Manchester Alliance for Community Care

Third Sector Strategy

During 2007, the Government announced its intention to monitor local areas on what they do to "enable a thriving Third Sector." In practice, this means how do the local statutory agencies work together to support and nurture the voluntary and community sector.

MACC welcomes this intention as it is our long held view that the voluntary and community sector makes a valuable and unique contribution to the delivery and development of services which meet the needs and wishes of the local community. However, at present work carried out to stimulate the voluntary sector economy in Manchester is currently un-coordinated and under resourced. A recent national report ‘Pulling in the Same Direction’ by the Charities Evaluation Service and B:RAP included the following conclusion which can clearly be applied to Manchester:

‘Third sector capacity building –both broadly as an end in itself an, and also from the perspective of strengthening the sector for public service delivery – is too important to be left to the present piecemeal arrangements. It is time to put mechanisms in place which will enable all those with an interest in third sector capacity building… to pool their expertise, share experience, join up approaches that have a proven track record and work towards a more coherent and co-ordinated cross-sector approach’

We are therefore working with other colleagues in the local sector to form a view on what would enable Manchester's "Third Sector" to "thrive" - and calling for the development of a Third Sector Strategy for Manchester. This involves working within the local voluntary sector infrastructure and in discussions with the City Council and Primary Care Trust at various levels - including the Partnership Working Group and the Commissioning Workstream both of which report to the Manchester Public Service Board.

We take the view that measures to sustain the ongoing development of a diverse voluntary and community sector to need to focus on ‘investment readiness’ – with ‘investment’ coming in a variety of forms from a ‘mixed-economy’ which includes grant funding, income generation, tendered / contracted services, etc. We believe this is the only way that those wishing to purchase services (whether commissioners or service users themselves) can be sure of a diverse range of voluntary and sector provision to choose from in the future.

MACC’s experience with our Business Improvement Service shows that this is a long slow process of change within the sector as a whole and within individual organisations. Change takes time, stability and support. Previous capacity building interventions have often failed to make lasting change because of two key factors:

limits on the duration and scale of the support
lack of fit with local processes and strategic priorities

A Third Sector Strategy will need to take a long view and seek to strike a balance between market stability, process improvement and capacity building. It also means that this is not just an issue for the voluntary sector organisations - we need capacity building in both the “funder” and the “provider”. This means working on

influencing the design of future commissioning arrangements
informing and supporting local voluntary sector organisations to get ready to respond to the changing culture.
gaining commitment from all those involved a long term, step-by-step plan - of which the new Government target will be the measure.

As this work takes shape, we will post further updates on this page.

Voluntary Sector Development

Notice Board
Dates for Your Diary
Notes of Meetings
Reports
Archive

Business Improvement

Useful Links
Sample Policies and Procedures
Tendering Resources

Voluntary Sector Policy

Compact
Commissioning
Third Sector Strategy

Developing Advocacy Services

Introduction
Aims
Resources

Improving Community Engagement

Community Engagement Strategy
Local Involvement Network
Community Network for Manchester
Talking Health
Resources