This video features a webinar between four individuals, talking about the Movement Fund Partner role. The discussion is led by Andrew Spiers and Kirsty McCoubrey, who are joined first by Ashley Ahlquist and Hannah Worth, then later by Thomas Andrews and Rosie Sadler to facilitate a Q&A.
[00:00:02] Andrew: So thank you everyone for making the time to join today's session or watch the recording back. My name's Andrew Spiers, I work for Sport England and I'm part of the team that's been working on the Movement Fund. In today's session, I'll be starting by providing an overview of the Movement Fund. Just some facts and figures, progress to date. I'm then going to pass to a colleague, Kirsty, who will explain to you some of our plans about establishing a network of Movement Fund Partners. And when we do that, we'll cover a range of things, including why we're taking the approach we are, the commitment that we're making. So co-designing this work with partners and this call today is a really important part of that, the Movement Fund Partner role itself that has been developing and how we plan to support the Movement Fund Partner network.
[00:00:44] Andrew: After that, I'm really pleased that we're going to be joined by Ashley from Versus Arthritis and Hannah from Active Devon. We're going to share some of their experience and reflections of working in a similar way to the Movement Fund Partner role on other investment programmes. And it's back to me to just give you a bit of an overview and share some information and next steps. And then, as I say, we'll finish with some time for questions that you have for us. Please feel free to post these in the chat or save them up to ask at the end. We're thankful also to those of you that submitted some questions in advance when you joined the mailing list and registered for this event. And we'll also get any of those questions that aren't covered naturally over the course of the session.
[00:01:26] Andrew: So the only other thing I wanted to say by way of introduction before we get into the overview of the fund itself was just to set some expectations for the next 40 minutes or so. Some of you may have already been involved in some of the early discussion we've had about the Movement Fund Partner role. This session will recap some of that information. And for some of you, I think when you hear about the Movement Fund Partner role, you may feel hopefully that it describes exactly the sort of organisation and role that you would like on your side, supporting you along the way, when you're applying for investment. That may not actually be something you might naturally do, a role you might naturally play yourself. If you do find yourself in that category, we're going to post in the chat some information about our investment helpline, which you should be free to contact to ask them any questions you have more about the operation, the application process, the fund itself. But more generally, if at any point in the session you feel like we're covering information that you already have, you've already received from us, or we're discussing something that feels less relevant to you or
your organisation, we certainly won't be offended if you decide to use the time perhaps to look at a few emails or even leave the session if that feels like the right thing for you to do to make best use of your time.
[00:02:43] Andrew: OK, so the Movement Fund itself, we launched the Movement Fund on 29th April. It has an award budget of £165 million over the next four financial years. So that's £30 million in this financial year. We've just entered into 24/25 and that will expand to £45 million in each of the three following financial years. And initially the Movement Fund will make awards of between £300 and £15,000, which is in line with the levels of funding that our Small Grants programme has offered for a number of years. But it is actually a slight increase to the maximum of £10,000 investment that we have have made through our Active Together crowdfunding programme. That limit of £15,000 is something that we do intend to increase in the future, but we're just at this moment in time yet to establish definite plans on how much we will increase that by and when exactly that increase
would take effect in place. But we hope that's something we can do over the course of this financial year.
[00:03:45] Andrew: An important feature about the Movement Fund is it can make both awards in the form of grants, but also crowdfunding pledges. Hopefully you're all familiar with the idea of a kind of traditional grant investment model, but perhaps some of you will be less familiar with the crowdfunding model. So crowdfunding involves, Sport England in this instance, pledging money towards a
crowdfunding, fundraising campaign. And we found it's a really, really good form of investment in community organisations for a number of reasons. The funding it raises on behalf of the organisation itself means that we can spread our money a bit further and support more projects. Those projects we support with pledges typically do a fantastic job of creating community engagement in their project and their work through the campaign that they run, which is a real bonus for them. And through the campaign, organisations typically are able to develop their fundraising and digital skills, that improves their capability and sustainability in the long term. So a really important part of how we're approaching the investment overall.
[00:04:50] Andrew: I'm not going to run through a sort of detailed, global IPO description of every aspect of the process and the systems we're using for the Movement Fund. But I think it's important to say that what we've really tried hard to do over the last few months is combine and build the best features of the Small Grants and Active Together programmes and also learning from other programmes and incorporate them. What we've done, and we've worked very hard to simplify and improve the user journey for organisations seeking funding. And we hope that people have been engaging with the Movement Fund content, and recognise some of the hopefully positive changes we've made. So those are some of the facts and figures about the Movement Fund and I'm now going to move on to the kind of purpose and ambition that we have for the fund.
[00:05:34] Andrew: So the Movement Fund will make thousands of investments into community, sports and physical activity projects each year. And these projects will cover the length and breadth of the country. The award decisions we make will be based on how well ultimately the project aligns with the objectives of the Uniting the Movement strategy. So will it increase activity levels? Will it help reduce inactivity levels? Will it tackle inequalities in engagement in sport physical activity? And whilst each Movement Fund investment will be relatively modest in terms of the amounts of money that it'll be, it's through the volume of those investments that they're going to make a really significant contribution to the achievement of that strategy. And it's that volume and breadth of investments that the Movement Fund will make that also means it's an excellent complement to our more strategic and targeted partner place and campaign investments.
[00:06:27] Andrew: Whilst the Movement Fund will be an open fund and we will be making investments into a very wide range of projects all over the country, there are some people and communities that we will be prioritising with our funding. And these are also probably at the heart of how we're thinking about the kind of Movement Fund Partner network we want to create and how we want to reach out more proactively to these people and communities. Those priorities are set out in the guidance on our website, but they reflect two things. First, the demographic characteristics that we know are most associated with lower levels of activity. So that could be older people, people from some culturally diverse communities and backgrounds, people with disabilities, people in low income or living in low-affluence families, women and girls and some other gender identities and LGBTQ+ people, people who have unpaid caring responsibilities and also people who have experienced the care system itself. And then geographically, areas that we know have high levels of deprivation or poor health outcomes or other social outcomes which aren't quite as favourable as we'd like them to be. So that's a brief overview of the Movement Fund. I'm now going to pass to Kirsty, who's going to tell you more about the really important role we want Movement Fund Partners to play in the fund and ensuring it has the greatest possible impact. So over to you, Kirsty.
[00:07:57] Kirsty: Thanks Andrew. So like Andrew said, if we're really committing to investing in people and communities where we know that the need is greatest, we know that we need to continue to work differently and we need to take a more proactive approach and to broaden our reach. So building on some of our learning from previous programmes such as the Together Fund and Places and Spaces, we're looking to mobilise a network of partners to help us identify and support community groups that access our funding. So this isn't about creating an additional pot of funding to sit alongside the Movement Fund, this is about raising awareness and helping community groups to apply to the Movement Fund itself.
[00:08:36] Kirsty: So over the past few months we've held five engagement sessions and we've spoken to over 100 different partners and community groups to help further understand the support that is really needed and to start to co-design this role. And what we've heard has been really clear. We've heard that many community organisations are aware of our funding opportunities, they might not be aware of Sport England at all or they might have come across us and seen the name Sport England and thought 'that's not for me, I'm not a sporting organisation'. And for those that are aware of us and our funding, we know that some of these groups often find it quite daunting or confusing in terms of our processes.
[00:09:12] Kirsty: So like Andrew said, this is something we're looking to address more broadly through the Movement Fund, through simpler processes and some better communication and guidance. But we also hope that by building this network of partners, we can provide that additional support that some of these groups will really need to access funding that they need to thrive. Next slide, please.So, in terms of the role, we know that we want to support community groups, but what do we really mean by support? And that's something that we wanted to explore through these co designed workshops. And through these conversations, we've identified a number of different tasks, which we've loosely grouped into six key functions.
[00:09:53] Kirsty: The first one is around understanding the need, so looking to identify local groups and building those relationships to better understand their needs and making sure that we're meeting groups where they're at and not expecting them to come to us. Looking to provide support to access funding and also helping to provide support around those crowdfunding campaigns like Andrew mentioned. Supporting to develop applications to signposting to tools and resources which might help to develop community groups' ideas and being that all-important point of contact that many need before, during and after an application. Connecting and building to the local network. So connecting with other local organisations to help groups to grow and develop further. Help them build capacity setting, empowering and upskilling community groups. Helping to develop their skills, knowledge and capability and also to help develop wider organisational resilience and sustainability. And finally, collaborating and sharing. So collaborating with Sport England and other Movement Fund Partners to demonstrate impact and also to help the network collectively learn and grow. And that's
something that we're really committed to doing. And this is a service, it's a longer-term piece of work and we really want to make sure that that we learn and grow along the way.
[00:11:08] Kirsty: So ultimately this is about providing support to making applying to the Movement Fund simpler and more accessible and learning along the way. And whilst these key tasks will act as a guide, I think it's also important that we provide some flexibility here as well, to enable these partners to respond to the need as it arises. And it's something that's absolutely at the heart of the Movement Fund Partner role. And that's something that we would look at, we would like to further explore. So what does better collaboration between partners really look like? So that could be working with a number of partners in a particular geography, in a particular place, to support movement in that area. Or it could be working with a group of partners that have a specific expertise and skills and experience with a particular priority audience that might want to look to work collectively together. And we'll come onto that a little bit later in terms of our next steps, but we have plans to have that conversation in the
coming weeks and months.
[00:12:06] Kirsty: So whilst this is kind of the emerging role and this is what we we envisage the role to look like, I think it's also worth highlighting a couple of things that we think that the role isn't. So firstly, this role isn't about funding for direct delivery. So if you're an organisation that has a really good project or a really good idea for a project that you want to upscale or roll out further, then this probably isn't the right opportunity for you. And whilst there will be a small amount of capacity funding to play this role, this really is about providing that support to community groups as opposed to directly delivering yourself. And the other thing that this role isn't, it isn't onward granting. So those of you who might be familiar with the Together Fund, that's a key difference here. So through the Movement Fund, there is no requirement to do any administration around the grants itself. The funding will sit within Sport England, as will the award agreements and all of the paperwork and the admin that goes alongside that. That will be all managed internally. Next slide, please.
[00:13:04] Kirsty: So that's quite a lot and it's a big role and it's a really important role that we hope will be really impactful. And so we want to commit from Sport England and we want to commit our support and help to these partners to play this role. And whilst it's important that we further refine that role once the partners are in place, we just wanted to give you a little bit of a flavour of what some of that support might look like. So things such as making sure that we give a really comprehensive onboarding process. So helping partners to really understand the Movement Fund criteria and processes to enable them to play that support role, to those community groups looking to provide training to improve knowledge and confidence around crowdfunding. And as Andrew touched upon earlier, we know that this is something that's quite new to a lot of partners. So we want to make sure that we can really build knowledge and confidence around that.
[00:13:54] Kirsty: We'd like to provide regular contact with Sport England colleagues and so having that point of contact to help with day-to-day questions and enquiries as they arise. We would look to convene co-owned spaces to enable partners to connect with one another and collaborate. As we mentioned, that's really going to be key to this role and we would also look to provide support from our external evaluation and learning partner as well to help guide around the evaluation and learning side of things. So that's a bit of a flavour in terms of that practical support. But we do also acknowledge that for some partners playing this role, they might require some additional capacity as well. So the good news is that we do have some resource available for this. However, we want to be really open and upfront from the outset to say that this is limited. So we really need to ensure that this funding is distributed as effectively and fairly as possible. And one of the conversations we've been having through these design workshops is thinking about some kind of guiding principles to help us in making some of these decisions. So for example, making sure that as much of the money as possible goes to communities. Because we recognise that every pound that goes to support partners to play this role is a pound that doesn't go to the community organisation. And also recognising that some partners that might become a Movement Fund Partner may already be funded to perform some of these tasks and functions by Sport England. So that is something else that would also have to take into account.
[00:15:20] Kirsty: We do also know that this question around capacity is a burning one for many of you. And it's going to be really key to help you decide whether or not this is the right opportunity for you. So this is something that we're committed to to focusing on over the next couple of weeks to make sure that we can provide that clarity for you as soon as possible. So we will keep you posted. And I think the other thing that I just wanted to say here as well is we think it's a really great opportunity to work a bit differently, to be part of a network with people and organisations who have that same collective ambition. So working with people to come together to connect, to share ideas and expertise and to collectively learn and grow. And that's something that we think is really exciting. And hopefully, everybody on the call will agree and think that that's exciting for you too.
[00:16:04] Kirsty: So I think that brings us nicely onto our next segment and our chat with Ashley and Hannah. So brilliant, we've stopped sharing. Ashley and Hannah, are you both there?
[00:16:16] Ashley: Yeah, I'm here.
[00:16:18] Kirsty: Hi, Ashley. I can't see Hannah. I don't know, Hannah, if you're there or not. I'm sorry, everybody, bear with us. Let's see if we can manually unmute Hannah. Tom, Andrew, can you try and do that in the background? Is that OK? And we'll continue seamless. I like it! Anyway, I'll start and then hopefully Hannah can join us in a second. But we're really pleased that... there we go. Here's Hannah. Hello, nice to see you. We're really pleased that you can both join us today and that the tech is actually working. So that's great. And so we're just going to spend the next 10 minutes or so just having a little bit of a chat just to hear a little bit about your experiences and working in a similar type role through the Together Fund. So I've got a couple of questions, if that's OK. So Ashley, if I'm alright to come to you first, could you just introduce yourself, your organisation and just tell everybody a little bit about the role that you've previously played to help support community groups access funding?
[00:17:20] Ashley: Yeah, sure. So I'm Ashley Ahlquist, I'm from Versus Arthritis, and we're a national
charity helping to support people with arthritis. I'm actually sitting within the physical activity team. I'm the physical activity manager and we're one of the partners who have been distributing funding as part of both the Tackling Inequalities Fund that it was previously called and now the Together Fund on behalf of Sport England. And I've been leading on the project with three teams internally. It's been really exciting. We've been working with the fundraising team, the awards team and the physical activity team. So it's been a real kind of collaborative effort internally as well, which is quite exciting. But previously our kind of experience with community groups from a physical activity perspective hasn't included giving people access to funding. It's more been about kind of working together with community groups to deliver projects together mainly, so slightly different.
[00:18:15] Kirsty: Thanks, Ashley. And Hannah, can I come to you please? Same question, if you'd
like to just introduce yourself and give a little bit of an overview of your experience in supporting community groups.
[00:18:25] Hannah: Sure, yeah. I'm Hannah Worth, I'm one of the directors at Active Devon. Active Devon is one of the network of active partnerships. Many of us were involved in distributing the Together Fund and the Tackling Inequalities Fund throughout the life of that programme. For us in how we manage that work, we made it part of a number of colleagues' roles within the team. So it was a small part of a lot of people's jobs during that time.
[00:18:56] Kirsty: OK, thank you. And so thinking about that role that you've both played, what do you think has been the most valuable in terms of that support and the different types of support role? What do you think has been the most valuable or beneficial to the community groups that you supported? Hannah, I'll come to you first, if that's OK.
[00:19:14] Hannah: So when you asked me to do this bit, I went back and looked at the impact report that we produced with a lot of the partners and the groups that were involved and just pulled out a bit of what they were telling us. What I did know and thought was interesting is that from a team perspective, on average, the team spent between 15 and 18 hours with community groups going through that process. And that development time did increase when they were working with particularly challenging areas or priority audiences and also when we were doing specific work around their sustainability and resilience. That often went up to kind of 25, 30 hours there as well.
[00:19:54] Hannah: It's really common for the community groups, and I know this will be common across the network. One of the most valuable things that they found was the time that we spent with them and the ability to be able to spend that time and support through the whole process. And that time often involved a lot of reassurance. So we were working a lot of the time with groups and people that did not have as much experience of preparing bids or doing things like writing business plans. So to be able to work on a deeper level to take them through a lot of that process and help them in their skills. That's stayed with them. So to quote one of the groups: "What you taught us enabled us to go on and be successful with other funding pots by ourselves." And we're really grateful for that and really proud of what we've achieved beyond just the Together Fund. So I thought it's quite a nice quote of them kind of continuing to take that skill on.
[00:20:50] Kirsty: Yeah, that's really nice. Thanks, Hannah. And I think that intensive hand-holding is definitely something that we've heard through the engagement as well, through the Together Fund but also through the engagement for the Movement Fund. And it's absolutely something that hopefully you can see that's reflected in that role that's emerging. And Ashley, how about you?
[00:21:10] Ashley: I kind of did the same thing really and went back through all our impact reports just to see what the community groups had actually said and two things that stood out. So before people had applied for the funding, the organisation, the community groups find it really beneficial to actually just speak to us about their project. So just have that kind of really informal chat and actually just have a bit of a conversation really about what they were planning. And it gave them the opportunity to ask questions. We could go through the criteria, through the funding in a bit more detail. It was very kind of non-critical, non-judgmental, just a really kind of excited and informative call.
[00:21:49] Ashley: And then I looked through what we'd asked community groups after they've received the funding, and we said, well, what support other than financial might be really beneficial for you? And the three areas of support that came up were networking and resources, marketing and community engagement, and then staff and training needs. And generally from kind of working on the fund, we found that actually introducing the community groups to each other was really beneficial and allowing a space for those groups to actually network with each other and see how they can perhaps help to support each other. And then finally, you know, we benefited from working with community groups too. So we talked about how the community groups benefit; well, we benefited from learning from them as well. You know, it's quite often we would learn how to reach other more culturally diverse communities. They do it much better than we do. So there's lots of things there that I think were quite fascinating.
[00:22:45] Kirsty: Yeah, thank you, Ashley. And that ties up the next question very nicely actually. So in terms of that, there's clearly loads of really great benefits to the community groups, but that was something I was interested to ask you actually, in terms of the wider benefits to you and your organisation. So you've already touched on one example there, Ashley, but are there any other examples that either of you have?
[00:23:03] Hannah: I did also write down that almost exact same thing. So the learning and contribution to increased skills of our own workforce has been really notable in the wider service and support that we provide and the confidence of the team. So I had to quote that one as well. And I think this will be quite common amongst the national network as well. So the contribution that working in this way made to some of our wider system change-focused work and it was such an enabler to convene people together and it kind of changed the narrative and enabled us to bring people together in a different way.
[00:23:42] Hannah: And things changed as a result of that beyond just the funding. So new partnerships were formed and different challenges were tackled because different people were brought together. And so a good outcome of that is a strategic level within northern Devon, a partnership of a lot of the health systems delivering health services have now formally adopted physical activity. It's called Fipper, a tackling health inequalities through physical activity approach in northern Devon. And an Active Devon member of staff has now been invited onto the board. That all came out of the Together Fund collaborative application. So the contribution that working in this way has made to our broad work and our broader system partner work, it goes really hand in hand. And some of the partnerships that we've made on a more informal level have continued beyond the life of the fund as well. And I think the confidence in the team of the openness and collaborative approach with Sport England as well, and their confidence to bring the learning from that into other areas that they're working on. So like opening school facilities and work like that and actually being able to ask questions and get involved in co-design and think about doing things in a different way. It's much more
commonplace now. So that's been a really good outcome.
[00:25:11] Kirsty: Yeah, that's great. And it's great to hear about these wider benefits. And I
think you're definitely not alone. I know we heard a lot of that from our partners. So that's really great
actually. Ashley, was there anything else you wanted to add?
[00:25:23] Ashley: I think for us, it's been unique really because there's been three separate teams working together, which is new for us. And it's really demonstrated how we can work quite effectively together and deliver quite an impactful project internally. There's definitely a huge number of partnership and networking opportunities that have popped up as part of the fund. Like I've created new partnerships and started to run physical activity projects with partners that I might not have met otherwise. I mentioned that reaching more culturally diverse communities, but also just generally learning from different people. You get to speak to so many different people as part of this project. It's really beneficial. And as part of our impact report, we have got a whole list of benefits for our organisation as well as for the people who took part in the services and the actual organisations, the community groups themselves. We developed 181 impact case studies, which are being developed as part of the work. So that's not just beneficial for us and demonstrating how much impact we've had as part of the project, but also really beneficial hopefully for the community groups to be able to demonstrate their work for future funding.
[00:26:33] Kirsty: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that learning is really a key thing, isn't it, through that work but hopefully also the Movement Fund as well. And when we do have that learning and evaluation partner in place, I think they've got a really exciting role to play to help the network make sure that's really embedded from the beginning as well. That's great, thank you both. So I've just got one final question and we've got a couple of minutes left. Is there anything that you think that we could maybe build upon into thinking about that collaboration, or that support role, anything we could build upon through the Movement Fund? Or is there just anything else that you would like to share with any partners listening on the call if they're considering whether or not this is the type of role that they might want to do going forward?
[00:27:17] Hannah: There's something on my mind. One of the things I wanted to say when you have a conversation like this, you end up focusing on all the real kind of positive bits naturally. So I just wanted to share some kind of vulnerability, I suppose, in working this way that through the Together Fund work, there were times when I certainly felt a bit uncomfortable with the agile approach and the evolutionary approach and the genuine kind of co-design. Because it meant that not all the answers and all the kind of A + B = Cs were there all the time and you had to kind of go with a bit of discomfort. Sometimes it's like 'we don't have 10 KPIs here. We're working much more openly than that'. Ultimately what resulted was stronger and more representative of the people we're all here to be serving and supporting. But it did mean that sometimes it was a little bit grey and you had to... but because the values and the ethos nationally and locally were really strong, it's just kind of mucking through that slight ickiness together. So I just wanted to share that because I think we've all worked on funding programmes before and it's like targets and a kind of boxed approach. And we all know this work has to be different to deliver impact. And that sometimes means, yeah, a bit of grey.
[00:28:45] Kirsty: Thank you. I think we did as well from Sport England and I particularly have a phrase that I keep saying and I 'trust the process' and it felt uncomfortable for us at times too. But we did trust that process and I think it worked really well. And we want to try and continue and build that through into the Movement Fund as well. Any closing remarks from you, Ashley? No worries if not.
[00:29:07] Ashley: Hannah just put it so well, you know. I think it is tricky, but the benefits just outweigh the negatives, don't they? And I think you really kind of join a little family, which is nice. You're all in it together, which is what's powerful. And we sort of talk about collaborative working. Well, this is truly collaborative work. And we actually are all inputting and all our views are listened to and digested before decisions are made. So it's a great kind of family. And I certainly hope to be involved in the future in some manner. It's definitely a new way of working. That's fairly refreshing, really – difficult, but refreshing. I think other benefits could be you can create a bit of a wider network externally, you can create more potential partners and you can reach more audiences.
[00:29:59] Kirsty: Thank you both so much and hopefully everybody listening found that really insightful and helpful. So thank you. Andrew, I think I'll pass back to you just to move on to the next steps.
[00:30:10] Andrew: Thanks, Kirsty and thanks, Hannah and Ashley. That was brilliant. So let me get my screen back up. Can you see the timeline slide? OK, thank you. So to sort of build on that, the next thing we wanted to talk about was a bit more about the timeline and the process that we're going to follow from this point forward. And we know this is something that quite a few of you are interested in. It's one of the things that you've asked us about and were keen to understand more. I would love to be in a position today where we could give you an absolutely cast-iron timeline, down to the day, the minute that everything will happen in the next little while. But just building on Hannah's last comments, there is a little bit of grey here because we are trying to work in a collaborative, co-creative way. So we want to move as quickly as possible, but more than that, we want to try and get this right and do this the right way.
[00:31:17] Andrew: And part of that is we want the role and the process to be a collaborative one that we co-create with you together. That's going to be a little bit more time-consuming. There's going to be more uncertainty in that. We're going to need to work that through with you rather than sort of impose it upon you. But we feel that's the right thing to do. More broadly, we also recognise that some of the organisations which we think are very likely to be logical and natural partners to do this
work have got a pretty busy summer and autumn coming up, and other deadlines and commitments that they would need to fulfil as partner organisations. And we need to be aware of that, considerate of that, sensitive towards that. So with all those caveats, the timeline that we are working towards in terms of the establishment and rollouts of the Movement Fund Partner network, there'll be further engagement throughout the rest of May and June. And as part of that, we are hoping to host an event in late June where we want to bring together in-person a range of partner or potential partner organisations and really have a particular focus on that and exploring what a collaborative Movement Fund Partner network might look like in practice.
[00:32:28] Andrew: So how would a a partner with a geographical focus work most effectively with
a partner that has perhaps an audience-led focus? And other considerations might be how would partners with complementary skills work effectively together? Some might be brilliant at identifying and bringing projects into the process, others might have real strengths about supporting them through the application process itself and maybe the post-award process to make sure their projects are as successful as possible. So that's the key thing we want to do there. We then are aiming to open the
application process over the summer itself with a view to onboarding the initial network of partners in the early autumn, ideally during September. But I think the more we've sat down as a team internally and thought about that, the more that feels quite a challenging and daunting timescale. We want to go as quickly as we can but, as I say, in the right way, bringing people with us as we do that. And that's perhaps the more important factor, we'd then like the initial partner or network of partners to be in place as quickly after that onboarding process as possible. We would love that to be from autumn onwards. October would be amazing. But again, I think we just need to be realistic about the timescales and we recognise that that's quite an ambitious timeline and may need to flex and be extended slightly, if that's the right thing to do.
[00:33:53] Andrew: Given that uncertainty, though, the thing we are absolutely committed to do is making sure that everyone who's signed up to this mailing list and has expressed an interest in being part of this Movement Fund Partner process, that we will keep you up to date on things as they progress. So that's at a very high level, where we're at in terms of the timeline on the work. I'm now going to stop sharing as we move into the time that we have for questions and answers.
[00:34:27] Andrew: OK, so we have questions coming in from a range of sources. As I said at the outset, some of you sent some questions into us when you registered for this session and I'll try and perhaps pick up some of those first. Tom and Rosie, who have joined us from Sport England have also been very kindly monitoring the chat as we've been going through. I've been trying to keep an eye on it as well while I've not been presenting and we'll between us relay those questions and try to respond them here just for the benefit of those people that will be watching the recording. When we go through those, we will read out the question and then respond to that in turn. And then anyone who wants to pop their hand up and ask us a question live within the session is very welcome to do so. But as we said before, if you don't want to come on camera and off mute, please just post something in the chat and we'll pick it up there.
[00:35:22] Andrew: So if I start with the questions that we received prior to the session, I think several of those we've picked up there were arranged around the role and the timeline, which hopefully Kirsty and I have done our best during the session to explain to you the current thinking and situation on that. But please do let us know if there are further questions you'd like to ask us or anything you'd like clarified on that. Questions we haven't covered that we'd received in advance. So the first one was, are we able to fund faith groups? And I think the short answer to that is yes, we are very comfortable funding faith groups through the Movement Fund. We do have some expectations around organisations being formally constituted on a not-for-profit basis and some expectations around the the openness of the organisation in terms of its structures and its membership. But yeah, I think there'll be a range of faith organisations that fit very comfortably in that situation and we'd be very happy to work with obviously on the basis they would have an eligible project as well.
[00:36:25] Andrew: But again, our our sense of an eligible project is very broad in terms of its ability to support support physical activity. So I think there'll be some faith-based organisations out there who will be perfect for the Movement Fund and they'll be able to be just the sorts of organisations that we would want to be able to work with and invest in through the fund. For those organisations that are unable to accept lottery funding, we can also offer Exchequer funding as part of the support we would give to them.
[00:36:53] Andrew: The second question that we've had, which probably is more directly relevant to the Movement Fund Partner role, was about how will involvement in the place expansion work affect eligibility for the Movement Fund Partner role? I think probably the overriding thing here to say is that we really want the Movement Fund to complement place expansion investment. And this is something we're currently working through with our colleagues who are leading on the place partnership investment at Sport England. I don't foresee many, if any, situations where geographically focused partners' involvement in the place expansion funding would make them unsuitable to be a Movement Fund Partner or vice versa. I think the only situation I could see that potentially occurring is where the entire geography that a partner might be working in is covered by place expansion funding and that funding is fully in place and covers all the needs of that geography, both development and delivery
needs in the area.
[00:37:50] Andrew: But my understanding of the investments and how those are likely to play out, and I think in the existing place partnerships that we have, is that those investments typically are targeting quite specific geographies within a wider geography. So it might be a new set of neighbourhoods within a local authority. And the role of the Movement Fund there, I think, is really to wrap around that focused investment and make sure we can support the whole community and that place where there are good projects. Or it might be a whole local authority, but it sits within a wider active partnership area. And again, we would want to be working with the partner there to make sure we can support the whole of the geography and everyone that lives within it. So, it's something we need to give further careful thought to, how the Movement Fund and the place expansion investment will sit alongside and complement each other. But yeah, we absolutely want to make sure that across those two types of investment, we're able to support the widest possible range of investments across the whole country.
[00:38:51] Andrew: So those are the two that came in advance. And Tom, Rosie, if I could turn to you to just sort of lead us through some of the questions that come through the chat, that would be great.
[00:39:01] Thomas: Thanks, Andrew. And just to say as well, we will do our best to get through all of these, but if we don't, then we'll send round a summary afterwards just to try and answer as much as we can. We'll focus for now on the Movement Fund-specific questions. There are a few other general questions. It's also important to say some of the questions in the chat have already been answered, but for the purpose of the recording, we're trying to address those at the same time as well. But in terms of those that we've got now, does the Movement Fund Partner role involve identifying organisations who could apply and supporting them to ensure a broader range of organisations
apply or would organisations who are already interested in applying to the fund be funnelled to Movement Fund Partners?
[00:39:42] Andrew: OK, should I try and answer that one? And Kirsty, Tom, Rosie, come in if you have a different perspective on this to me, but I think a bit of both really. I think we would absolutely want the partnerships whereby we can bring through the best organisations and projects from the communities, particularly those that perhaps wouldn't otherwise have naturally come forward for funding. But I think there will be some instances where organisations come forward via other routes where perhaps there are slight blind spots in local networks or whatever it might be. And once we've identified those projects and the potential of them, I think it would be great if our partners could get alongside them and support them through the process where that's appropriate to do so. So I think it's a little bit of both in my mind.
[00:40:28] Thomas: Great, thanks. Assuming the partners will not all be active partnerships and they were looking for different partners as well?
[00:40:38] Andrew: Yes, in a word. And I guess the way we thought about it mostly, up to this point,
and I've probably spent a lot of time poring over both our strategy and our implementation plan in recent weeks and months, thinking about how we apply it in the Movement Fund and we operationalise it. We talk a lot about the people and the communities that most need our help. And I think communities speaks often to geography in a place. People is more about audience. And I think it's great that we had both Ashley and Hannah as our guest speakers today, one with a real focus on a particular audience that's a priority for us, in people living with arthritis, and one that had a real focus on a geography, in Devon. And I think we want a really rich mixture of both. And I think sometimes the real magic will be when they come together and we think about a project which is a real audience focus in a place and it really makes sense in that place. So I think we want a range of partners that can help us reach both the people, audience and communities, places that we most want to support and work with.
[00:41:54] Thomas: Thanks. Next question is do we have a minimum standard with regards to
business plans with governance and will their support be offered to the network of partners to upskill
and assure everyone's on the same page?
[00:42:11] Andrew: I think the exact support package is yet to be figured out. But yes, it's one of the things and I think it's been a reflection of some of the organisations we've spoken to who have worked on the Together Fund Partner. There were things like governance, which were recurring issues that needed to be addressed and worked through with organisations that were coming forward for funding. So if that's one of the things we need to make sure our partner network can support with, either by upskilling them or giving them the tools or the signposting that they need to be able to make sure that those organisations and projects can access that, that's absolutely something we should look to build into that support package.
[00:42:53] Thomas: Next question's had a lot of love in the chat and we've heard this quite a lot as well in previous sessions we've run, but will Sport England be sharing information with partners about who has and who hasn't been funded in our areas?
[00:43:07] Andrew: Yes, and I personally think we need to go further than that as well. So it's not one of the most exciting things we've had to do in getting the Movement Fund in place, but we've done quite a bit of work about data impact, data privacy and impact assessments. And part of that has been thinking about how when we bring the Movement Fund Partner network on board, how do we make sure that they have the visibility they need to do their job effectively? I think absolutely that would mean partners understanding where investment has or hasn't gone. And I think transparency about the reasons for that. So I hope there won't be large instances of us reaching decisions on funding that feel odd or strange or out of kilter with what the partners feel about the projects. But if there are, we need to be honest with each other and work through that.
[00:44:02] Andew: But I think that's personally not enough. I think a partner will need to know things like when a URN, as we call it, but a record on our grant system has been created. I think they would want to know when a project has been submitted. So I think there are a range of points throughout the life-cycle of a project when we need to be able to share that data in an appropriate way with the partners so they can understand where the actual touch points to get close to and support those organisations are, and perhaps help them along the way.
[00:44:38] Thomas: Thank you. I will just pick up a last couple because we're running out of time, but so apologies if your question doesn't get picked up. But has consideration been given to partnership funding opportunities to ensure this funding has additional impact? Is there a potential role for partners and linking them with regional, local or place-based funding opportunities?
[00:44:57] Andrew: So partnership funding for the Movement Fund Partner role... OK, I'll be honest, it's not something I've thought about in detail, but yes, if there are opportunities for us to make, as Kirsty said, the relatively limited funding we'll have available to support this role, to stretch that further, I'd be quite interested and excited by that. So if the person that asked that question has any thoughts or suggestions on how we could do that, I would love to pick that up with them.
[00:45:29] Thomas: And it's tricky to choose the last one but is there more information available about
the place needs classification tool? And is it possible to access a CSV file on this? And where can we find more information about it?
[00:45:48] Andrew: Yep. So, I think it's basically one we need to take away and think about a little
bit. Without getting into the details of it, there's one data source in particular there where we are respecting the partner that shared the data with us. So this is around the community needs index and their rights to share that data in a release that they want to do later in the year. So that's partly why if people have used the tool so far, certain bits of data have been suppressed. But yeah, absolutely, we'll take away the request and we'll see what we can do on that.
[00:46:29] Thomas: Thanks very much. I think we'll leave it there.
[00:46:33] Andrew: OK. So I think that just leaves me to say thank you so much to everyone for your time and interest and engagement today. Please look out for further communication and invites to events and I think I probably speak on behalf of everyone at the team here: we really look forward to working with many of you on the future on this. So thank you.
