sense of the complex mix of funding that has been needed over the years to keep the service in being.
The next meeting will be on Wednesday, 3 December and three London funders’ members will be making presentations: Sioned Churchill on work the City Parochial Foundation has funded towards ‘Building Our Futures’, the action research project on the human resource needs of Deaf and Disabled People’s Organisations, and the range of solutions which could meet these needs; Louise Woodford on the LDA’s Pathfinders work in east and west London, which is bringing fresh approaches to addressing poverty and worklessness; and Sandra Jones on the London Borough of Lewisham’s ‘traffic light system’ used to alert staff to performance issues in funded organisations.
If you would like to attend this meeting and /or join this group please contact Belinda.
A small meeting in July looked at workforce development in the voluntary and community sector – covering recruitment, retention, staff development and qualifications. The Workforce Hub, based at NCVO, is keen to share its perspective and specialist knowledge to encourage funders to support good practice in the VCS and to try to push grant recipients into better practice.
The autumn meeting of the Group from 10 am to 1.30 pm on Friday, 17 October, will take the form of a half day communications strategy “taster” workshop led by top media and marketing trainers Sound Delivery which will explore ways in which funders can use communications to market themselves more effectively to external audiences and target applicants. The morning will conclude with a networking lunch.
This event is free for London Funders’ members (subject to a cancellation fee since spaces are strictly limited) and £30 for non-members. If you would like to attend please contact Belinda to book your place.
The group’s October meeting had the theme of legacy, hearing from Alex Bax, senior policy adviser to the Mayor, for planning and development – his current work relates particularly to health inequality in London. He briefly reviewed a whole series of policy areas as they relate to health – poverty, empowerment and learning, for example, and looked at how Olympics related activity could add value to work being undertaken. The Mayor has a formal duty to deliver a legacy to London from the Olympics and Alex stimulated some constructive debate around what this legacy could mean for east London communities and more widely.
Sunny Crouch, OBE, a member of London First’s Olympic Legacy Group and former Director of London Docklands Development Corporation – and currently a governor of the University of East London - talked from the heart as a resident of Docklands, as well as from her varied professional experience – she riveted the group with her strong views both on the physical legacy of the Olympics for east London and on the elements of community-building and the need for positive change to benefit individuals, especially the young.
We hope that our notes of the meeting will give a good flavour of these contributions and the ensuing debate – we will let members know as soon as these are available on the website.
The next meeting of the group will be later in 2008 and the Secretariat will publicise it in good time.
If you would like to register for this meeting or join this group or please contact Belinda.
The group met in September and covered two main issues. Firstly, two of the research staff of the Big Lottery Fund, Alison Pollard and Patrick Carroll, asked colleagues for advice on ideas they have for ambitious longitudinal studies of the impact of Lottery funding on individuals. The discussion of their ideas was a very serious critique, both warning of potential pitfalls in such studies and producing positive ideas and offers of collaboration.
The second topic drew on a paper presented by Kate Hinds of the King’s Fund at an international research conference. It tackled the efforts made in a specific grantmaking programme to use performance monitoring not just for the funder’s purposes but to provide learning opportunities for the funded projects. The paper included a very critical internal review of why this was initially less successful than expected and the group discussion which ensued was enlightening for all involved. An abstract of this paper is available on the conference website.
The next meeting of the group will take place from 10am - 12noon on 9 December will feature a presentation from New Philanthropy Capital on their repository ‘results’ library.
If you would like to register for this meeting or join this group or please contact Belinda.
Future project group dates (all at London Funders)