ADD2465 London Community Response: Coordination, Equity and Evaluation

The Team London programme helps deliver the Mayor’s priorities to work with communities and civil society groups across London to encourage active participation in community and civic life, supporting Londoners of all ages to volunteer and take action to improve London. Team London’s ultimate goals are to: Improve the volunteering experience in London; increase the value of volunteering and make volunteering open to all.

Covid19 has had a dramatic impact on communities and the civil society sector. We have seen an increase in demand for charity services from emergency food provision to befriending, domestic abuse services and advice. At the same time charities have lost revenue from the closure of premises, causing loss of both of earned income and postponement of fundraising activities. Pro Bono Economics predict this means UK charities face a £10.1bn funding gap over the next six months. Income is expected to drop by £6.7bn at the same time as a rise in demand for support by around £3.4bn.

As a response to this crisis London’s funders have been working together to provide coordinated funding to support groups responding to the needs of the capital's communities. Only a few days after Lockdown the London Community Response (LCR) was launched with a contribution of £5m from the Mayor of London and pooled and aligned funding from City Bridge Trust, Bloomberg and others. The funding was designed with a simple application process to enable a fast turnaround to meet the needs of community level organisations quickly. To date over £22m in funding has been distributed through a collaboration of over sixty funders, and now also includes aligned funding from the National Lottery Community Fund.

The LCR has had a strong equity focus, recognising the disproportionate impact of Covid on Londoners with protected characteristics. Analysis of the grants made to date shows that 43.8% went to Black and Minority Ethnic-led organisations, 8% went to Deaf and Disabled-led organisations, 5.8% went to LGBT-led organisations and 58.8% went to Women-led organisations. This was achieved through funding the valuable expertise, reach and proactive support of equality-led infrastructure groups who are working alongside the funding partnership.

Funding of £75,000 has been awarded to Ubele, Council of Somali Organisations, London Gypsy and Travellers, Inclusion London, Women’s Resource Centre and Consortium to ensure BAME, Deaf and Disabled, Women’s and LGBTQ+ led organisations are reached and supported by the London Community Response. This complements the current Civil Society Roots programme that the GLA is running with equalities infrastructure groups.

The LCR has been an important demonstration of what can be achieved through strategic and collaborative funding. The work has bolstered the Team London and GLA aims of supporting a thriving civil society.

The funding of up to £50,000 will support London Funders to Coordinate ongoing activity of the LCR as we move into wave four of funding. It will contribute to continued work with equalities groups and bring a contribution to match other funder partners, to create a London Funders shared learning budget to enable the commissioning of external independent evaluation.

This funding will support the work of London Funders in coordinating the London Community Response. There are three elements to the funding:

Supporting the Coordination of London Community response (£30,000)

This funding will support the costs of the coordination and management of the ongoing London Community response. The core objectives of this work are to:

• leverage funding to the London Community response
• work with funders and partners to develop shared outcomes for funding and streamlined applications processes
• coordinate work with funders and partners to share sifting and assessment of applications
• maintain communications with funders and the wider sector about LCR

The funding will support:

• £20,919 staffing costs to manage the grants process and handle enquiries from applicants.
• £9,081 digital solutions –for the development of, and ongoing support for, the web platform and back-end systems that enable the single application form and for funders to make collective decisions on grants

Contributing to funding for equity groups (£10,000)

This expenditure will act as conduit funding to the equity partners (Ubele, Council of Somali Organisations, London Gypsy and Travellers, Inclusion London, Women’s Resource Centre, Consortium and Migrants Organise) to contribute to the London Communities Strategy group and other transition working groups to inform public bodies in their work on transition and recovery.

Contributing to a shared learning budget (£10,000)

This funding will be pooled with that of other funders to contribute to commissioning an external independent evaluation of the London Community Response and identify areas of learning for future collaboration. The total learning partner cost is likely to be in the region of £80k Team London’s contribution will be alongside CBT, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, the Southwark funder group, London Community Foundation and others. The work will start by the end of September, initial findings in October, and final reports by March 2021.

The public-sector equality duty requires the identification and evaluation of the likely potential impacts, both Under Section 149 of the Equality Act 2010 (the “Equality Act”) as public authorities, the Mayor and the GLA must have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation, and to advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristics and those who do not. Protected characteristics under the Equality Act comprise age, disability, gender re-assignment, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, sexual orientation, and marriage or civil partnership status.

As noted in section 1 above, the LCR has had a strong equity focus with inclusion and equalities highlighted as a key principle of the first three waves of funding. The high levels of funding achieved to equalities groups was enabled through close work with equalities infrastructure.

A portion of the funding from Team London will be for London Funders to continue their support of equalities infrastructure so that the LCR can continue to meet the needs of grassroots equalities groups in future rounds.

Equal Opportunities are enshrined within Team London’s programmes. Team London volunteering programmes and projects aim to ensure that all Londoners can access volunteering opportunities. They seek to eliminate discrimination, harassment and victimisation, and indeed by doing so support other Londoners equally throughout the city. We will work with London Funders to ensure these principles are enshrined in funding programmes.

Our projects promote: equal life chances; the reduction of barriers to social mobility; and seek to enable and demonstrate improvements in social integration and effective community engagement. This programme will involve working with potentially under-represented groups to help improve equality of access to funding.

The established Advisory Board for Team London ensures we have the voice of all relevant parties shaping the future of the programme to ensure it is relevant, efficient and delivering the best volunteering related outcomes for Londoners.

Our work also embraces London’s diversity by connecting Londoners from a variety of demographical and geographical backgrounds, including those with protected characteristics together in support of commons causes.

Risks

Links to Mayoral strategies and priorities

Team London’s work on supporting civil society engages with communities and civil society groups across London to encourage active participation in community and civic life for all Londoners. This links to Mayoral priorities on social integration, social mobility and community engagement. We will be working closely with the Communities team and other relevant teams across the GLA to share findings emerging from the evaluation of the grants. The work links heavily with recovery priorities around equity and inclusion, and supporting those Londoners who have been disproportionately affected by Covid.

Impact Assessments and consultations

We consult relevant groups and stakeholders when undertaking any new programmes. We held an event with 50 Stakeholders in February 2020 to identify where Team London could best support a strong volunteering landscape in London. Since the beginning of April 2020 the Civil Society Team have been running a weekly survey with the sector (London Community Response Survey) [1]to ascertain changing needs and this has informed the direction of the collaborative emergency funding.

There is an established Advisory Board for Team London to ensure we have the voice of all relevant parties shaping the future of the programme to ensure it is relevant, efficient and delivering the best volunteering related outcomes for Londoners.

Due consideration has been given to any conflict of interest (both existing and that may arise) and none have been found to exist.

Approval is being sought for expenditure of £50,000 to fund the coordination and management of the London Community Response, contribution to London Funders work with equity groups and contribution to a shared learning budget.

This expenditure will be funded from the 2020-21 ESV (£10,000), and Reward and Recognition (£40,000) 2020/21 programme budgets within the Team London and Community Sports Unit.