VCS Strategy Refresh and Grants Programme Redesign

Overview

VCS Strategy

We’re refreshing our Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) Strategy 2019 - 2022. The current strategy is high-level and long-term. It visualises the sector’s future and explores what we need to continue to thrive. This means much of what we found through engagement is still relevant today. However, some things have changed. This refresh provides an opportunity to reflect on what has changed and what we need to include in the strategy.

Key themes that had emerged from the engagement with the sector and which have defined the structure of the strategy include:

• Culture, attitudes and behaviour
• Investment and commissioning
• Property
• Volunteering and social action
• Infrastructure and capacity building

We would like to understand if the challenges and issues we have identified resonate with the sector and residents, and whether we have identified the right conditions, approach and ways of working to address these and any gaps. This information will be used to inform the refresh of the VCS Strategy which will then in turn help to inform the design of a new grants programme for 2025/26 onwards.

2024 to 2025 grants programme

The grants programme is one of the ways in which we aim to work in collaboration with the voluntary and community sector to meet our objectives of Working Together for a Better Hackney. To do this, the programme focuses on supporting projects that deliver against the following priorities from Hackney’s Strategic Plan, and expects any grants within the programme to contribute to one or both of the following:

• Promoting prosperity and wellbeing with targeted, positive action when needed
• Building strong, cohesive communities that are part of the solution

The current context

Like the Council, local organisations are facing significant challenges. The Council has endured 14 years of reduced grant from central government alongside growing demand and increasing complexity. We are therefore having to find £67m in savings over the next three years. This will include significant savings of £820,000 from the Council’s grant programme.

This is extremely challenging when we know that the context for Hackney is that inequality is increasing. In response, we have developed and agreed a refreshed Equality Plan. This will help us to ensure that as we reduce budgets and with no new funding, we centre equalities in how we evolve, adapt and innovate to respond to the challenges we face in meeting the needs of our communities. 

What feedback can we take onboard?

We have begun work on what we should include in the refreshed VCS Strategy. However, we would like to seek your views on themes in the refreshed VCS strategy in the wider context of budget cuts and the Equalities Plan.

We have run online sessions on the areas above and the recordings and presentations can be found here.

At this stage, we can take on board feedback to shape the direction of the refreshed VCS Strategy. We would be interested to receive feedback, suggestions and comments on:

• Whether the issues and challenges identified in the last strategy remain the same
• If there are any gaps
• Whether the principles and objectives identified are the right ones

What happens with your feedback?

Your feedback will be used to draft the refreshed VCS Strategy. It will be collated into a report which will be published, explaining how feedback has been considered. The refreshed VCS Strategy will then in turn inform the design of a new grants programme for 2025/26 onwards.