What is this survey about?

Background:
Tower Hamlets Council is currently co-producing their new grants policy.  When implemented, the new policy will apply to most council grant funding for voluntary organisation in the borough.  Although there will be some limits, the questions about what should be funded, who should be funded, what size the grants should be and how long they should last are all still up for discussion.

THCVS is assisting the council with the co-production process by asking as many people as possible who might be affected by, or who might want to apply for council funded grants to get involved. Since October 2017, we have facilitated 3 workshops to gather ideas. 79 people from 65 different voluntary and community organisations attended, and we have used their feedback to form some of the questions here.

Through this survey we hope to get a wider reach into the community.  We want to see if you agree with the findings so far and check if there is anything that needs to be added.

This survey should take around 10-15 minutes to complete; it consists of some tick box elements and some comments boxes.

We want everyone who might be affected (professionals, volunteers, community members) to respond. Please forward this survey on to others by sending them this link: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/MWCLNL7

Strategic Context:
Tower Hamlets’ Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) Strategy commits the Council to commissioning services, rather than offering grants in most cases. Commissioned services traditionally have outcomes and outputs defined by the Council, whereas with grants there is traditionally more flexibility for organisations to design their own service to meet a set need, or needs, in the community.

This new grants policy will affect the council’s future grants programmes.  It will not affect the Mainstream Grant, which is coming to an end in April 2019.  A programme of co-production to help agree what activities should be commissioned after the end of the MSG will be starting soon.

For more information and context about this survey and council grants, please see the Tower Hamlets Council for Voluntary Service's (THCVS) website, here.

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