Copy of letter sent 18 December 2006

 TO ALL VILLAGE HALLS AND COMMUNITY BUILDINGS IN NORTHUMBERLAND: OUTCOMES TRAINING

Dear Secretary
Many funders, such as the Big Lottery Fund and the Northern Rock Foundation, are placing more emphasis on “outcomes” in their application procedures. The Big Lottery Fund Community Buildings Programme is a good example of an application procedure that is heavily based on relating your project to “outcomes”.

The Community Council has received a number of enquiries and is already assisting some halls in this area but suspect the need for Outcomes Training is more wide spread. I am therefore writing to all hall secretaries to assess the level of need. If you are completing an application form, or are thinking about starting a project, you will need to become familiar with the new focus.

CCN is considering organising some training sessions in January / February 2007. Would your hall be sending a representative/s to such an event? Could you let us know as soon as possible (before 8 January 2007 would be preferable) stating whether your representatives would be available during the day, evening or both.

Finally, can I remind you that as from 1 January 2007 the Community Council will be changing its name to Community Action Northumberland?

You can reply in writing or by email to the address below.

Thank you for your help

Alan Hedley
Village Halls Adviser
Community Action Northumberland (formerly Community Council of Northumberland)
Tower Buildings
 9 Oldgate
 Morpeth
 Northumberland
 NE61 1PY

Postscript to this letter.
 Since drafting this letter I have received from ACRE an update (14 December) of information from the Big Lottery in respect of the Community Buildings Programme. The update follows discussion between other organsations that support community buildings (such as Community Matters, National Village Hall Forum, Urban Forum, DTA) and some questions posed by ACRE to the Big Lottery. The Big Lottery has told ACRE that the outcomes in applications to date have not been as strong as what they had hoped for. The update gives some examples of what the Big Lottery would describe as SMART outcomes. I think that the update explains the importance of getting the application right and urge any hall that is about to submit an application to the Community Buildings Fund to get in touch with the Community Council as soon as possible.
 
If you are not submitting an application to this programme but may be considering fund raising in the near future you should seriously consider the value of outpcomes training at this point.

I have enclosed a copy of the ACRE update for halls that I know are applying or have applied to the fund. If you have not received a copy you can download one from our website at the “support for village halls” which can be found in the “services” section of www.ca-north.org.uk or by emailing alanhedley@ca-north.org.uk

Download ACRE update 14 December 2006