VONNE

During the last decade a significant shift in voluntary and community sector (VCS) funding has taken place. In a sector with a strong history of grant funding, changes to the national, regional and local resourcing of charities have occurred which have encouraged voluntary and community groups to diversify their income. This has led to a greater number of voluntary groups earning a greater proportion of their income from contracting with the public and other sectors to deliver public services. The 2009 NCVO Almanac and other sources show that:

• Earned income now makes up over half of charities' income, equating to £17 billion.
• Nationally a third of public spending goes on purchasing goods and services.
• Regional public spend equals local benefit. In North East it is estimated that if an extra 1% of public procurement spend was won by regional suppliers this would result in around 5,000 extra jobs.

Definitions

• Commissioning - the whole cycle of assessing the needs of people in an area, designing and then securing an appropriate service to provide for those needs)
• Procurement - the purchasing process within commissioning of buying services

VONNE's View

VONNE advocates that the VCS has a vital role to play in helping to design services that meet the needs of local people. The sector is also well placed to deliver many of these services. The VCS in the North East needs a healthy mix of funding from stable grant sources and competitively tendered contracts to play an effective role in the life of the North East.

VONNE has identified 3 categories of support needs for the voluntary and community sector in the region:

• that individual VCS organisations that wish to engage in the provision of public services are contract ready;
• where there is a general trend towards higher value contracts covering wider geographical areas, that VCS organisations have the means to collaborate to compete jointly for work;
• ensuring that commissioners and procurers in the public sector understand the value of the VCS as strategic partner, a delivery partner and as an independent champion of change.

Where to Start

If you're completely new to contracting as a means of funding the following tools are a good starting point. You can also contact your local Council for the Voluntary Service to find out more about hands on help in your area:

Northumberland's Voluntary and Community Sector Guide to Commissioning, Procurement, Tendering and Contracts (Northumberland VCS Consortium, May 2009) (1Mb)

Want to Find Out More?

VONNE's commissioning and procurement pages aim to provide an easy-to-navigate selection of some of the more useful resources on the web, as well as news and events information. They are also a gateway to other sites of interest or help. We always welcome comments on the information we provide to the sector and our partners so if you have any views email Rhiannon.Bearne@vonne.org.uk.

How We're Doing

VONNE has recently commissioned an evaluation of our Northern Rock Foundation-funded procurement and commissioning project which supports the work of the Procurement and Commissioning Manager. The evaluation has concluded that 'the project has begun the long process of generating change in the regional procurement and commissioning agenda.'

Key recommendations from the evaluation include:

• Clarity of purpose and communication are really important to the project’s impact and effectiveness and should be improvded in future work.
• Only a limited number of organisations are aware of the North East Commissioning Action Plan (NECAP) which restricts its impact and ability to create change.  Raising awareness of the NECAP should be a major priority for future work.
• The full added value and impact of the project will only be realised in the longer term.

The evaluation is available to download below:

VONNE Procurement Project Evaluation Report Final (New Skills Consulting, October 2009) (pdf 366Kb)