A group of Cumbria Funders supporting community-led emergency response work share their deliberations over what a sustained response to Covid-19 might look like. Read the briefing paper here.
The group includes independent funders, local authorities, NHS commissioners and infrastructure organisations.
Initially, Cumbria Community Foundation drew on learning from grant-making in previous emergencies such as the 2001 Foot and Mouth outbreak and flooding between 2005 and 2015. It launched the Cumbria Covid-19 Response Fund at the end of March 2020. Several of the independent funders in Cumbria donated to the fund and joined the grants panel. This multi-agency approach was able to act quickly and flexibly to distribute funds to third sector groups – emergency response funding, agreeing to changes in what existing funding is used for, and assessing applications regularly: ‘Looking at applications on a weekly basis has definitely been a high for me, in terms of the capacity and pace in which we have responded in Cumbria. It has been a really definitive response to need’.
As a group of funders, we were keen to look at the emerging community needs regarding covid-19 and to consider this collectively. Now our attention is starting to turn to longer-term collaboration given the ongoing and uncertain nature of this pandemic. The Institute for Voluntary Action Research (IVAR) facilitated a conversation to support our thinking about whether and how we could continue working together.
Challenges
The situation remains fluid, but there are three concerns already on our minds:
- Funding: Some funders ‘have to raise our own money in order to give it away’, others are dependent on dividends that companies have suspended giving out: ‘We don’t know yet when we can look at grant-making and our situation in the long-term’. And for statutory funders in particular, internal processes are a barrier: ‘We are constrained by our funding guidelines and we try to support our third sector providers as much as we can … Even if our guidelines change, we will probably not be able to be anywhere near as flexible as other funders can be’.
- Organisations surviving: Some organisations doing good work will be unable to sustain themselves ‘because of a combination of possible long-term reductions in funding and fundraising activity’. This is exacerbated by lack of capacity in the third sector to think about and plan for the future, with most people either busy in emergency response work or furloughed. So, we’re not sure whether now is the time to introduce new funding pots: ‘Seen from previous emergencies, most groups would be too immersed to step out and write a proposal at this time’.
- Speed vs strategy: We have been busy with emergency responses, and worry that ‘we haven’t had a chance to stop and pause and look at the breadth of grant-making are we doing. Are we missing out some of our rural communities and underrepresented groups?’. There may also be a missed focus on sectors beyond healthcare and emergency, like the arts and climate change: ‘Once the dust settles, we will need to re-look at priorities’.
Shared vision with a collaborative approach
We want to work through these challenges together, to collectively support the third sector in Cumbria now and for the future – and to work with people who have ‘lived experience’ to develop a long-term vision for recovery: ‘This helps ensure panels are listening to communities and are able to then fund the actual need’.
We expect different priorities to emerge – financial hardship, children and young people, vulnerable groups, mental health issues: ‘Sharing our thinking around these priorities will be important, so we can spread out and fund different initiatives’.
Next steps
We believe it is ‘important not to lose the momentum and adrenaline with which we have all been working, and as we move away from lockdown to whatever the new normal looks like, we need to be practical about the collaborations built and continue to share information and work together with the same energy and vigour’. We have explored partnerships between funders who would not normally work together, and there is a need to preserve this for the long term. There is a definite appetite for working collaboratively in future. At the same time, we need to build the case for this collaboration through both hard data and softer, anecdotal data and stories. Through the Cumbria Funders group we will explore ways for future collaborative working.
This blog is based on a peer support session facilitated by IVAR with 16 Cumbria-based funders, infrastructure organisations and statutory partners, namely: ACTion with Communities in Cumbria; Barrow Borough Council; Copeland Community Fund; Cumbria Community Foundation; Cumbria County Council; Cumbria CVS/Cumbria Community Resilience Group, Cumbria Exchange; Francis C Scott Charitable Trust; Frieda Scott Charitable Trust; Hadfield Trust; Lake District Foundation; Lloyds Bank Foundation; Morecambe Bay CCG; North Cumbria CCG; Sellafield Ltd; and Sir John Fisher Foundation