What a difference ten years can make! Iridescent has been a partner to POP in delivering the POPideas service in Plymouth for a decade. Read more about our thoughts on this amazing project. On the 26th of August 2014 Plymouth City Council awarded a contract to deliver a ‘funding advice service’ to Zebra Collective in partnership with Iridescent Ideas CIC. This contract would fund a project which quickly became known as ‘POPideas.’ Who could have forecast then, that this service would go on to be one of the most successful advice programmes the city has ever seen.
I remember putting the tender together with Zebra and the nervousness as we waited for the decision. Then the joy at winning the contract! Zebra and Iridescent held their first management meeting on the 12th of September 2014 and discussed the delivery of the contract. The following note was taken: “It was agreed that we want to serve more people, in more depth, provide mentoring support and an element of sustainability, on start-up and funding for CICs and Charities, provide advice on fundraising and build up the social and economic outcomes of the sector.” The hope and ambition was high. We decided to call the service ‘POPideas.’ Why? Well at that time POP was a ‘project’ of Zebra and was yet to be an independent charity but was starting to deliver voluntary sector support and as for ‘Ideas,’ well I think you can work that out. So what have we achieved in a decade? It’s all about the numbers! In the ten years we have:
It’s not about the numbers! “So what?” I hear you ask. The numbers are impressive but what’s been as powerful are the outcomes we’ve achieved. We run an annual survey and people repeatedly tell us that they feel:
Our overall satisfaction rating - not an indicator necessarily of ‘impact’ but of quality delivery - has averaged 94% for the duration. It’s been as high as 98% and yes, I would love that to be 100% but there’s always one grumpy client! Why has POPideas been so successful? It’s clear, practical and simple. I think the concept is straightforward and it works. Pay for skilled, experienced people with a diverse range of expertise to give clear and concise advice on topics voluntary, community and social enterprise organizations want and need. It’s accessible. It’s a free service. POPideas was initially subsidised by Plymouth City Council and is now funded by the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation. We receive a lot of feedback about accessibility and ease of use of the advice be it one-to-one or in workshops. It’s consistent. The core team that delivers POPideas has been remarkably stable for the whole period. Imogen Potter at POP has been a brilliant manager and leader of the programme and has also delivered excellent hands-on funding support. Paul Read, now running Drift Advice, has been an expert in business planning, funding, marketing and more. Susan Moores has consistently delivered fabulous workshops to high training standards particularly on how to write great funding bids. As for me, well, I’ve concentrated on my areas of expertise - legal structures, governance and social impact. It's impactful. Look at the stats above. POPideas works. It gives extremely useful advice and support that is effective and makes a difference. We’ve embraced proving the impact of the service. We’ve taken a lot of care and time to do this consistently and rigorously. We’ve trialled different ways to do this including videos, paper reports, maps, blogs, case studies, infographics and more. It’s incredibly cost effective. We estimate that the return on investment averages out to £25 gained for Plymouth for every £1 our funders have invested in the service. It’s been flexible, agile and innovative. We’ve brokered new partnerships and broken-down barriers with funders. We’ve embraced digital delivery where appropriate. We’ve tried all sorts of different workshop topics. We’ve brought in other experts where needed. We’ve got an online suite of workshops and resources that people can access anywhere at any time. What’s the magic and spirit of POPideas? I asked Paul, Imogen and Susan what they thought the secret ingredients for POPideas have been: Susan said: “My personal joy is watching the lightbulb moments for people in the training/learning space and the unexpected connections and sharing that happen in every single workshop. I know that individuals receive high quality information and learning. New collaborations, joint work and friendships have begun germinating in these rooms - both in-person and on line.” Paul reflected that: ”The 'magic' of POPideas is the team's ability to offer a diverse range of skills and knowledge that genuinely makes a difference to the organisations we support. I think we’ve also done a great job to evolve the service based on the feedback we receive. The impact I see from clients is implementing the advice we offer, whether that is improving the evaluation processes or writing better funding applications.” Imogen reported that: “Special moments for me have always been the joy in helping small community groups get their first funding bid and the diversity of clients that we help. I'm always taken aback when the advice that I give often turns out to mean the world to our clients and they feedback how grateful they are for the support.” As for me? The work we’ve collectively done through POPideas is amongst that which I’m the proudest of in my working career. I’ve loved working as part of a team with differing experiences and areas of interest. Its been a joy and an honour to work with such committed people. We meet every month to catch up and we are all are truly passionate, excited and ambitious about what the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector can achieve for the city. Yes we share frustrations about the pace of change and have our cranky moments but that’s the joy of working together. The bigger vision drives us all. We all believe that Plymouth is a better place because of the work of our fantastic community groups and we want to help that grow. What next? So we close a decade of delivery. The stats and return on investment speak for themselves. Yes, some of that could have happened anyway but I strongly believe we have significantly added capacity to the sector, helped a lot of organizations to start up and increased the funding the city’s VCSE organizations receive. So what next? Well funnily enough people consistently report that they want more of the same. An often-repeated bit of feedback in what we could do better is: “nothing, keep doing what you are doing!” But, of course, we cannot sit still. The top five issues organizations report needing support on are: funding, social impact, digital skills, business planning and financial management advice. On funding particularly, people say they want support gaining new funds and diversifying their income base. We need to make sure our future services respond to these needs. We need to innovate delivery models. Before COVID we delivered in person and ‘in the classroom.’ We still do some of that but the switch to online delivery has been a profound change. It continues to work this way but we also need to make sure the accessibility values remain high. We need to embrace digital more – exploring AI, data, tech solutions for funding, governance, organization development and more. We need more diversity in the team with more experience of a wider range of needs. We need to ensure we tackle the systemic, root causes of the issues people and communities face in Plymouth. We need to remain true to the spirit of the original idea: ”To serve more people, in more depth and provide advice on fundraising and build up the social and economic outcomes of the sector.” It’s simple really. 😊 Comments are closed.
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