Collaboration and Impact on Beneficiaries

During the period January 2010 until October 2016, Building Change Trust invested £1.8 million of its £10million Trust fund in supporting collaboration within the Northern Ireland Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise sector.

The bulk of our support was for the CollaborationNI programme which was developed and delivered by a consortium of NICVA, CO3 and Stellar Leadership.

This programme provided initially general training and support and then evolved into bespoke and expert facilitation and support including legal information to collaborating individuals and organisations accompanied by a series of focused events and seminars all accompanied by a Collaboration Enabling Fund from the Trust.

Our external independent evaluation of the programme highlighted the positive impact on participating individuals and organisations  but we wanted to consider the impact of collaboration on beneficiaries and service users.

In autumn 2016 we commissioned the Institute for Voluntary Action Research to investigate the impact of collaboration on service users by way of looking at a number of case studies.

The research identifies three specific ingredients that enable collaboration to deliver responsive and well-received services.

Come along to hear from Ben Cairns and Miranda Lewis from IVAR. They will share the findings from the research followed by a participative discussion on the role of collaboration in supporting better  services for beneficiaries and what next for support for collaboration for the sector.

Click here to register for the event.