Supporting Communities Fund: evaluation

1. Introduction

1.1 Background

On 18 March 2020, in response to the emerging Covid-19 pandemic, the Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Local Government announced a £350 million package of Communities Funding support. This rapid response to the pandemic reflected Ministers' concerns around the seriousness of the situation, and their recognition of the need to support neighbourhoods and communities through the crisis.

The Supporting Communities Fund (SCF) was established with an initial £20 million investment to provide funding to community anchor organisations (CAOs), such as charities, voluntary controlled housing associations and social enterprises to help support local responses to the pandemic. Community anchor organisations were expected to work with public services, grassroots organisations and small community-based groups to disburse funds to where they were needed. The fund was designed to provide financial support in the short term, initially over a 4-6 month period, and closed in September 2020. In total, £17.056,890 to 373 organisations was approved for funding.

1.2 Terminology

Throughout this report, the terms intermediary funding partners (IFPs), community anchor organisations (CAOs) and funded organisations are used to refer to those involved in the delivery of the SCF (the structure of the SCF is discussed in more detail in section 1.3). Where intermediary funding partners are referenced, they are described as either "IFPs" or "partners", whereas community anchor organisations are described as "CAOs" or "organisations".^[1] Funded organisations are exclusively referred to as "funded organisations". A full list of acronyms is included in Appendix 1.

1.3 Overview of the Supporting Communities Fund

The SCF application process was set up in partnership between the Scottish Government and national third sector organisations, who are known throughout this report as intermediary funding partners (IFPs). The structure of the SCF was organised with the IFPs and CAOs as intermediary layers between the Scottish Government and people in communities (see Figure 1). Various IFPs (see Appendix 2) along with the Scottish Government made up the Supporting Communities Fund Partnership (SCFP). The partnership was responsible for identifying CAOs to fund, and for developing and overseeing the management of the fund, including budget spend and sign off of funding application approvals. The SCFP was also responsible for coordinating fund delivery capacity/resource across IFPs, and for supporting contributions to maximise the impact of the SCF alongside other funding streams and with other funding bodies/structures. The SCFP was also responsible for identifying and addressing gaps in delivery and worked closely with the Community Wellbeing Fund (CWF) coalition.

Figure 1: Supporting Communities Fund funding structure

• Scottish Government
• Intermediary funding partners (IFP)
• Community anchor organisations (CAO)
• Local funded organisations

The IFPs acted as lead funding partners on behalf of the Scottish Government to manage SCF applications. These were largely the same partners that comprised the SCFP and were responsible for supporting the development of successful bids; assessing bids and making approval recommendations; supporting /advising CAOs; acting as grantor to CAOs including holding administering, distributing funds; and gathering monitoring and reporting information on expenditure and outputs/outcomes. The IFPs liaised with the SCFP members and provided the partnership with progress updates, application approval reports and activity reports.

CAOs were responsible for the coordination and planning of local activity (in partnership with public services and other community organisations) and provided a local conduit for accessing the SCF. They provided local budget management to meet accounting and audit requirements and compiled project reports for their IFP (the grantor).

Following the announcement of the funds, rapid work was undertaken with stakeholders to develop an approach through which the SCF could be delivered. This was agreed by Ministers on 26 March 2021. Detailed work began to fully establish the funding delivery partnership, and then with the SCFP to co-produce the necessary processes for managing the fund, including the development of the fund's criteria, supporting documents and decision making structure.

By 29 March 2021, the SCFP had begun contacting potential applicants through the partners; reaching out to over 800 community organisations inviting expressions of interest; and developing those received into full applications. On 16 April the panel approved the first set of applications awarding over £2.7 million to 45 community anchor organisations.

1.3.1 Application process

The application process took place in two rounds between April and September 2020.

The SCF was open to organisations across all 32 local authorities and funding could be disbursed in one or two instalments. Funding was generally disbursed in one instalment if the funding requested was below £25,000. Where the funding requested was £25,000 or above, the activity was delivered over a longer period or the activity was in development, funding was disbursed in two instalments.

Phase 1

To meet the developing needs of communities in the face of the pandemic, the application process was designed to be rapid and flexible to allow organisations to respond effectively to local priorities. In the initial stage of the SCF application process, expression of interest forms (EOIs) were used by IFPs to invite local organisations to apply. In completing an EOI, CAOs were asked to confirm whether they were able to act in the role of a local coordinator for their community and whether they could support other organisations by distributing funding to them. Applicants were encouraged to provide information about any Covid-19 activity they were already delivering or to identify activity in the community which could benefit from SCF funding, giving an indication of the amount of funding needed. To reduce duplication and to target funding towards needs as effectively as possible, applicants were expected to demonstrate that they were engaged in local coordination with other organisations delivering similar or related projects in order to create a single request for support. During the specified funding period, applicants were unable to apply to another Covid-19 emergency fund for the same activity.

Completed EOIs were returned to the lead funding partner (LFP) (either the IFP or Scottish Government) who determined whether the eligibility criteria was met (see section 1.3.2). LFPs were provided with guidance to allow them to consistently assess the applications and determine if applicants met the criteria for support.

Phase 2

In phase 2 of the application process, LFPs were able to forego the expression of interest stage and invite applicants to apply directly. This direct invitation was based on collective work by the IFPs to 'map' the initial distribution of the fund, in terms of geographic coverage, to identify communities (of place) where there were potential gaps in support.

1.3.2 Funding criteria

CAOs were expected to work in partnership with grassroots and small community-based groups to disburse funds to where they were needed, and to provide a local point of contact. The application criteria for the SCF required applications to:

• Demonstrate that funding would be used for new or extended activity in the community that was being delivered solely in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and supported any members of the community experiencing challenges as a result of the pandemic (the fund did not target any particular group, although many individual projects chose to support those areas of the community where local need was greatest).
• Demonstrate that the new or extended activity started no earlier than 16 March 2020 and the project could be delivered over the short-term, initially over a 4-6 month period.
• Funding was flexible but CAOs were expected to propose a project to respond to what they considered to be local priorities - this could cover costs such as staff/volunteer costs, travel costs and other related and unforeseen expenditure. Organisations were also able to include costs associated with coordinating the activity and keeping staff / volunteers safe i.e. personal protective equipment (PPE).
• Propose a project costing between £3,000 and £100,000 (higher value applications over £100,000 were considered where they were supported by a strong case of need).

1.3.3 Activities for funding

As previously discussed (see section 1.3.2), CAOs could distribute funding for new or extended activity in the community that was being delivered solely in response to Covid-19 to support members of the community experiencing challenges as a result of the pandemic. This activity was considered as having started no earlier than 16 March 2020 i.e. the start of the first national lockdown.

Whilst SCF was flexible so that it could be used to respond to local priorities, funding could, for example, be used for the following:

• Providing and delivering food to those who could not buy it for themselves or were unable to access it due to self-isolation;
• Providing advice for people to access benefits and emergency funds for fuel, accommodation etc.;
• Connecting services and volunteers to where they were needed;
• Financial support for community organisations to increase or deliver new activity to meet demand e.g. fuel cards;
• Funding to support community organisations to deliver services in new ways in response to Covid-19 e.g. digital tools to enable people to remain connected;
• Funding to support and maintain organisational cashflow and staff/volunteer costs while dealing with the pandemic, e.g. due to loss of other income sources;
• Travel costs and equipment;
• Costs of supporting personal safety; and/or
• Costs for CAO for coordinating the activity.

1.4 Evaluation aims

This evaluation aims to examine where and how the Supporting Communities Fund funding was spent, what the outputs of the funding were and from the perspective of the CAOs and the IFPs, what were their experiences of the funding process. It also seeks to generate learning about the funding process that can be used to inform similar approaches to funding in the future, identify new and emerging priorities in our recovery from the pandemic and gain insight into CAOs' experiences of partnership working. To determine if those involved in the administration of the fund were able to apply any learning from their experience of the SCF to the subsequent Communities Recovery Fund (CRF), those involved in both funds were also asked to compare their experiences.

Due to the light touch approach taken, the nature of the interventions and the limitations of the environment groups were working in, the quality of the available data was in some cases limited (see section 1.6 for study limitations). Therefore, this report is not able to measure or comment on the fund's overall effectiveness in reducing the impact of the pandemic on local communities and beneficiaries as direct conclusions were not able to be drawn from the data available. Instead, it focuses on what the funding was used for, where it was distributed and highlights lessons from the funding process. Therefore, the main research aim was to generate learning about the funding process that can be used to inform approaches to funding in future.

1.5 Methodology

Analysis for this report was conducted by Scottish Government analysts, bringing together analysis from four main data sources: application and awards data for all SCF applicants; monitoring returns data submitted by CAOs; a follow-up survey carried out with CAOs; and an additional survey carried out with the IFPs. Several short case studies have also been included to illustrate a range of activities, recipients and outcomes.

Application and awards data from all 465 applications were used in the analysis.There were very few expressions of interest that were not progressed to the full application stage. Where applications were not progressed, this could be to prevent duplication (where similar activity was already being delivered in an area), because the size, scale or focus of the project did not match community needs, or because the organisation was asking for funding for activities that were not in direct response to the pandemic. The data on application and awards included organisational and location information, details of the proposed projects, target groups and intended outcomes. This data was collected by the CAOs and supplied to Scottish Government analysts by the IFPs. This data also forms the basis of the published mapping tool.^[2]

Monitoring returns data was collected by the IFPs, with all successful applicant organisations asked to complete an end of project monitoring form. Of the 373 grant awardees, 320 completed the monitoring form in time to be included in the analysis. The monitoring form asked for a brief report on the expected and actual activities, and evidence of expenditure. The monitoring forms included no further guidance on what details should be included and as a result there is a large variation in the quality of these reports, making comparison challenging and direct outcomes difficult to determine.

An online survey was designed to gather information from the monitoring forms in a standardised way. To limit the burden placed on the CAOs, Scottish Government analysts initially pre-populated the survey using information found within the application and monitoring forms. A follow-up survey was then designed around the topics where information was missing and the refined survey was then distributed to the CAOs for completion.

The follow-up survey included both closed and open-ended questions requesting information on:

• initial thoughts on the funding process
• reflections on the funding process now that the funding period has ended
• what worked well/ less well
• any reflections on their experiences of partnership working
• key learning from organisations' experience of the SCF process

A similar survey was designed and distributed to the IFPs involved in the funding process.

1.5.1 Quantitative Methods

Data was provided by CAOs and compiled by Scottish Government policy colleagues. This data was then reviewed and duplicate cases and those with missing data flagged and filtered prior to analysis. A flag was also added to mark those applications that were recorded as funding uplifts. Flags were created in either Excel or SPSS. Data on Local Authority (LA) area and EOIs were cleaned and standardised to remove misspellings and typos. Missing data for LAs was located and matched using available organisational information provided.

Each of the following categories were assigned by SG analysts to the planned activities laid out in the application and monitoring forms, and used to categorise data in the pre-populated survey. Due to variation in the ways activities were described and carried out, there was overlap between categories and they were not coded as mutually exclusive – therefore a degree of interpretation was involved in assigning coding activities. Below what each category encompasses is set out and explained:

Welfare advice: provision of welfare advice via various methods – helplines, online etc. with a particular focus on benefits advice to those who have lost jobs/income due to Covid-19. Also included in this category are instances where services regularly offered by Citizens Advice Scotland are supported.

Debt Advice: often provided in tandem with welfare advice via the same methods. Again services offered by Citizens Advice Scotland are supported.

Financial assistance (not fuel): the assessment of need and distribution of hardship grants and vouchers for various necessities to those who were in financial hardship and those who have fallen into financial hardship due to Covid-19. This included direct financial assistance for specific services or items such as transport costs, tablets, phones top-ups, food vouchers or other items but excluded support forfuel and utilities.

Food support and associated costs: the supply of hot meals to those who are:

• vulnerable;
• shielding;
• self-isolating.

Provision of foodbank or food parcel services to those in need, shopping and delivery services for self-isolating and shielding individuals and food growing initiatives where seeds/produce or similar are provided from local community gardens were also included in this category.

Basic provisions (not food): provision of toiletries, sanitary products etc. Either via food parcels or shopping delivery services.

Health and wellbeing support: includes a wide range of physical and mental health services such as the provision of helplines offering general health and wellbeing advice; specialised mental health advice or counselling helplines/online activities; and bicycle rental for key workers.

Utilities assistance (e.g. energy bills): includes the provision of vouchers/top-ups to cover fuel/phone costs or similar.

Medical prescription delivery: pickup and delivery of medical prescriptions.

Home and family support resources: includes a range of activities aimed at reducing social isolation, loneliness and boredom due to long periods spent at home such as activity packs and quizzes for children in lockdown, support with school work, rental or provision of puzzles/board games and memory packs for older residents containing CD's of old music and photographs.

Domestic abuse support: various services were provided including helplines providing support and advice and initiatives providing access to counselling.

Housing support: includes a range of activities related to housing including emergency repairs, provision of white goods, support accessing housing and paying for housing costs.

Social outreach (e.g. befriending calls): includes support with providing distanced activities and volunteers costs in coordination and carrying out regular befriending phone calls.

Support with social interaction and associated costs: includes the provision of phones, phone top-ups etc. to enable people to keep connected with services/family.

Signposting to other support services: includes activities where referrals were made to other services as well as advice lines, websites or community newsletters.

Community resilience: includes activities which provided support for community hubs or delivered support via community councils. Some projects also created welcoming safe spaces for distanced activities or coordinated rural transport for remote communities, as restrictions allowed.

Supporting self-help: includes support to those setting up support or self-help networks.

Digital access to services and associated costs: includes activities aimed at supporting or improving access to digital services or activities such as the provision or rental of laptops/tablets/broadband dongles to allow individuals/families to access online services or to contact relatives online via video call.

Online activities: includes activities focusing on the provision of online classes, social activities, counselling and wellbeing groups, and community websites and Facebook pages.

Operating costs: includes support for staffing costs, volunteer management, rent/utility costs for premises used in food prep and cost of fuel for local minibus/delivery van schemes.

It is important to note that in many cases activities were interlinked and targeted multiple areas of need. Therefore, in some cases certain planned activities could fall into a number of categories and they are not mutually exclusive. As previously mentioned, an element of subjective judgement has therefore been employed in assigning activities to each category.

The descriptive statistics and cross tabulations that amount to the quantitative analysis were produced using SPSS.

1.5.2 Qualitative methods

Due to time constraints, a sample of 20% of the monitoring forms provided in time was selected for in-depth analysis. An additional 5 monitoring forms were also purposively selected at random to ensure at least one organisation was drawn from each local authority area. The data from the monitoring forms was coded using a process of manual thematic coding to analyse qualitative information. A manual approach was chosen in order to better interpret any complexities in the qualitative data.

Using a combination of codes emergent from the data and imposed from an existing coding framework, 10% of the randomised sample was coded by a group of SG analysts to allow for comparison and to check for consistency. The monitoring forms were sorted into a coding matrix in Word, with each form being given a specific source tag to allow for easy identification. The text from each monitoring form was then broken down into meaningful fragments of text and a close reading carried out of each sentence. Emergent key themes and sub-themes were identified and the data was coded according to these themes. Following initial coding, SG analysts agreed on final codes and the rest of the sample was coded accordingly.

Data from the open-ended questions from the follow-up survey and the survey carried out with the IFPs were also coded and analysed in NVivo. Themes and emerging findings were then recorded in a framework matrix in Excel, where the data was linked with the monitoring form analysis to compare key themes across the multiple data sources. This ensured that the analysis of the data was as rigorous, balanced and accurate as possible and that key cross-cutting messages or concepts could be identified.

1.6 Study limitations

As discussed in the aims (see section 1.4), due to the nature and limitations of the available data, it is beyond the scope of this project to make any definitive claims regarding the overall impact of the SCF. In particular, it was not possible to conduct a direct evaluation with the individuals, groups or communities supported by the funded organisations. In order to disburse the funds as quickly as possible and to reduce the burden on the CAOs and funded organisations, the monitoring process for the SCF was comparatively light touch when balanced against the monitoring process for some of the other Covid-19 emergency funds. This approach also reflected Ministers' wishes for a light touch application and monitoring process to respond quickly, minimise the burden on applicants and avoid delaying funding with a complicated application process. Aside from financial information, many organisations provided very little feedback in their monitoring forms. Financial information assisted in understanding how the funds were used, however, in some cases tangible benefits delivered to communities were still unclear.

It was also not possible to compare funded areas/organisations with those that did not receive this funding, or make any assessment of whether the funding could have been used more effectively in a different manner. Therefore, rather than seeking to make claims about the impact or efficacy of the fund, the parts of this report focusing on outcomes instead present a picture of what the funding was used for, and a flavour of who was supported by the fund, where possible, with reference to the self-reported benefits delivered by CAOs.

By relying on CAOs' and funded organisations' own reporting about how they used the funds and how effective the projects were, the report cannot provide an entirely impartial, objective picture of the use of the funding, but it nevertheless provides important and useful insight into the successes and challenges of the funded projects.

It is also important to note that the SCF existed within the wider context of numerous Scottish Government and other emergency funds to support third sector organisations. This report is therefore limited by its focus on a single fund which represents a single aspect of a much wider funding landscape.

Analysis of the geographical data relating to applications and awards was limited by the fact that many applicant organisations were often working across several areas and more than one local authority. This made it challenging to undertake a full analysis of how funding was spent in different local authorities or, for example, in areas of higher vs lower deprivation. Several organisations also indicated that they received funding from multiple sources and reported these projects in their monitoring forms, meaning that determining attribution to the various funding sources was challenging.

Due to the lack of specific questions in the monitoring forms, it is also difficult to draw any firm conclusions around the number of people supported by the fund as organisations described their reach in a number of different ways. For example, some organisations estimated the number of beneficiaries, while others measured their reach in how many food parcels they had delivered over the course of a month.