Communities and Culture Committee: Enquiry into funding of voluntary sector organisations - Response from Chwarae Teg - 28 November 2007

Introduction

Chwarae Teg (CT) promotes and develops the role of women in the Welsh economy. We do this by sensitising government strategy and policy to the barriers confronting women who wish to fully participate in the labour market and economic development programmes. The persistency of occupational segregation, the predominance of women in low paid jobs, the gender pay gap, the lack of women in senior and management level positions and the limited number of women in decision making roles presents a challenge to Welsh economic policy and practice.

Chwarae Teg also designs and manages discrete projects to support women to fully participate in the Welsh economy. The European Employment Strategy recognises that Member States cannot attain their jobs and growth targets unless every individual can contribute. This means tackling economic inactivity and the under employment of women, finding new ways of working and maintaining attachment to the labour market over the lifetime. Chwarae Teg’s expertise is employed by organisations adapting to these new ways of working in Wales.

Chwarae Teg is a not for profit organisation established in Wales in 1992. In addition to delivering Welsh Assembly Government contracts to large public sector and Small Medium Enterprises Chwarae Teg operates European funded projects, and receives core income, raised from membership contributions.

Purpose of Paper

Chwarae Teg welcomes the Communities and Culture Committee enquiry into the funding of the voluntary sector in Wales. Our response focuses upon the 3 questions supplied in the call for evidence. However, CT considers that the paper submitted to the enquiry by Wales Council for Voluntary Action (WCVA) comprehensively summarises the historical and current situation regarding voluntary sector funding in Wales (CC(3)03-07(p2): 10 October 2007).

It raises the pertinent issues to be addressed, which if addressed correctly should preserve the integrity and independence of the sector whilst providing much needed stability for growth and sustainability. In particular, CT supports the reiteration of the principles underpinning the Voluntary Sector Partnership Scheme, and the central theme of providing core long term (3 year) funding to small organisations so that they may grow and expand their income streams. That this scheme and its resulting Code of Practice for Funding the Voluntary Sector in Wales is not universally applied across devolved and local governance structures is a disappointing but redeemable situation.

Submission

ChwaraeTeg submits the following additional observations to the enquiry:

1. Ease or difficulty of obtaining funding

The public sector is increasingly reliant upon service delivery procured from the voluntary sector. The current relationship does not always allow voluntary sector contractors security for stability and growth. The voluntary sector can often be relied upon for innovation in policy and delivery but sufficient time and resource must be available to support this 'thinking’ or consultation work. The voluntary sector must not be thought of as a 'cheap option’ but as a valuable and cost effective resource. The relationship must be one of equals working together for the benefit of Wales’ citizens.

Given the centrality of Making the Connections (WAG 2005) and the Beecham Review (WAG 2006) of this strategy’s intent and routes to implementation, the role of the voluntary sector is likely to grow as a conduit to engagement. These organisations are often closest to the co-producers of future services. Considerable investment will be needed in the voluntary and community sector in order to build capacity to carry out such work. In this regard, and with wider application, project funding must ensure 'full cost recovery’ of operational cost and where appropriate include provision to allow 2/3% allocation to organisational reserves. This allows organisations to grow and develop in new directions and to avoid reliance on public sector funding.

Planning, timing and organisational reliance on clear communication from funding bodies has recently been highlighted as an issue through the delayed launch of the EU Convergence funding. Organisations which have been predominantly project based and reliant on the start of the next round of funding to continue their work, have faced difficulty balancing the continuation of resources such as staff, who are key to successful achievement of further project funding, and remaining as a going concern. It would be a fair response that organisations involved in European Funded projects should develop a more sustainable funding mix however the inability to gain 'full cost recovery’ places extra demands on limited resources and an organisation’s ability to diversify activities.

The lack of clear communication with the voluntary sector has created further difficulties in forward planning. The sector needs to be involved at the very heart of these decisions - however, effective engagement should not be seen as a cheap option and needs to be appropriately resourced.

2. Ease/difficulty with constraints/ conditions

Chwarae Teg welcomes the use of mutually agreed Service Level Agreements subject to 3 monthly reporting and monitoring. Criteria should be uniformly applied. Additional outcomes should be negotiated with attendant additional funding. However, monitoring thus far (particularly equalities monitoring) has been process driven and assessed by volume, and not necessarily outcome, of actions. The implementation/outcome gap is an issue across the public sector -clear evidenced based evaluation methods need to be devised and operated jointly by both the public and voluntary sector. The additional costs of effective monitoring should be factored into budgets.

Voluntary sector organisations whether involved in housing, addiction programmes, education, social care, economic development or citizen based community initiatives are all involved in promoting equality. Indeed, this is, or should be, their rational for existing - the voluntary sector deals with and tries to ameliorate the negative consequences of the way our society and economy are currently organised. Voluntary sector organisations are, or should be, enabling the Welsh Assembly Government to meet its duties under the unique duty to promote equality in Wales (s.77 Government of Wales Act 2006).

It is therefore necessary to ensure that the procurement and contract compliance policies central to the effective implementation of the duties to promote equality on race, gender and disability, are applied by the government to all contractors.

3. Duration/timing of funding issues

As noted in the WCVA paper, procurement is not always appropriate and should not be used to replace grant funding. For example, the Communities and Culture Committee could investigate and celebrate the considerable successes of some organisations funded by the 3 year, core funding, Promoting Equality Grant (now renamed Promoting Equality Fund).

Applying for project funding is resource intensive and often unattainable for small organisations who do not meet the required governance criteria. There should be continued support for the WCVA advice programmes that enable small organisations in this regard.

Additionally, it can be the case that when funding is awarded, timescales have been eroded and the same volume of work as was tendered for is required for less money. This is should not be the unintended outcome of Compulsory Competitive tendering.

4. Other Comments

Chwarae Teg particularly welcomes the inclusion of gender budgeting in the enquiry. We suggest that all funding allocations require evidence of differential benefits in both application and outcome (at minimum beneficiary assessments. For example, the Department for Enterprise, Innovation and Networks provided £19,611,622 funding to the voluntary sector in Wales in 2005/6 (WCVA paper to committee). It is not known how many women benefited or what qualitative difference to their lives they derived from this budget.