Trust Shaping the Future of Collaboration Support in NI.

In 2010 Building Change Trust issued a tender for the development and delivery of a collaboration, partnership and mergers support programme for the Northern Ireland community and voluntary sector.

A consortium comprising NICVA, CO3 and Stellar Leadership were successful in their bid and subsequently CollaborationNI has been operating since spring 2011 providing a range of support to the sector across Northern Ireland including general and in house training, expert facilitation, coaching and mentoring, legal support and seminars and study visits. 

Latterly the Trust has augmented the support available through CollaborationNI with a Collaboration Enabling Fund which has operated on a pilot basis. This fund has made 5 awards to date to enable collaborating organisations implement their collaboration plans.

The Trust’s contract with NICVA and partners for delivery of CollaborationNI will come to an end in spring 2014 and the Trust now wishes to consider the future support needs (between now and 2018) of Northern Ireland’s community and voluntary sector organisations with respect to collaboration as well as the response to those needs; how can support best be provided between now and 2018?

Finally, in respect of provision of support how can that support be procured and resourced?

To help consider these questions The Trust has commissioned the Institute for Voluntary Action Research (IVAR) which is an independent charitable research institute based at Birkbeck, University of London, to undertake a time limited and focused development planning process working with the Trust, the CollaborationNI partners and engaging with the sector and key stakeholders through a survey, focus groups and one to one interviews.

The Trust has identified more and better collaboration in the sector as an outcome it plans to achieve as a result of its interventions over its ten year lifespan and has agreed that collaboration is also a key theme for action in the period up until December 2018.

With a total budget of £2 million towards this theme and with approximately £800,000 remaining the Trust is keen to benefit from the input of people from across the sector to help shape the provision and resourcing of collaboration support in the coming period.

Whilst this is an open focus group places are limited to 20 on a first come first served basis and if you wish to attend please book a place by email to [email protected] and including Collaboration Open Focus Group in the subject line.