The Digbeth Trust Development Support Services
The Digbeth Trust is a source of development funding and professional and technical support for grassroots voluntary and community organisations (VCOs) in Birmingham and surrounding areas. We have a particular expertise in helping groups seeking to develop community facilities and services.
The Trust provides this through a mix of:
- Support from its development workers
- Access to professional and technical expertise from its register of consultants, and
- Access to funding from various grant programmes it manages on behalf of regeneration initiatives
The development support that The Trust provides ranges from general capacity building through to more specialist support. An example of this is the Neighbourhood Performance Reward Grant pilot programme where The Trust has been commissioned by Birmingham Community Safety Partnership to provide capacity building and evaluation support to community based groups.
The Trust specialises in working with VCOs who are:
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Involved in the direct provision of community-based services, e.g. health and social welfare, advice, neighbourhood services, recreation and education
- Small (usually less than £60k turnover and few paid staff)
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Un-incorporated associations, volunteer-led, lack internal capacity, lack access to funders and technical aid providers and generally have had little past support
Transferring skills and encouraging self-help is at the heart of what we do. We particularly promote the use of feasibility studies - a 'THINK & PLAN' approach - to help groups develop community facilities and services.
- We believe this enables VCOs see their ideas and organisation in the wider context, and so lay down firm foundations for sustaining their services in the long term
- We work with local development agencies and other support partners, to make sure VCOs who come to us are able to benefit from the most appropriate support options
The Trust collaborates with voluntary & public sector agencies and networks to influence policy and strengthen the development support infrastructure for the voluntary and community sector, through for example membership of the Birmingham & Solihull Social Economy Consortium, Birmingham ChangeUp Consortium and Birmingham Community Empowerment Network.