A new communities fund, designed by Glasgow City Council in partnership with the city’s third sector moved a step closer to operation today (29 August 2019). The Council’s City Administration Committee agreed a report outlining the fund’s aims, three year budget and a new approach to allocating grant funding at a city and local level.
The Council is working with Glasgow Third Sector Interface Network (GTSIN) and other partners, to focus the fund on responding to the impact of poverty, deprivation and inequalities across the city and to ensure that it supports communities in co-designing, developing and delivering sustainable services.
The fund design also implements the requirements of the Scottish Parliament’s Community Empowerment Act (2015) to help empower citizens; making them feel more confident about participating in the social, economic and cultural life of the city, and helping them to influence development, planning and decision-making around the services that affect their daily lives.
The introduction of the fund demonstrates a commitment in the Council’s Strategic Plan to look at how the Council can better support and work with the third sector and community groups.
Open to all third sector organisations in the city, the new fund is designed on key principles of early intervention and prevention, equalities, innovation and a focus on outcomes and the impact it makes.
It will be flexible enough to respond to emerging issues such as the successful Holiday Activity Programme that engages third sector bodies in providing healthy food and activities for thousands of the city’s school children, during holiday periods.
Earlier this year, stakeholder engagement events were held with third sector organisations, including those who don’t currently receive money from the council’s existing grant fund. These were held jointly with GTSIN and helped shape how the new fund will operate.
The grant application process will be launched in the autumn when guidance and closing date information will be made available to all third sector and community organisations.
Councillor Jennifer Layden, City Convener for Community Empowerment, Equalities and Human Rights said:
“For years Glasgow has needed an equitable, accountable and transparent funding programme, which works better for the third sector, providing multi-year funding and focuses on outcomes. I am pleased that we have reached agreement on a new fund that will deliver this.
“With 90% of the third sector shut out of current funding arrangements, these clearly don’t work for the city as a whole, and too many organisations who could deliver great work for their communities are shut out of the funding process.
“The new fund has been developed working closely with Glasgow’s Third Sector and we will continue to work closely with GTSIN and the wider sector as we roll it out between now and April next year.”
