"You said, we did….”

In February a number of voluntary organisations, community groups and social enterprises completed the Salford CVS pulse check. First of all, thank you to everyone who took the time to complete it. The survey provided valuable insight into your work and what you need from us as an organisation. The findings from the survey can be found in this short report. This article isn’t focusing on the report it's about letting you know how we used your insight to make a difference!

Informing the public sector

The information you gave us about the priority areas of need and demand has been fed into the public sector and broader stakeholders in a variety of ways.

Firstly, Salford CVS complete a similar pulse check regarding emergency response and need every two weeks – insight from this helps inform the VCS Emergency Partnership with their work influencing national policy both with government and the NHS.

Secondly, the intelligence and information you gave us has been fed into a range of strategic meetings within Salford and Greater Manchester. Ranging from the Salford Estates Management group (which is about buildings and spaces) through to humanitarian aid groups responsible for ensuring access to food.

Last but not least your information is helping to share the communications and engagement approach within the city. Both through feedback into the cities communications and engagement work but also by helping us to shape programmes such as Trusted Voices and our Community Champions work (soon to be launched – watch this space).

Shaping our support to you

Through the pulse survey, some organisations shared with us very specific support needs and our development team will be getting in touch with those groups individually.

In terms of the common requests here is an overview of our work so far:

Finding and applying for funding

The Salford CVS development team are here to help you with any funding needs that you may have. Whether that’s finding suitable funding sources or refining your project plan and bid. You can:

• Visit our funding portal to find grants or download our latest funding bulletin
• Contact our development team for support or call the office on 0161 787 7795
• Check out our funding focus sessions and Win that Bid workshops for insight on creating that winning bid
• Salford CVS Grants Programme – Thanks to funding from Salford CCG we continue to deliver grants to the sector and our members. New grants available from Salford CVS for 2021/22 will be listed on our website from mid-late April 2021

Reopening support

Salford CVS development team are here to support organisations with their reopening. We are running training on risk assessments and continue to do so. We’ve also provided advice and guidance to groups as the situations involved via our communications and our guide for groups on the website as well as running training on designing and updated services. You can also call the office on 0161 787 7795 or contact us here for further support.

Additionally, we are signposting to supporting offers for the sector including health checks and lateral flow testing opportunities. Salford CVS also shared the challenges being faced by the sector regarding venues and facilities through a paper to the Salford Estates Management group. As we move out of restrictions we will be revisiting this work.

Volunteer management and recruitment

Our development team and Volunteer Centre team are still here to support groups with these needs and we are actively looking at transitioning our emergency response volunteers into more sustainable volunteer roles within the community as lockdown ends and restrictions ease. As we move out of lockdown we are keen to run additional training sessions to support volunteer recruitment and volunteer good practice. As part of this, we have a course coming up on the 29 March that will explore Managing Volunteers Through Change and will be delivered by volunteer management expert Laura Hamilton.

Digital, social media and cyber security

Salford CVS continue to support groups in these areas including signposting to a range of resources and expertise through our digital library resources. February also saw the relaunch of our DigiComms programme that brings regular training focusing on digital communications and social media (join our next session looking at how to create Attention Grabbing Graphics on 27 April). February also saw the launch of our new course Introduction to Cyber Security aiming to give small groups the essential information they need to know in this area. Salford CVS continue to lead the GM VCSE Information Governance group covering all things linked to data protection more information including our small organisation toolkit and how to sign-up to the IG leads forum can be found on our website.

We will be running our next pulse check in the Spring (April 2021) but in the meantime, we hope you find this update useful both in terms of information for your group but also that those five minutes you spent completing the survey has helped to make a difference in both our covid work and our services to you. We look forward to seeing the next set of pulse responses but in the meantime any queries or questions please do not hesitate to get in touch!