At the end of its three year programme, the Finance Hub can point to a “substantial body of high quality information which has benefit to the VCS at every level”, according to, Anderson & Gollan, the evaluators of the Finance Hub Programme.

Over the last three years the Finance Hub has identified areas of finance and funding in the Third Sector which have needed further research. It highlights a mixed picture of financial capacity within the sector and identifies barriers to further development caused by factors outside of the sector itself.

As well as research projects, the wide ranging programme of work has involved the development of training courses, tools for use by advisors on finance and funding, recommendations on policy development, briefings and case studies, all of which is freely available on the Finance Hub website.

The Programme covered key areas and recommendations including:

• “Establishing a Funding Advice National Network (FANN)” confirmed that a FANN should be set up. A business plan which develops the model further should ensure that the national network builds upon and works closely with the existing funding advice agencies already operating at regional and local level throughout England
• “Strengthening the Community Accountancy National Network (CANN)” recommended providing funding for a national office for CANN to promote community accountancy to national, regional and local government.
• “Successful procurement and negotiation in the third sector” highlighted the need for breaking down the current barriers between commissioners and third sector employees as being crucial for the success of procurement and commissioning in the future.
• “Get ready for that local authority contract” recommended setting up a two year longitudinal study into a sample of organisations following the benchmarks to test their effectiveness. The project also recommended setting up national support to help organisations put benchmarks into practice
• “The decline of local authority grants – fact or fiction?” recommended that National Policy Makers should outline stronger monitoring requirements from Local Authorities. This would identify and generate evidence of how different funding agreements impact on third sector organisations’ abilities and capacity to deliver public services, plan for sustainability, scale-up operations and improve their developmental prospects.
• “Intelligent funding – from vision to reality” recommended when adopting capacity building approaches to engagement with the third sector (RDAs and PCTs, for example), these should be backed up with sufficient resources and/or operating budgets that enable innovative work and support to be commissioned.

Russell Prior Chair of the Finance Hub commented “The tools and research will be of great use for people providing advise and support for VCOs, small charities and social enterprises. This work should also help these organisations to improve their income streams and understand how to make their money go further”

“The independent evaluation by Anderson & Gollan Associates on the work and achievements of the Finance Hub between 2005 and 2008, also published today, has concluded that the organisation has ‘achieved the objectives set for them’ by ChangeUp, ‘and significantly improved the range of funding and finance resources available throughout England.’”

All of the findings, recommendations and key learning from projects are available at www.financehub.org.uk together with specialised resources that will help to guide organisations through the maze of options to getting and managing funding.

For further details contact:

Macro Kuntze
Finance Hub
Tel: 020 7832 3008
Email: mkuntze@financehub.org.uk

CAF Press Office
Mandy Pursey
Tel: 020 7832 3012
Email: mpursey@cafonline.org