Developing a thriving third sector
Case study: Capacitybuilders' Social Enterprise Programme evaluation
Rocket Science recently completed the final report of an evaluation of Capacitybuilders' Social Enterprise Programme. This fund set out to enable the social enterprise movement to be more organisationally effective, have more opportunities and to gain an effective voice at a policy level. It funded social enterprise support organisations such as those delivering peer-to-peer mentoring, networking and specialist advisors.
We felt that this programme was particularly important not because of its scale (only £6m) but because of its design. This led us to write a short discussion paper asking "is Capacitybuilders' Social Enterprise Programme ahead of its time?"
In our interim report (2010) we identified the way the programme had been organised and designed. We also found that 71% of frontline social enterprises need support to survive; 88% of frontline social enterprises need support to grow; and 79% of frontline social enterprises needed support to start-up.
Our final report (2011) found that the sub-national approach using outcomes-based funding was effective and had used resources intelligently to identify needs (gaps in local support provision) and to try to share knowledge. There are many lessons that are worth taking from this programme - especially as there is now so little new investment in social enterprise support - and our final national report indicates the opportunities for government/funders, for social enterprise support organisations and for frontline social enterprises.
Please click below to access the reports:
Social Enterprise Programme Evaluation Final Report - national
Social Enterprise Programme Evaluation Final Report - regional
Rocket Science have much experience around social enterprise business support, including work with Cabinet Office, Capacitybuilders, SEC, SEL, Communities Scotland and delivering some support ourselves.
Case study: Business Development Needs of Social Enterprises in Lowland Scotland
In the course of this research project commissioned by Communities Scotland, we worked closely with social enterprises to:
- Examine current business support available to social enterprise in terms of both geographical coverage and sectoral / thematic expertise, and identify gaps;
- Investigate the experiences (in terms of both level and quality) of social enterprises accessing business development support, and where it was perceived as strong or weak;
- Identify with social enterprises whether current business support actually met their present and future needs at the local level; and their business support needs that would enable them to develop and grow into healthy, sustainable organisations;
- Make recommendations on filling the gaps in the current support offering and develop a clear strategy for meeting these needs;
- Develop a draft tender specification for the provision of business development services which was subsequently competitively tendered.
We also work hard to support the charity, community and voluntary sectors. Below are some more examples of our expertise in the Third Sector:
Policy
We were commissioned by the National Audit Office to conduct a top line review including literature review and stakeholder interviews on activities and funding for the third sector across national government departments. The purpose of the research was to help the NAO gain a clearer understanding of policy and interventions in the sector to inform their research and development programme. It was completed within a very tight timescale with the core research being carried out in a four-week period.
Creating consortia
We were commissioned by the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (acevo) to undertake research on third sector partnerships for public service delivery. We initially focused research on three strands which are strategically important in helping the sector to thrive in the current policy climate and economic situation. These were: prime contractors (especially in the welfare to work arena); personalisation of services (especially in health and social care); and the recession (especially the impact of this on organisations merging or collaborating). As well as undertaking desk research on these areas, we interviewed key figures from the sector to produce a couple of commentary pieces on the first two research strands. We also undertook preparatory work to help Acevo produce podcast interviews for their Recession Support website. The next stage of our research involves creating action learning sets with third sector organisations and second tier support groups to further explore the issues around partnerships for public service delivery, prime contractors and personalisation.