The voluntary and community sector is fundamental to Bristol’s wellbeing, health and economy. A strong community and voluntary sector ecosystem, which supports community action and collaboration is critical in supporting the council to meet its obligations and strategic objectives and realising the BCC Corporate Strategy and One City Plan.
The 2017 launch of the first Bristol Impact Fund signalled a new strategic approach to grant investment, with the city council pooling budgets to provide a four-year grant investment programme for VCSE organisations in Bristol.
The goal of the second round of Bristol Impact Fund (BIF2) was to grow the power of communities that experience the greatest inequity and responds to the recommendations in the VCSE report ‘Designing a New Social Reality’ (February 2021).
Our Theory of Change
Focusing on inequity (a lack of fairness) is about recognising the harm to citizens, communities and the city of social exclusion and injustice, disadvantage and discrimination. To address this we need to be intentional about removing barriers, changing the way things are done and empowering people and communities. This will increase social cohesion (and reduce isolation), enable people to take control over their own lives, and help communities to work together to support one another for the common good.
BIF2 has purposefully channelled funding to organisations that are ‘of their community’, including Black, Asian and Minoritised ethnic-led and Disabled people-led organisations and those based in the 20% most deprived neighbourhoods. This is important for our resilience as a city.
BIF2 encourages organisations to collaborate and build community by taking an asset-based approach, which means focusing on strengths, developing the skills and confidence of communities and encouraging them to take a lead.
There are many complex social and economic pressures including growing inequity, poverty, growing demand for adult social care and children’s services and the climate crisis. The council and wider public sector is having to make very difficult financial decisions at a time of rising demand. All of this is having the biggest impact on citizens and communities who are poor and experience the greatest inequity. Collaboration and mobilising all our city assets is vital if we are to find a way through these challenges.
To build resilience within this context, social capital and community wealth must be continually nurtured. BIF2 has shown us that it takes time to build a way of working which focuses on what is strong, is led by diverse communities and is fair.
The proposed approach to Bristol Impact Fund 3 takes this into account, with a continued commitment to the BIF2 ways of working and the overall goal of growing the power of communities who experience the greatest inequity.
Things we propose stay the same as BIF2:
- The goal “to grow the power of communities experiencing the greatest inequity”
- The 7 ways of working
- Small, medium and large grants
- Ringfenced hate crime funding
- Funding for monitoring, evaluation and learning
Things we propose to change and ask about in this consultation:
- Impacts
- Outcomes
- Priorities
- Increasing maximum grant size
- Longer time period for small grants
- Ringfenced hate crime funding – retaining this and increasing maximum grant size