Origins of the Project
The Enterprising Communities project was set up by Voluntary Action Cumbria in 2002. VAC is the Rural Community Council for Cumbria first established in 1949. The project ran for four years from 2002 to 2006 and was delivered in two equal phases.
Phase 1 began in 2002 with the successful application to Phoenix Development Round 1 (Small Business Service of the Department of Trade and Industry for two years funding. This was matched with European (ERDF) and some local funding. During the first year (2002), EC researched, mapped and built its understanding of the rural social enterprise sector in Cumbria. This was needed because it was a new project working in a sector that was neither well known, nor well understood. The team built up its client base by responding to enquiries and by broad-based but sporadic outreach to the most visible rural social enterprises in Cumbria. The project piloted social enterprise business support tools with the clients and by the end of year the second year of operation had built its confidence as a team and its reputation as people who listened, understood and gave practical help to rural social enterprises. This gave them the motivation, knowledge and experience to continue seeking funds. EC applied to Phoenix Development Funding Round 2 - Building on the Best. The application was successful and Phase 2 commenced in April 2004.
One of the key ambitions for Phase 2 was to move the project from a local social enterprise support agency providing good quality support and advice to social enterprises 'in the know', to something that reached more social enterprises and punched above its weight. In Phase 2 the team worked 'smarter' by developing and scaling-up its products and services to deal with the increasing demand from rural social enterprises.
While EC were clear about keeping its feet on the ground through hands-on support, the team also wanted to influence policy makers and funders using carefully documented experience as evidence. This was achieved to a large extent and in the process the team and the project gained a regional and national profile that was demonstrated in a range of achievements:
- Viv Lewis, the programme manager was elected to the Board of the Social Enterprise Coalition.
- EC became the only local agency among a Consortium of national agencies to deliver a large Defra project.
- It was instrumental in setting up a Cumbria-wide partnership of social enterprises funded by the North West Development Agency.
- It represented the partnership in its region.
- EC bid for and won the Business Link contract to deliver start-up support to social enterprise in Cumbria.
- EC increased its 'earned' trading income to 50% in its final year.
Despite these successes, it became increasingly clear that the changing funding climate would not allow the organisation to continue to finance a free-at-the-point-of-delivery advisory service unless EC drastically reduced the scale of the project. EC were unwilling to do this as none of the team wanted to ration the support given to individual social enterprises. The team believed that good quality support was 'intensive and expensive' and represented good value for money as it reduced the failure rate of the social enterprises.