I've just spent a fascinating couple of hours losing a job .... but learning a lot about the realities of how councils may (or may not) carry through policies to bring public service delivery closer to users by greater involvement of nonprofit organisations. My conclusion - great idea, but it may be the service users who lose out because of the complexity of regulations involved.
My potential job was a small piece of work to evaluate the benefits of involving users (that is 'the community') in the development and running of a highly innovative rural bus service. Users can hop on, or call up to book a ride, and expect the bus to divert to pick them up within an hour.
On the face of it, the success of the project depends quite substantially on the promotional efforts of volunteers who helped get the service started, and the commitment of users to embrace 'their' service.
However, I held off accepting the brief because recent developments made it clear that any work should take account of a change in funding within two years as the development phase ended. What was needed was some forward thinking, not just evaluation of past performance. I wanted to sit in at an advisory group meeting, without commitment or cost to the client, agree a revised brief if appropriate, withdraw if not.
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About half-way through the meeting the real story began to emerge. The volunteers had decided to try and bring together several different bus services whose funding would be reduced, and set up a non-profit social enterprise. The council officers didn't rule this out, and said it would be one of the options they would look at in their forward thinking.
The snag was that there were two possible ways to fund a social enterprise - by tendered contract, or by grant. They couldn't say which it might be, because council members wouldn't decide on an overall policy on social enterprise for a couple of months. That pushed detailed decisions on the service into early 2006.
This makes things difficult for the social entrepreneurs because they need to start work fast on a business plan if they are to have sound proposals in place early enough to make sure the services continue. Could the council help with a grant for business plan development? Sorry, no, that might be against procurement regulations if the service went out to tender ... it would give them an unfair advantage over competitors. It might also be that they should drop off the advisory panel for the same reason. Everything would have to wind its way through committees, with social entrepreneurs and council officers remaining at arms length until some time next year. By then, it seemed me, it might well be too late to put together a realistic plan. Finance committee would look at the costs of running the service as a council operation, and in the context of a very tight budget quite likely decide that it would have to go.
What seemed to me was needed were two things. First a recognition - or at least working hypothesis - that the service could only survive and develop if it could continue to call on the help of volunteers, and also gain increased loyalty from its users as a community-based service. The officers and volunteer/social entrepreneurs would then get together in partnership to work out the best way to fund and develop the service. In doing that they would make great efforts to involve the users... without whose support nothing would work.
Instead what's quite like to happen is that users will learn one day that their bus service is to disappear. That's bad enough if it is a straight commercial operation. It is highly destructive of public trust if it is a service that has been hailed as a great social experiment that will help people to leave their cars at home, combat social exclusion, give young and older people a better life in the countryside, and so on.
It appeared at the meeting that everyone involved was operating with the best of intentions. Council officers were sticking to their brief, volunteer/social entrepreneurs were trying to come up with a solution rather than whipping up a campaign again threated council cuts.
But the result may be that the grass-roots energy of people trying to do something for their neighbours - an enormous store of social capital - could well be completely dissipated, along with some pretty high levels of experimental funding.
My suggestion would be to come clean - tell the service users what is happening, and use their concerns to help market the service and increase usage. This would help underpin the business plan for a social enterprise, and also demonstrate to politicians the value of the service and the place it should have in their overall transport planning. I would be delighted to revise my brief and contribute to this mix of user engagement and partnership building, but I don't think that's on the cards. Evaluation is one thing ... creative contributions are probably a different budget.
Note: there was no requirement of confidentiality in the meeting I attended, and public minutes will be produced. However, I'll leave to others involved to name the area if they wish ... and add nuances to my deliberately broad-brush treatment.
On Partnerships Online: Nonprofits press for more public service contracts
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