Partnerships - Consortium Development
Jan 2007 – Birmingham wide

Barbara Follet MP& Trevor Phillips enjoying a kick about

Local leagues has always taken a beneficiary centric approach and over the years we identified partners who shared similar objectives and were engaged in complimentary activities. So rather than compete, we decided that by working together we could offer beneficiaries a comprehensive package utilising the strengths of individual organisations and make significant cost savings.

We stipulated that partners would work according to the policies and procedures of the lead organisation. This led to the realisation that many of our partners were at vastly different levels organisational maturity and required significant support from Local Leagues to prevent a slippage of overall standards. During this period changes in funders eligibility criteria and priorities, meant the sustainability of our partners was in doubt.

Local Leagues managed to secure funding from Enterprise and Communities, to address the twin needs of statutory compliance and sustainability for other similar and smaller sized organisation, within the Enterprise & Communities area.
With this funding Local Leagues acted as a facilitator and mentor in developing the capacity of the 8 Voluntary Community Organisation’s (VCO’s) to participate in events and exhibitions including coaching sessions in the community lead to more community engagement and more business for the 7 Voluntary Community Organisation’s – and Local Leagues.
The project took a segmented approach to business development in that the 7 VCO’s working with particular disadvantaged groups’ e.g.

• Community Life Network and Ashiana with BME women,
  
• MEAC with newcomers to the area mainly from East Africa and
  
• MCDT and SHCF with the under-achieving Kashmiri/ Pakistani community.

Local Leagues was able to share its business experience of community engagement through sport with the 7 Voluntary Community Organisation’s as well as acting as a facilitator for the group to share their knowledge, experience and contacts with ‘hard to reach’ groups.
In addition to the revenue program Local Leagues was also able to access capital funding from Enterprise and Communities to develop a pool of shared Information Technology and exhibition resources for the explicit purpose of allowing the organisations to better present themselves. In addition to sharing resources the partners also agreed to loan staff and jointly collaborate whenever a member was exhibiting.
This enhanced their business capacity and enable the social economy hub to operate more effectively as a unit and the Voluntary Community Organisation’s to grow their business within the social economy.