Using quality assurance for funding success - Play England

Using Quality in Play evidence to bid for funding
The Quality in Play process is based around
creating a portfolio of evidence. You will have
most of the evidence already – going through the
process is about getting it organised and
reflecting on how policies and procedures are
actually put into practice.
Do use your portfolio to show what you do
well. Funders will be interested in what
return (including social benefits) they will
get in return for their investment.
Don’t be afraid to use your portfolio evidence to
identify gaps in service provision and
show how you could do more for the
children and families that are in their
priorities. This is what they want to fund –
particularly where this shows how you
could meet their priorities with some
additional resources and how their
investment could make a difference.
Do include the costs of undertaking Quality in
Play in your funding or commissioning bids
as part of how you will evaluate the
difference you will make with their money.
As a tried and tested framework with an
external assessment and accreditation
element, it will help to reassure funders
and commissioners that your evaluation
will really tell the story of what difference
you have made.
Don’t forget that your funders and investors
will also have to explain to their trustees
or senior management what difference
their money has made – your story is what
they need.
Funding: a changing future
In these changing times there will be increasing
pressure on play providers in the public, private
and voluntary sectors to develop more businesslike
models, to create social enterprise to fund
core activities.
Local authorities and other public bodies are
much less likely to run grants programmes in
future as they move to a commissioning model
and new legislation requires them to consider who
else is best placed to deliver services. This will
mean competitive invitations to organisations to
provide the services they have decided are
priorities, rather than simply funding them to do
what they have always done in the past.
Charitable trusts and other grant-making bodies
will continue to give grants but with a tighter
focus on their particular priorities and areas of
interest. Other trends in grant-giving that are
likely to continue are a focus on outcomes (i.e.
what difference you made) rather than outputs
(i.e. how much you provided) and a reluctance to
continue funding beyond the period of the grant.
This means that play providers need to be very
clear about how they fit into grant and commissioning
priorities. Play providers also need to think
about how they can use charitable or other
grants to develop their service and capacity to
the point where they are ready to bid for commissions.
Some funding programmes support
community organisations to build capacity and
sustainability rather than direct services and can
help with the costs of external support and
expertise.
Quality in Play provides a framework for developing
your business case because it focuses on
what you do, how you do it and how this fits in with
the wider picture, in a way that will appeal to
funders and investors. All the time ensuring the
focus stays on the playing child.