By Liz Davies, Chief Executive, SociaLink/Tūhono Pāpori

SociaLink held a workshop in late November for organisations interested in effectively positioning their organisation to navigate changes in funding. We talked about the recent social sector research, which reveals concerns about how many organisations are fairing, with 45 percent needing to dip into reserves, if they have reserves.

We passed on advice from local philanthropic funders to get in touch with them sooner rather than later if they are struggling. If an organisation is about to close their doors, it is a lot more difficult for funders to see how they may be able to help.

A wero, or challenge, was set to organisations to get Boards to ask the hard questions about their organisation, such as: ‘do we still need to exist?’, ‘should we have an end date?’, ‘should we continue to try and go it alone?’.

Given funding challenges and signals from the Government that they prefer to work with large providers, a range of examples and case studies of collaboration were presented by our talented Organisational Advisor, Christa George.

Examples included sharing resources, integrated service delivery, as well as local case studies of collaboration such as the merging of Volunteering Bay of Plenty with SociaLink, Bay Conservation Alliance and Super Support. Keep in mind that local philanthropic funders look very favourably at organisations that are collaborating, so funding could be available to support collaborative efforts.

SociaLink’s financial guru, Tracy Stockman, walked organisations through how to accurately cost the delivery of services to make sure they are accounting for all direct and indirect costs involved in delivering the services. If they do not know this then it is difficult to approach funders for the full cost of delivering a service.

If your organisation is interested in any of the above, please get in touch with SociaLink: www.socialink.org.nz

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Key Update from Minister Nicola Willis about Social Investment

By Liz Davies, Chief Executive, SociaLink/Tūhono Pāpori

You may have attended a webinar, along with about 800 others, in late November hosted by Hui E!, to which Minister Nicola Willis presented about social investment. I won’t go through the whole webinar, as a recording will be made available on the Hui E! website if you are interested, but one of the key take outs is Minister Nicola Willis wished to dispel the myth that a social impact assessment or social return on investment by the Impact Lab is required in order to access social investment funding; she was very clear that this was not the case.

She also emphasised that social investment is starting slowly, and initially is focusing internally, so it’s likely that most social service providers will not be impacted for some time. This provides time for providers to consider measuring impact and collaborative models.