Big Lottery Fund and NCVO have launched a programme to support infrastructure bodies which will encourage organisations to rate and review the support they receive, Tripadvisor-style.

The three-year, £6m BIG Assist programme aims to touch 1,050 infrastructure organisations by providing direct, peer-to-peer and digital support to enable them to adapt to changing circumstances.

Infrastructure bodies (local or specialist voluntary sector and social enterprise support organisations) can apply to receive BIG Assist vouchers, ranging in value from £2,000 to £7,000, which they can take to an online marketplace and use with listed suppliers – who may come either from civil society or the private sector. It’s estimated that up to 1,400 organisations will be eligible from when it goes live, on 5 November.  

Launching the new programme at the NCVO offices in North London yesterday, chief executive Sir Stuart Etherington said that BIG Assist addresses the lack of evidence around the impact of infrastructure support for the sector. “It will begin to provide an evaluative framework which is long overdue,” he said. “We’ve got to evidence infrastructure support more than we have in the past.

“This is an experimental programme, so we will learn as we go along.”

Etherington said that the programme was not merely addressing the public funding cuts hitting infrastructure bodies, but also the changing environment which includes the rise of technology and the changing mix of providers.

In addition to being able to spend vouchers in the BIG Assist online marketplace, and review the providers, organisations will also be able to spend their money with providers through that same marketplace. Providers with low ratings will be removed from the site.

BIG England director Dharmendra Kanani congratulated NCVO for winning the right to develop and deliver BIG Assist after what he described as a “fairly tough, rigorous, competition to win this contract”.

He said that the new fund would mean “placing the purchasing power in the hands of those lower down the funding food chain”, rather than BIG or NCVO dictating from on high about what infrastructure organisations need. 

Leesa Herbert, who is leading the BIG Assist from within NCVO, emphasised that the fund will be restricted to infrastructure organisations, and a priority given to organisations which have other resources coming in, but not necessarily already receiving money from BIG's Transforming Local Infrastructure fund.