PCD 1487 Innovation Fund

Executive summary

This Decision requests the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime approves a funding award of £1,500,000 to Rocketscience to additionally fund, grant manage and provide capacity building support for up to 54 organisations within the new Innovation Fund, alongside their current grant management and capacity building offer within the Stronger Futures After School provision fund which was approved in PCD1147.

The VRU’s £1.5m Innovation Fund will enable community – led groups who are currently not accessing funding from the VRU, to test new approaches and ideas to support vulnerable Londoners who are at risk or have been involved in violence, applying for a grant up to £50,000.

As part of the Stronger Futures – After School provision fund, grassroots organisations benefit from capacity building support to develop their intervention to better support young Londoners as well as help organization strengthen their processes and governance. Within the Innovation Fund, recipients will also benefit from the same offer of grant management support and capacity building that’s being provided across the Stronger future programme, whilst creating a network of community leaders.

The variation to the Grant Management Contract will ensure there is continuity of grant management specialist and capacity building support for both Stronger Futures – After School provision recipients, as well as recipients of the Innovation Fund. Rocketscience will receive £110,000 over the two years in order to provide grant management specialist and capacity building training. The remaining £1,390,000 will be allocated across up to organisations on the programme to carry out delivery of their proposed intervention.

Recommendation

The Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime to:

1. To approve and extend the current contract awarded to Rocketscience by a further £110,000 over two year 2023-24 and 2024-25 for grant management and capacity building fee for this programme.
2. To approve allocation of £1,390,000 to Rocketscience to distribute across appointed organisations to carry out delivery of their proposed interventions over the two year 2023-24 and 2024-25 

PART I - NON-CONFIDENTIAL FACTS AND ADVICE TO THE DMPC

1. Introduction and background

1.1. The Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) recognises the value of the work of community-led organisations in supporting Londoners who are at risk of violence.  The Unit is already collaborating with a range of partners and funders to ensure that violence reduction and measures to build strong communities are at the very heart of decision making.

1.2. The VRU’s Stronger Futures programme is a £3.9 million pound investment over three years to deliver prevention and early intervention work with young people aged between 8-18 who may be at risk of violence, exploitation, or grooming.

1.3. 20 targeted projects are working with young people after school and at weekends, to improve educational outcomes and reduce school exclusions, as well as to improve employability prospects and mental health and wellbeing.  Rocketscience grant manage this portfolio alongside Action for Race equality who provide the capacity building support.

1.4. The programme offers a “funder plus” model to this programme in order to provide a blend of investment of finance for three years and capacity building support including direct consultancy support and access to a range of workshops and expertise to improve resilience, sustainability and through social media, raise awareness and showcase impact.

2. Innovation Fund

2.1. The VRU’s proposal for a two-year, £1.5m Innovation Fund will enable community-led groups who are currently not accessing funding from the Violence Reduction Unit (VRU), to test new approaches and ideas to support vulnerable Londoners who are either at risk or have been involved in violence. 

2.2. Grants of between £20,000 and £50,000 will be awarded, with an anticipated average size of c.£30,000.

2.3. The objectives of the fund are:

• To encourage innovation in the violence reduction space. We encourage creativity, experimentation and piloting new programmes that deal with emerging issues relating to violence. By supporting novel ideas, the VRU intends to identify promising practice that can be piloted and potentially scaled up.
• To empower communities by funding smaller, grassroots community groups, we support those who are closest to the issues with the resources they need to experiment and find new solutions that are appropriate to their own locality. 
• All projects should support the VRU’s core mission & sit within our outcomes framework. 
• By identifying outcomes from within our framework, we ensure that we are progressing towards our long-term impact aim of reducing violence, supporting YP to feel safer and ensuring sustainable partnership approaches to solutions. 

2.4. The expectation is to support up to 54 projects over the two-year period.

2.5. To ensure that the Innovation Programme has maximum impact, the fund will be a blend of finance and capacity building support with referral pathways into the VRU Stronger Futures Programme to benefit from online networking/ collaboration, capacity building and other tools.

3. Rocketscience

3.1. Rocket Science in partnership with the Action for Race Equality (ARE) combine their skills and experience of grant management and the capacity building of community-led organisations to meet the VRU’s requirements. 

3.2. Rocketscience with the innovation fund will: 

• Co-designing a prospectus and guidance materials which are accessible to community organisations, particularly small equity-led groups.
• Provide dedicated grantmaking and consultancy support to coach and mentor VRU colleagues in understanding grantmaking, requirements, solutions and best practice particularly post-Covid.
• Using a bespoke grant-management portal and an intuitive online form to process applications (we include telephone and online support to assist those needing additional help).
• Reviewing organisations for eligibility and against priority areas to support the VRU to assess a reduced number of applications.
• Allocating shortlisted applications to the VRU to score and assess using the Blackbaud system.
• Undertaking appropriate due-diligence checks on shortlisted applicants which are proportionate to the size of the grant awards.
• Designing proportionate monitoring processes to capture learning and outcomes.
• Contracting with the grantees and managing the disbursement of funds in accordance with pre-agreed milestones.
• Reporting to VRU on the performance and learning from the fund.
• Enabling the VRU to focus on decision making and building relationships with new projects across London.
• Maintaining an exemplary standard of customer service, but also including an effective complaints policy and procedure.

4. Issues for consideration

4.1. The VRU committed to the Mayor of London that we will respond to the asks the office receives from community groups who request access to opportunities to apply for short term, small funding, to lead and deliver interventions in their community that contribute to the reduction of violence.

4.2. The VRU is keen to ensure this fund is launched during summer 2023 and beyond to maximize the number of interventions taking place across the capital.

4.3 The funding award will ensure that the VRU community portfolio sits under one consistent framework and ensures our framework and community offer is consistent across the two portfolios.

 5.Financial Comments

5.1. This decision seeks approval to allocate a total of £1,500,000 to Rocketscience to extend the existing contract for financial year 2023-24 and 2024-25. The 2023-24 VRU budget for Innovation Fund is £1,500,000, a carry forward request will be made during 2023-24 to align the expenditure across the two financial years of the programme.

5.2. Rocketscience and Action for Race equality will receive £110,000 over the two years in order to provide grant management specialist and capacity building training. £1,390,000 will be allocated across up to 54 organisations on the programme to carry out delivery of their proposed intervention.

6. Legal comments

6.1. The Mayor's Office for Policing Crime is a contracting authority as defined in the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 ("the Regulations"). All awards of public contracts for goods and/or services valued at £181,302 or above will be procured in accordance with the Regulations.

6.2 Paragraph 4.13 of the MOPAC Scheme of Delegation and Consent provides that the Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime (DMPC) has delegated authority to approve all requests to go out to tender for contracts of £500,000 or above.

6.3 Officers can confirm that the DMPC has the legal authority to agree this decision in Accordance with the legal framework. 

7. Commercial Issues 

7.1. Regulation 72 of The Procurement Contract Regulations 2015 provides the conditions that must be met to modify a contract, based on the following justifications the variation to the Girls and Young Women's Programme meet all the requirements.

7.2. The original contract term was included in the ITT documentation. An option to extend was not included as the expectation was all the services would be delivered within the contract term and the overall nature of the contracts has not changed. The Supplier will be delivering similar services during the extension period and the modification does not alter the overall nature of the contract

7.3. Running a procurement exercise and appointing a new Grant Manager for the innovation fund will come at an additional cost.

7.4.The increase in price does not exceed 50 per cent of the value of the original contract which is demonstrated as follows:

7.5. The original contract value was £237,090.50; with the requested extension the total value is £347,090.50 which is 46% of the original contract.

8. Public Health Approach

8.1. This piece of work has been informed by discussions and feedback from the Violence Reduction Unit wider staff team.

9. GDPR and Data Privacy

9.1. MOPAC will adhere to the Data Protection Act (DPA) 2018 and ensure that any organisations who are commissioned to do work with or on behalf of MOPAC are fully compliant with the policy and understand their GDPR responsibilities.

10. Equality Comments

10.1. MOPAC is required to comply with the public sector equality duty set out in section 149(1) of the Equality Act 2010. This requires MOPAC to have due regard to the need to eliminate discrimination, advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations by reference to people with protected characteristics. The protected characteristics are: age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex and sexual orientation.