Transforming Local Infrastructure: early indications

Transforming Local Infrastructure (TLI), the £30million government grant fund aiming to create strong local support for the voluntary sector, shows early signs of having been a success, according to an analysis by Navca.

The Cabinet Office’s TLI programme, launched in 2011, offered short-term grants to local organisations providing support to frontline charities and funded work designed to improve the way the organisations worked with each other and their local communities.

Funding from the TLI ends in September. And a Navca analysis of the two-year programme, entitled Transforming Local Infrastructure: early indicators, finds it has been broadly successful.

The report states that the most successful areas were those where the funding had been used to do something different, to explore a fresh approach or to find the space to make change that had already been identified as critical.

TIL was successful in supporter mergers between infrastructure bodies, helping infrastructure bodies collaborate, increase earned income and identify ways to improve the way they work with businesses.

There were, however, some criticisms, including that emphasis has been placed on organisational change and not enough on staff and trustee development, and that some partnership bids included organisations that made no real contribution and did not match the definition of voluntary sector infrastructure.

Navca also states that the competitive process in which only half the applicants could receive money resulted in investment not always going to the areas that needed it the most.

The report has been written using evidence from Navca members, local reports and a number of telephone interviews.

For further information and to read the report visit www.navca.org.uk/news/view-article/early-indications-of-tli-success.