Archives for June 2020

Handling Covid19 – Street Factory

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This week we are spotlighting the fantastic work of Street Factory, a Plymouth-based Hip Hop Social Collective.

Street Factory has been known to the Foundation since 2018 as one of the 8 original Place-Based funded organisations in Plymouth. Since then, they have performed at our annual conference and grown as an organisation.

We spoke to Jo Gorniak, co-founder and Director at Street Factory, who runs the CIC with her husband Toby.

Founded in 2007, Street Factory’s tagline is “Transforming lives, so they exceed their potential and fall in love with their purpose!”. Over the past 13 years, Jo and Toby have been offering street dance and hip-hop classes to children and young adults, often subsedising or sponsoring those who are unable to pay full fees. They also host over 18 dance groups and have created a mentoring environment and a caring community ‘hub’. This means they are much more than a dance studio – the Street Factory team get to know their service users and offer emotional supportm promoting peace, fun, love and unity.

In a ‘usual’ week, Jo and Toby would be delivering their sessions from their Plymouth theatre to over 300 service users, as well as working with their hip-hop outreach team in schools, training programmes and other nationwide projects.

However, when the Covid19 pandemic broke out and lockdown set in, Street Factory were unable to deliver their usual classes and workshops, meaning the team have had to think innovatively about how to adapt to the restrictions. Jo, Toby and the team have been quick to act, immediately turning to digital means in order to stay connected and to support their 300+ local community service users. They have been offering daily (sometimes hourly) community support, and have been running hip-hop lessons digitally from their living room. Due to the isolation and loneliness of lockdown, they are needed now more than ever.

Street Factory creates change that empowers their service users of all ages, races and experience the chance to unlock their own potential, despite facing a range of social and economic challenges.

If you would like more information about Street Factory CIC, you can:
Visit their Facebook page
Visit their Youtube Channel
Drop them an email at streetfactorystudios@hotmail.com

Resilience Fund: Making the Leap and Newington Day Centre

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On 3rd April 2020 The Rank Foundation launched the Resilience Fund in response to the Coronavirus pandemic. Applications are open to all RankNet members, and the fund has been implemented to cover cashflow, fundraising and loss of income challenges relating to the current covid-19 related climate. This includes those facing significant, unplanned demand on services. Within hours of opening, applications were received and the Grants Manager and Foundation Executives began processing the applications, assessing management accounts and cash flow forecasts, knowing that access to this type of funding was a priority.

We will be looking at some of the Resilience Fund grantees each fortnight, with this week spotlighting Making the Leap and Newington Day Centre.

Making the Leap

Organisation Overview:

Making the Leap first came to Rank’s attention in 2016 and became a Major Grant recipient later that year.

Making the Leap’s mission is to transform the futures of young people from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds. They deliver training to raise young people’s aspirations and equip them with the skills, behaviours and confidence to succeed whilst increasing their access to opportunities. They deliver their programmes via a number of methods: from the classroom, to their own centre but also via employee engagement opportunities helping businesses to meet their Corporate Social Responsibility goals.

Difficulties due to Coronavirus:

The team have been unable to deliver sessions due to school closure and cutbacks on CSB budgets to protect businesses through the COVID19 period. Most schools will prioritise the curriculum for the remainder of the year due to the time lost, therefore additional services such as the opportunities offered by Making the Leap will drop further down the priority list. And in longer term plans, businesses will be likely to continue to cut CSR and HR budgets to recover.

Their annual fundraiser 2020 UK Social Mobility Awards will be very unlikely to happen due to new social distancing and capacity laws (or will at least be significantly scaled-back), which means minimal sponsorship or ticket sales profits.

What will the Resilience Fund grant be used for?

“As a result of Covid-19, young people from disadvantaged backgrounds and their families are now facing additional challenges – loss of income, rising household costs, health problems, social isolation and housing issues. Therefore, it is vital we continue to support young people during this time to boost their professional skills, stay motivated and remain connected with others”

The Resilience Fund grant of £20,000 will cover 6 months of predicted operational costs and loss of fundraising, allowing Making the Leap to continue to support their service users, albeit virtually.

Newington Day Centre

Organisation Overview:

Similarly to Making the Leap, Newington Day Centre was first funded by Rank back in 2016 as one of our Major grantees. They were also the joint winners of the Rank Accelerator award in 2019, voted for at our Annual Conference.

Newington Day Centre provides a range of Day Care services to people who are older and their carers since 1978 . They provide 250 places each week with individuals attending 2/3 days each week. The services offered by NDC include assistance to maintain good personal care, therapeutic hand care, a hairdresser, daily meals, a range of community services, a chiropodist, a community hearing clinic and a range of community events to help members engage in community life. They also provide opportunities for students on work placements completing NVQs and also support many nursing and social work students.

Difficulties due to Coronavirus:

The centre is unable to provide any physical services and has had to close. However, Newington Day Centre has adapted to the closure and now offers a telephone support service to ensure the most at-risk are receiving adequate care. They are also delivering arts and crafts boxes for entertainment and to keep their members occupied.

What will the Resilience Fund grant be used for?

There will be a large reduction in donations as many of the community face challenging times ahead and the ability to hold fundraising events. Local community and business fundraising usually brings in around £130,000 per year. Therefore a Resilience grant of £25,000 has been accepted to help with the current shortfall.

If you are a member of RankNet and wish to apply for Resilience funding, please visit our Opportunities page on the online platform. If you have any RankNet related queries, please contact ranknet@rankfoundation.com.

Handling Covid19 – Why Me?

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Why me? are the only national charity fighting for victims of crime to have access to Restorative Justice. Restorative Justice empowers victims of crime to communicate with the offender, through a face to face meeting where appropriate. This gives them the chance to talk about the impact of the crime, seek answers about why it happened and have their voices heard. Many victims of crime feel excluded, confused and revictimized by the criminal justice process. Restorative Justice can change this.

We spoke to the team at Why me? about the changes and adaptations to service delivery due to the Coronavirus pandemic.

Why me? has been known to the Foundation since 2017 when they first received a 3 year Major Grant to fund a new Business Development Manager role. As an organisation, they have been engaged and active RankNet members ever since.

Why me?’s work focuses on two key areas. One is providing Restorative Justice, which they do through their own Restorative Justice service. Anyone is free to get in touch to explore whether a restorative process is best for them and if Why me? are best placed to facilitate it. Their work also focuses on campaigning for the greater use of Restorative Justice. This strand of their work includes policy development, lobbying Government, spreading best practice, engaging with the Restorative Justice sector and helping to perfect the use of restorative practices for under-used crime types: such as hate crime. They have seven hard working, part time staff and a dedicated team of trustees, restorative facilitators and ambassadors who have lived experience of being victims of crime.

During lockdown, Why me? have prioritised communication within the Restorative Justice sector highly. They now send out a weekly newsletter, and hold forums on different issues for people working in Restorative Justice to attend. These include Why me?’s regular forums but also one-off forums on important subjects, such as an upcoming Restorative Listening forum for BAME people to talk about racism they have experienced from the police and justice system. These events are all part of a growing online “Restorative Hub” which Why me? are seeking to develop, with the help of funding from the Rank Foundation.

We asked the team about the challenges they have faced during this difficult period. They explained:

“One of our key aims is to influence policy makers, and this is difficult during a time when the Government have so many urgent priorities. Restorative practice has a part to play in a number of problems facing the country: it could help to address the backlog in the courts, guide the police on how to carefully police new COVID laws, and be part of the healing process as the country returns to health. But our ability to have these representations heard is diminished at the moment, due to the focus on the emergency response to the pandemic. We have also had financial struggles during this period, like most small charities, but we are doing everything we can to overcome them.”

However, it would appear that the service users at Why me? have responded well, and the organisation said they were heartened by how restorative providers around the country have engaged with their online forums. Aided by Why me?’s ability to share best practice, restorative services across the country have learned to operate remotely, giving victims of crime the opportunity to engage remotely in Restorative Justice if they wish to. Some participants have been keen to continue with their restorative processes remotely, while others have preferred to wait until face to face meetings are possible again.

If you would like to contact the team at Why me? for more information, you can email them at: info@why-me.org.uk

Website: www.why-me.org
Twitter: @WhyMeUK

Resilience Fund: Horatio’s Garden and DCFRP

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On 3rd April 2020 The Rank Foundation launched the Resilience Fund in response to the Coronavirus pandemic. Applications are open to all RankNet members, and the fund has been implemented to cover cashflow, fundraising and loss of income challenges relating to the current covid-19 related climate. This includes those facing significant, unplanned demand on services. Within hours of opening, applications were received and the Grants Manager and Foundation Executives began processing the applications, assessing management accounts and cash flow forecasts, knowing that access to this type of funding was a priority.

We will be looking at some of the Resilience Fund grantees each fortnight, with this week spotlighting Horatio’s Garden and Devon and Cornwall Furniture Reuse Project.

Horatio’s Garden

Organisation Overview:

Horatio’s Garden creates and cares for beautiful gardens in NHS spinal injury centres. Once the gardens have been built the charity maintains them and organises activities to take place in the garden. A Head Gardener leads a team of dedicated volunteers who keep the garden looking beautiful, run rehabilitative garden and art therapy sessions, serve tea and cakes, and host food events and music concerts. The feeling of being free from the hospital means that longer-term patients can use the garden for things they can’t necessarily do on the ward.

Difficulties due to Coronavirus:

As a result of the lockdown, the charity has had to cancel all its Spring and Summer fundraising events which will lead to a loss of income in the region of £240,000. As a garden charity, Horatio’s Garden hold the majority of their fundraising events over these months when the gardens are at their most beautiful so a large proportion of their fundraising income is raised during these months.

What will the Resilience Fund grant be used for?

The uncertainty around how long the pandemic will last means Horatio’s Garden is not getting the exposure it would usually recieve. Therefore a grant of £20,000 towards new fundraising efforts has been awarded.

Devon and Cornwall Furniture Reuse Project

Organisation Overview:

Devon and Cornwall Furniture Reuse Project (DCFRP) help people in the local community to make their houses into homes. They help around 340 people per year who may be moving into a property after being homeless or moving home because of domestic violence. Many of their clients have been given properties with no carpets or curtains and haven’t received any help or advice.

The charity believes that every person should have a bed to sleep in and a sofa to sit on and every family should have a dining table.

As well as furniture, DCFRP provide advice via a free coffee and advice corner. They will help people to look for jobs and write their CV’s, and also help with applications for benefits and housing advice.

Difficulties due to Coronavirus:

“At the moment, and to be honest, we are trying to take it day by day and week by week. We are concentrating on what we can do to survive for now in the hopes that we will recover.”

The furniture shop has closed due to the Coronavirus pandemic, therefore this revenue stream has stopped. The only income they have is when Plymouth City Council rehome an individual or a family, but this is nowhere near enough income to pay salaries and cover rent. DCFRP are still donating furniture, but are unable to collect donated furniture due to social distancing and lockdown, therefore stocks are low.

What will the Resilience Fund grant be used for?

Bringing forward DCFRP’s Match Trading grant of £10,000 will help them to recover far quicker than the anticipated 6-12 months and will significantly decrease the likeliness of the charity closing its doors.

Handling Covid19 – The Circle Dundee

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The Circle is a “More Than Profit” organisation based in Dundee and is focused on working with social entrepreneurs, community activists, charity leaders, commercial business leaders, trustees and non-executive directors. The Circle is a hub for charities, social enterprises, community groups and socially aware businesses in Dundee. They provide affordable offices, co-working and community space, as well as affordable meeting and event spaces.

We spoke to The Circle’s Founder and CEO, Kirsty Thomson on how the charity is adapting to the challenges of Covid19.

In a usual week, The Circle are based in a thriving community hub in a large 1970’s building right in the heart of the community. They are usually offering 5 main services: affordable office space, event space, consultancy services, The Circle Café and The Circle Academy. They currently have a team of 13 staff and has 15 tenant organisations within the hub. The building usually sees up to 700 sign-ins every week which includes tenants, volunteers, service users and visitors attending meetings or events in our spaces. Kirsty explained “we have a wide variety of tenants and host events on almost a daily basis and as such, we don’t  have too many ‘normal’ days – we’ve been known to turn our hand at becoming renovators, delivery drivers, wifi experts, and even emptying flooded drains with buckets!”

However with the lockdown in full force due to the Coronavirus pandemic, The Circle have been working to adapt how they work in order to continue supporting their tenants and other clients. They were in the midst of delivering their ‘Circle Academy‘ to their second cohort of candidates when the programme had to be swiftly changed to be offered digitally.  The team has also been offering free one-to-one consultancy sessions and will be running a series of webinars during June and July for people in the third sector.

Kirsty explained that one of the hardest parts has been not being able to run their café, and being unable to see their volunteers and regular visitors who access the services of their hub tenants. However, the team have been keeping the spirit and social culture of The Circle alive and their daily team lunches have become daily team catch up calls and Friday evening quizzes.

So what next? The team at The Circle are busy planning for the next cohort of The Circle Academy and trying to find ways to get their café back up and running. They are also continuing to support the local community through The Circle Superstars, a new initiative to be launched this summer supported by the Wellbeing Fund to support children and young people in the local community. Kirsty told us “the biggest challenge for us during this period is making sure everyone is well and supported through a time that is undoubtedly posing emotional, health and financial challenges for our staff, volunteers, tenants and service users.”

You can access more information about The Circle at www.thecircledundee.org.uk

You can find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @thecircledundee and on Linkedin. RankNet members can find Kirsty Thomson and the current Time to Shine Leader, Alice Watts on our online community platform members directory.

For any specific enquiries, please email reception@thecircledundee.org.uk

Covid19 Update – June 2020

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Nearly one-third of lower-paid employees have lost jobs or been furloughed, compared to less than one-in-ten top earners: in numerical terms that is around 7 million jobs overall. The Resolution Foundation reports ‘significant anxiety’ amongst those furloughed as to immediate and future prospects, especially as furloughing is likely to obscure or hide future job losses. On this we might not see a clear picture until the year end.

About one million under 25s hit the labour market for the first time each year, mostly in the third quarter, and it unlikely that we will see any significant economic recovery before then. Given the predicted degree of economic contraction, there is little doubt that the young will bear the heaviest burden of this post pandemic recovery. With an extra 600,000 young people likely to be added to existing unemployment figures in the coming year, the challenge for the young is likely to eclipse those experiences of 2008: we are mindful that Rank’s exemplar leadership programme, Time to Shine, emerged from the rubble of the financial crash nearly 12 years ago.

Why do we mention this? Because Rank’s long standing interest in challenging inequality, especially around issues of social mobility and the emphasis we have placed on encouraging and supporting a generation of young, enterprising leaders is not likely to disappear. We might frame it differently, but we sense the need for greater focus and to ensure that our resources are maximised to greater effect.

As an ‘engaged’ funder the Foundation has concentrated on meeting the needs of its 450 strong network of organisations: ‘RankNet’ has grown steadily over recent years. If you are funded by Rank, then, by definition, you are part of the network and, through this, you have access to a range of funds, activities and support.

Governed by an elected group of ‘social leaders’, working closely with the Rank executive, we have been operating two funds for the last 8 weeks: an Emergency Fund (for small capital or training needs) and the uncapped Resilience Fund, created for those in the network experiencing immediate shortfalls in planned income, especially around meeting cashflow needs. Both of these operate with a short turnaround – anything considered by the weekly Resilience Fund committee is paid a few days later.

Through both of these funds, we have made 107 grants and supported 88 organisations. What is interesting, especially regarding the Resilience Fund applications, is that the size of the respective ask has been relatively modest with an average request of around £16K, perhaps reflecting the respect and understanding gained through existing relationships?

We have also followed up with 15 of those organisations recently supported, to assess the immediate impact of our grant whilst trying to better understand the complexities and significance of their respective challenges, and how we might better help going forward. But there is no doubt as to the significance of the uncertainty felt amongst our RankNet leaders, where for some the real crunch might not be felt for another 6 – 12 months.

The Rank team has also been busy managing the wider needs of our network including supporting our various leaders (including those furloughed) as part of our Time to Shine (T2S) or Rank Aspire Programme (RAP) and the Leadership Award holders. Part of this is the decision to consider extending those on our current schemes, where applicable, not just because of the upheaval caused by the pandemic but mindful of the challenges of leaving these schemes at a time when new job opportunities will be severely limited.

Adapting quickly to ‘remote’ working has ensured that we have been able to continue with much of our routine support of the network including the management of our place-based and social enterprise programmes. Across the network, we have run nearly 60 ‘Zoom’ events for some 550 people since lockdown. We have been struck by how responsive our members have been, building on the strength of strong networks and a mutual understanding on how powerful collaboration and partnerships can be.

The coordinated effort to help feed the most impoverished and the most vulnerable in Dundee, has been led, for most part, by a Rank funded coalition. As we look across RankNet, we have been overwhelmed by stories of exceptional practice, of innovation and, above all, of strong, community centred leadership: this is what we see as ‘engaged philanthropy’ in action. But ‘food poverty’ is but one strand of many, from digital poverty to poverty of opportunity, especially regarding the young, where other issues around mental health and well-being will sharpen our focus over the coming months.

What next? Mindful that the dust is yet to settle, we will look to ensure that the Foundation is well set to meet these emerging challenges, deepening our understanding of the opportunities this engaged, focused approach can bring. But more than ever, Rank is willing to collaborate and share with our partners, both within and outside of our network and across the various sectors, as the challenge to ‘reset, recover, rebuild and renew’ begins.