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It’s time for external funding officers to embrace performance management, argues Murray Macdonald

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One of the joys of working for a local authority is the contact with real people and being able to offer support and advice that directly improves their lives. I am sure that all lottery officers will have enjoyed the sense of fulfilment that comes from working with a group through to a successful conclusion. The community group that refurbished the village hall, the sports group that gained new equipment or the local theatre’s roof repair all resulted in a sense of achievement. Imagine, then, my delight, when in May I was seconded to the corporate offices to work on the Government’s latest inspection regime, the Comprehensive Performance Assessment.

Having left the real world of service delivery and entered the darkness that is corporate planning, I was surprised to discover that CPA was concerned with how well we satisfy communities’ needs. In fact CPA is no different from Best Value or even common management sense in that it asks questions such as: What did you plan to do?, Why?, What did you achieve?, and Did it make a difference to people? All wrapped up in thousands of pages of government documentation. We have completed our CPA self-assessment of the authority and are awaiting the arrival of the Audit Commission’s inspection team. During this lull I have been reflecting upon how important external funding has become in delivering many of the priorities that we identified within our self-assessment. Lottery funding plays an important part, but in order to be effective the lottery team must know how it fits into the bigger council picture. In short, could the lottery staff answer those same CPA questions? It is clear that external funding is a thriving field among local authorities. This should come as no surprise: much of our work operates within a competitive bidding culture, and councils across the country have invested time, staff and money to ensure that they ‘win’ the game. Indeed, in almost every area of council work, officers can be heard to complain about the amount of effort and time they ‘waste’ completing funding applications. 

In these times of league tables and performance management you would expect councils to know how well their investment in the funding game is performing, both directly in council applications and indirectly as support to community bids. And since the Government is committed to competitive bidding for many of its funding streams, you might think there would be comparative analysis of councils’ performance in securing funding.

A quick search through the Audit Commission’s website confirms that while it carries out inspections in all the major areas of council work, under the heading of lottery or external funding, you will find not a single review or analysis of efficiency and effectiveness. It can only be a matter of time before Best Value and CPA shine a spotlight on the job of external fundraising and support for community groups.

How should funding officers react? One option is to run to the hills, bury our heads in sand and hope these threatening notions will go away. A common enough strategy, but a risky one that is unlikely to deliver service improvement! In the new financial environment funding officers are central to many of the projects that councils undertake and are well placed to influence the delivery of their councils’ priorities. Much better, then, to grasp the new agenda and ensure that our service moves from a reactive support role to one of actively promoting corporate priorities for improvement. By identifying appropriate funding opportunities, developing strategies and plans to support those opportunities, leading the bidding team and reporting on performance funding, lottery / external funding teams can move from the poor relation to the core of corporate management. Here, based on my own recent work, are some suggestions as to how a council should benefit from its lottery team in the performance management world.

1. Know what we want to achieve.
The best councils have priorities that deliver on issues of real importance to their residents. Lottery officers must play

an important part in this delivery, not simply in securing money but innovatively chasing opportunities, lobbying regionally and nationally, bringing partnerships together and working outside of traditional boundaries to secure the desired outcomes. Don’t invest time and staff chasing £5,000 Awards for All grants when the council’s priority is a multi-million pound health clinic.

2. Set out to deliver outcomes not structures.
 Partnership is frequently the key to successful bids and yet all too often lottery officers are seen as a council function. The voluntary sector and other public bodies have as big a role in the process as we do, particularly with the development of Local Strategic Partnerships / SIPs. Explore the possibility of multi-agency funding support teams that can take advantage of the existing partnerships and focus on the cross-cutting priorities that matter to local people.

3. Embrace performance management. 
Senior managers and councillors must have a full picture of funding in order to balance opportunity and risk. Open and transparent systems must be in place that ensure funding delivers on priorities rather than allowing funding to drive delivery. When the latest NOF scheme is announced you must be able to show that an investment in the application will bring tangible improvements in line with the council’s own priorities. Performance should be measured not simply in terms of how much money is levered into the locality but how successful we are against the total available, how well we compare to other areas and what outcomes have been achieved. Multi-million pound awards mean nothing to people until they are turned into jobs created, children’s play areas developed or heritage sites saved. CPA and Best Value are good tools to help us focus on both ends of the process and move successfully from identification of need to delivery of lottery projects that change people’s lives.

Murray Macdonald is senior lottery officer at north-east Lincolnshire; email murray.macdonald@nelincs.gov.uk