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Two partner bodies launched to aid collaboration on contracts

Finance | Jonathan Last | 13 Feb 2012

A start-up co-operative is using its share of the £30m Transforming Local Infrastructure Fund to develop its capacity to help civil society organisations adapt to the demands of contract bidding, and to collaborate with a new social business partner to this aim.

The Big Society Co-operative (BSC), which will officially launch in April, was awarded £600,000 by the Office for Civil Societies to help with its mission to "assist and promote civil society organisations and act as a conduit to share and promote best practice in innovative working between civil society, pubic and private sector organisations".

It plans to act as a national umbrella body for civil society support, giving access to a wide range of information, advice and support via a new ‘one stop shop’ web platform, which is already live.

Launching concurrently is the Big Society Partnership (BSP), a social business which aims to develop a new prime contractor model with a focus on ethical business and equitable relationships. It will work with the Big Society Co-operative to develop consortia from the civil society sector who wish to bid for public service contracts. The profit-making business will donate a percentage of its annual profits to the Co-operative.

"The rationale for establishing two bodies (one a non-profit co-operative and the other a profit-making social business) is to ensure that those parts of the civil society sector which are not likely to be involved in contracting or commissioning are still able to transform themselves to become less reliant on public funding and more sustainable through consortium or shared working, or by accessing lower cost back office support and services," the partnership advised.

BSC has negotiated with a range of professional firms to provide back-office services at a reduced rate for its members. These include legal services, PR, marketing, web design and accountancy.

The Co-operative is working with ten partner organisations* and 100 other organisations expressed an interest when the Co-operative was first mooted in summer last year. The election of its first full management committee is expected later this month.

Help winning bids

The partnership expects to help smaller charities have a greater chance in commissioning. Amanda Carpenter, co-founder of the Big Society Partnership, said:

“In the next three years the majority of social and health services will be put out to tender by local authorities, GP consortia and health authorities. As a result the hundreds of small and medium sized civil society organisations that currently provide frontline services on a grant-funded basis will have to bid competitively for funds to deliver services they are already expert in providing within communities across the UK.

“While some larger charities have resources and skills to tender and win contracts, very many are without the capacity and the capability to do this. To respond to this challenge, organisations (known as ‘prime contractors’) are forming consortia and working with them to develop their capacity to bid and deliver contracts.”

BSP has formed its first consortium – the Kent Children and Young Peoples Consortium – members are KCFN, Home Start, Action for Children, Kent Youth, Family Action, CXK (Connections) and Avante Partnership (Step Ahead Support). This consortium will be bidding for contracts in the coming months.

More than seventy partnerships of local support and development organisations across England received grants from the Transforming Local Infrastructure Fund at the start of February. The full list can be found here.

*Big Society Co-operative is working in partnership with ten other organisations: KCFN, CASE Kent, Canterbury & Herne Bay Volunteer Centre, Kent CAN, Romney Resource Centre, Thanet Community Development Trust, Kent Community Cohesion Council, Channel Chamber of Commerce, Kamsen and Kent Youth.

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