Sustaining your O4O

As part of the O4O project, we suggested we would use information emerging from the ongoing process of establishing O4Os to highlight the factors that are likely to be important in ensuring the ongoing operation of O4Os during, and beyond the funded project (ie sustainability criteria).

This paper will be reviewed and added to, as the project proceeds. This document is based on emerging findings from Highland and findings from other regional partners will need to be added. A review of the literature on sustainability criteria for social enterprises is being conducted.

Sustainability Criteria

Level 1: Operational Level (O4O Internal)

What will be required, operationally to keep O4Os running?

Funding

O4Os have needed funding to establish them. To date, this has largely come from local authority grants, although applications to charities, Scottish Government and EU programmes are under consideration.

O4Os may continue to run on the basis of grants. To become social enterprises, technically, they should be engaged in ‘trade’ activity; that is, generating some of their resources from earned income.

O4Os need to have funding to keep them going. This may be from one or multiple sources, including:

• Grants
• Earned income from business or ‘trade’ activity; for example, supported housing for older people might be established that also included a café that was open to the public, accommodation that could be rented out or a ‘bunkhouse’ for tourists. A community transport scheme might include a vehicle that could be available to rent by community groups.
• Individual payments – from users of the service.
• Service level agreements with local authority or health service providers. Under this arrangement, local authorities or health services might contract with O4Os to provide a service to one or more communities; for example, provision of meals for older people or provision of supported housing.
• Subcontracts from organisations with service level agreements. Some organisations might have contracts with local authority or health services to provide a service over a large area, but might have difficulty providing this to small or remote communities; in this case, it might be possible for communities to obtain a subcontract with a large service provider. For example, communities might subcontract with a private home care provider to provide home care in their own community for their own older people.

In a remote or rural area it may be difficult to make survivable income from a single activity (provision of one type of service), so there may be a need to diversify, but there is the problem of taking into consideration effects on other local businesses, e.g. if developing accommodation or a café.

Volunteers

In theory, there should be many potential volunteers for O4Os because there is evidence of rising proportions of older people in rural communities. However, in reality:

• Volunteers are difficult to generate as many people do not want to volunteer, are busy sometimes with multiple jobs, have existing caring roles or want to help informally rather than formally.
• Many people do not want to undergo training required or to go through the bureaucratic process of ‘disclosures’ checks.
• Formal volunteering is concentrated among a small group who do a lot. It is important not to exhaust that group.

An ongoing supply of person-power is important and the O4O has to look at how to reward personnel. Is there potential for a small payment or retainer or can there be other rewards for volunteering? Attracting volunteers may be easier at the start of an endeavour, retaining and attracting new volunteers is difficult.

Structure

O4Os need to have a structure and feel like they have a structure. This means having policies, procedures, people assigned with responsibility, a committee or board, links to sources of advice and support.

Leadership capacity

Organisations should not just be dependent on one person. There needs to be a group that are prepared to take the work forward, providing leadership. There needs to be a wider group involved so that there is a feeling of community ownership. Relying on one person would be difficult as they might get ill or leave; also they might go their own way and not listen to others and the organisation might lose support as perceived to be one person’s ‘hobby horse’.

Adaptability

The organisation needs to look for and adapt to, things that are needed in the community. There needs to be a mechanism in place for doing that.

Impact

It has been suggested by community participants and, looking at other community project, after two years, an organisation is unlikely to continue unless it is perceived to have made some impact by the local community. It will not succeed in getting volunteers or funding if it is not perceived to be useful.

External mentor structure?

We are undecided on this, but we think it may be important to have some sort of external ‘guiding’ body who can do things like help fill in forms, help construct procedures manuals, help with contacts, etc. The guiding body would provide support, confidence-building and an element of mentoring. It could also be a strong link with local authorities and health services, knowing people in authority who can make things happen more quickly. Without this, local communities are thought to have a will to do things, but get bogged down in the bureaucracy and time taken for things to happen. We think organisations like Highlands & Islands Social Enterprise Zone (HISEZ), Councils for Voluntary Services (CVS) and other agencies may provide this, but it is currently difficult for communities to access a supportive one-stop shop for seamlessly and straightforwardly proceeding with establishing a social organisation. This is currently what O4O is doing for communities.

Harnessing the support of local politicians (and service provider managers)

Is important for engaging with potential sources of funding, maintaining knowledge of potential policy change and influencing policy change. It is important for convincing the policy and service agenda of the value and role of local people providing local services.

Level 2: Political & Strategic Level (O4O External)

What will be required, politically and strategically, to keep O4Os running?

Robust community planning & decision-making

O4Os need to be tied into a real community planning agenda that looks at the cross-sectoral needs of communities, plans and organises provision of services potentially against a real or notional community budget.

Service provider capability to contract with communities

Policy says O4O type initiatives are needed, but changes in the environment that are needed to make O4O embed will not happen unless decision-makers and service providers are persuaded that O4Os are ‘a good thing’.

Currently, although local authorities and health services recognise serious difficulties with providing the services to maintain older people living in their communities, potentially until they die, they tend to contract with large organisations to provide services. This is likely partially due to:

• The economies of scale offered in contracting with large organisations to provide services for large areas
• Lack of time to contract with many separate community-based providers
• Lack of a tradition/ experience of doing this
• Concerns with what happens when a community-based provider ceases. The local authority or health service provider would then have to step in to provide the service. The concern is ongoing sustainability and reliability of community-based providers.

We believe that, to develop a culture where more O4O type organisations grow, local authorities and health service providers have to find ways to contract with more community-based providers. Indeed, they need to positively encourage community based provision to grow.

How can this happen? They need to see good practice: there needs to be at least one really successful example.

Communities need to be convinced

Communities like to see action and they want to see good services for their residents. They want older people to be able to remain in their communities until the end of their lives. Community members are used to things being done to them and for them by increasingly distant centralised service providers, although they often have good relationships with local service providers like GPs, nurses, social carers and others. People of remote and rural communities are suspicious that they are being asked to provide more to support themselves compared with people in urban areas. If the agenda of ‘community resilience’ is to move on, then policy both local and national needs to clarify the responsibility of communities and community members vis a vis service provision. The apparent desired movement of policy from paternalism to individual and community responsibility needs to be supported by information and easy ways for communities to, for example, devise their own services and contract with the local authority to provide them locally.

Communities need to see successful examples of other communities doing things for themselves and thereby improving aspects of their community.