Supporting small charities and social enterprises through the pandemic
Julian Lomas
This is the first in a short series of blogs we will publish in the coming weeks reflecting on the work we have been doing since late 2020 to deliver a substantial programme of support for small charities and social enterprises on behalf of Clarion Futures.
As we highlighted in a previous blog, when Covid-19 hit the UK in March 2020, most charities turned to grant funders for help and most funders stepped up to the mark. An NCVO report found that 58% of charities reported that existing funders offered more funding during the pandemic and that funders showed the flexibility and compassion many charities needed to survive and respond to the needs of vulnerable communities.
This has been particularly true of our client Clarion Futures, the charitable foundation of Clarion Housing Group, the largest social landlord in the country.
Each year Clarion Futures invests millions of pounds in charities, community groups and other organisations who support Clarion residents and local communities. In April 2020 Clarion Futures launched its Recovery and Resilience Programme (R&RP) and during the height of the pandemic provided over £726,000 in grant funding to charities and social enterprises to provide vital support in Clarion communities.
This funding has proved to be a lifeline for many (particularly smaller) organisations who were struggling to cope with a surge in demand for their support, coupled with a need to adapt services during the pandemic.
With tremendous foresight, Clarion Futures recognised early on that, important though money is to small charities and social enterprises, many of its partners (as it calls the organisations it supports) needed additional, non-financial support to ride out the pandemic and emerge from it stronger and more resilient. And so, the R&RP non-financial support offer was born.
In October 2020, Clarion Futures tendered for consultants to help design and deliver its R&RP non-financial support offer. Almond Tree Strategic Consulting was delighted to be selected to do this.
Working with a small army of our associates, we quickly got to work developing tools for Clarion Futures Communities Officers and our consultants to assess the needs of partners identified as likely to benefit from non-financial support and to assign our consultants to help partners according to those needs.
Across 2 cohorts we have supported 35 of Clarion Futures’ partners with a wide range of needs including business planning, financial management, governance, fundraising, organisational development, volunteer management, business continuity planning, impact assessment, human resources and marketing/communications.
This has included over 50 hours of live online training and over 100 days of bespoke, one-to-one consultancy support, mentoring and training as well as a comprehensive evaluation of the outcomes and impacts of the support provided.
We are delighted and overwhelmed by the positive feedback we have received.
“We would definitely do this again! It has been transformative”
The next blog in this series will explore in more detail the evaluation evidence for the considerable impacts of the non-financial support we have provided on behalf of Clarion Futures.
“I have loved hearing from my partner about how pleased they have been with their progress.”
It has been wonderful working with Clarion Futures to deliver the R&RP non-financial support offer. Helping small charities and social enterprises navigate their way through the challenges of the pandemic and emerge from it better able to prosper has been a privilege. We are delighted that we have now been asked to work with Clarion Futures to develop and pilot a successor non-financial support offer to benefit of their partners on an ongoing basis.