By and large, partnerships can be divided into two categories: the vertical partnerships, the relationships with funding sources; and the horizontal partnerships, which refer to the work done with other agencies active in the area.
Funding a project like the CHAT Shop is a complex challenge, particularly since the considerable expansion of the enterprise earlier this year. The constituent churches do not have the wherewithal to fund the work and so we have to seek support from the various sources of cash around and about. The process of application can have a significant impact on the nature of our development.
Broadly speaking, grant making institutions fall into two categories.
First, there are those trusts that provide funding for good causes. Once upon a time, applying was fairly simple and money was easily forthcoming. Over the past few years most of these have tightened up significantly on their procedures for distributing their largesse.
Whilst, in the short term, it is quite an attractive prospect to need only to commit one's pleading to paper and receive a cheque by return of post. However, looked at in the round, this is not really a good way of doing things. This insouciant method resulted in large sums of money being wasted on projects that were either pointless or patently non-viable from the outset.
Increasingly, these charitable organisations set parameters to the field of work that they will support. Typically, few will provide funds for specifically religious projects. This can be an issue for the CHAT Shop on account of our constitution; and we have to be careful that we do not cross the boundary into the promotion of the Christian allegiance in our activities. This can lead to a differentiation between the various aspects of our work, ensuring that funding streams and the work for which they are awarded are kept separate.
Nowadays, most charitable organisations take a close interest in the organisations, which they support, both during the process of application and also during the period for which a grant has been made. This enhanced accountability on the part of an enterprise sharpens our own procedures and picks up on shortcomings in our methods. We also find that we have to be able to present a clear description not only of our broader purposes, but also of the detailed work.
Therefore, we find that as well as the financial help, our sponsoring organisations help us to sharpen our self-understanding and refine our procedures to ensure that we make the most of the resources that we have.
At the other end of the scale, there are large sums of money available from local government, national government agencies and departments as well as supra-national sources, usually in the UK, the UN and the EU.
Whilst charitable organisations are just that - individuals and corporations seeking to share their wealth with the more disadvantaged - these statutory bodies are in a rather different business.
Public money is not usually extra cash: it has been top-sliced or otherwise clawed back from other expenditure so that it can be targeted at initiatives to further political programmes; what we might call social engineering.
The various bodies are allocated targets in terms of specific and quantifiable outputs, which the money they disburse is expected to purchase. In accepting funds from them a project effectively becomes a sub-contractor to achieve a proportion of those targets.
Some projects are set up specifically to address the programme of the agency. However, others, like the CHAT Shop, have an established identity that does not match exactly the terms of reference of the grant administering body.
Assuming that one has set one's mind on applying for a grant from such a source, a project has two options.
The first is effectively to lie on the application form, knowing full well that the undertakings are unrealistic. Setting aside the question of the morality of such a move, it is a foolish choice. Monitoring is intense and funds usually come on stream drip by drip and retrospectively.
The second alternative is to reconfigure one's enterprise, or that part of it for which financial support is sought, to include the aspirations intrinsic to the grant. Whilst this can seem a daunting task at the beginning, in retrospect it often proves to be an enriching experience as one contemplates new horizons and possibilities.
The advantages of working with public funding are: first, the large sums of money available; secondly, the vast networks of support that are available with organisations pursuing a similar agenda; and thirdly, the resources provided by the agency itself.
This, however, brings us to the challenges. Prime amongst them is the almost intrusive activity of the staff of the agency. Your independence is somewhat compromised not only by having to conform to ethos of the grant-making body, but also to accepting that they will effectively become part of your organisation.
Secondly and connected with this, one needs considerable steel in the spine to cling onto the original purpose and identity of the organisation: it would be so easy to be swallowed up and become little more than an arm of the agency.
Thirdly, there is the huge burden of administration. A grant application to the EU or New Deal for Communities routinely runs into sixty or seventy pages plus appendices and supporting documentation and these can run through several drafts before submission. For a small organisation, such as ours was (!), this is a demanding exercise, putting huge strains on a tiny staff and a few volunteers.
Fourthly, and this is an ever present pressure, there is the politics of the whole thing. These agencies are subject to considerable political influence from a variety of directions. Not only are central and local government constantly chewing at their ears, but also often their remit includes a strong element of local accountability, which can make the whole business very volatile. Moving into the area of public funding requires you to engage with all this.
Before embarking upon an application to a government agency, you need to be fairly confident that you have the wherewithal, not only to go the distance with the application, but can continue to sustain the heavy demands that will be placed upon you throughout the period for which the grant applies.
An organisation like the CHAT Shop has no option other than to seek financial support from others, having little financial resource of its own. However, this is not necessarily a disadvantage. The constant process of accountability and evaluation prevents us from becoming complacent or isolated from the reality of the community we seek to serve.
The acceptance of funds is not a one-way traffic of largesse. All the organisations that award funds have the cash, but not the opportunity to address on the ground the disadvantage they seek to mitigate. As it were, they buy into work. The CHAT Shop provides them with an established organisation at the heart of the sort of community they wish to support. Viewed in this way, it is correct to understand the relationship between them and us as a partnership.
The CHAT Shop has always considered it important that we should, so far as possible, work with other community groups and agencies. Our network of contacts is extensive and we are always keen to develop our partnerships.
The Newcastle Plan distinguishes between four distinct groupings with which agencies may enter into partnerships:
Communities of identity (eg one parent families, gay and lesbian organisations, ethnic communities &c)
Communities of interest (eg parents of children who attend a particular school, devotees of a particular sport &c)
Communities of a locality
Excluded communities (eg those with learning disabilities)
These groupings are, of course, not mutually exclusive and people might fit into a number of categories. The CHAT Shop would see itself primarily as working with a community of locality as well as some excluded communities.
Working with grassroots community groups opens up opportunities for providing hands on support for people. These grassroots community groups also know their constituencies well and are able to identify their strengths as well as their needs. They can also give good accounts of other work in the area. However, one needs a little discernment when accessing the community groups, since members are not always representative of the community as a whole.
Meeting shared objectives in partnership with other groups and agencies can greatly increase the effectiveness of the project, broadening the client base, whilst restricting costs and overheads. In such enterprises, sentimentality must be avoided. The projects are usually short term in nature, addressing a specific need at a particular time. Their success relies on regular monitoring and evaluation to ensure that they are continuing to be valuable and viable. We should always remember that resources assigned to one enterprise are being denied to another and all groups must be vigilant to ensure that they are directing their efforts at the best activities.
One of the most noticeable benefits of partnership is the exchange and dissemination of information. Strong and healthy contacts can ensure a rapid and broadly based distribution of news. However, in the midst of the business of sharing information, we have to be careful not to breach codes of confidentiality and also to avoid the tendency to become talking shops that are a poor substitute for actually getting things done. Communication is a skilled activity, which is refined by learning the lessons of success and error through the passage of time. Organisations also need a certain amount of self-discipline to ensure that competition and one-upmanship is kept at bay.
When partnerships are working well, they are focused on the real needs of the client base and not the whims of the agency or the obsessions of particular individuals. This is underpinned by regular evaluation of all aspects of the work and those who do execute it.
Partnerships can quickly become dysfunctional if there is a feel of inequality between the participating agencies or people; those with the cash, premises or skills need always to be careful not to use their resources as a means of domination.
It follows inexorably from this that honesty both in terms of initial assessments and continuing reflexion is essential if projects are not to pass through decadence into irrelevance. We need to be clear from the start what is expected from every partner in an enterprise. We must also ensure that the partnership is genuinely dynamic and not just a means by which one or more groups can tick boxes on their grant applications or performance reviews.
A spirit of compromise must pervade most partnerships, since different groups will have their own individual agendas, which cannot all be fulfilled in their entirety by one joint project. As with vertical partnerships, of course, the business of negotiation can be have a very healthy impact on clarifying and refining our own self-understanding and development. Equally, the success of a venture will require a high level of trust between the partners.
This is all achieved by ensuring that communications are good between all concerned groups. This can be frustrating when it protracts processes and costs money; but without it partnerships can be severely weakened.
The CHAT Shop does not seek partnerships to save us time or money, because they do not. Rather, we believe that the enhancement they bring to our work justifies the additional demands that they make on us.
Home page: http://stmatthewsnewcastle.org.uk/