Using quality assurance for funding success - Play England

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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.
Find out more about Quality in Play. www.playengland.org.uk/quality Download A journey, not a destination, the Ludemos evaluation report on Quality in Play. www.playengland.org.uk/journey Engaging Communities in Play is a Play England programme offering a range of products and tools to increase the involvement of voluntary and community groups in shaping local play opportunities for children. For further information visit www.playengland.org.uk/communityplay Playful Communities is a dedicated website with a toolkit for anyone wishing to get involved in creating, improving and maintaining places where young people can play and spend their free time. The section on fundraising can be found here. www.playfulcommunities.org.uk/keeping_it_going/funding_and_sustainability.aspx The Children’s Play Information Service has a comprehensive selection of books, publications, articles and a photo archive on the history and development of play provision. A fundraising fact sheet can be found here. www.ncb.org.uk/cpis/resources/factsheets.aspx The Playday website has useful statistics and research data on what children and families say in a series of national polls. www.playday.org.uk The Playday ‘Get organised!’ guide has information on funding sources. www.playday.org.uk/playday_events/resources.aspx#201GetOrganisedGuide Play for a change is a comprehensive review of the scientific literature on children’s play. A short briefing and a link to the full report is here. www.playengland.org.uk/playforachange Play, naturally is a review of the evidence for the benefits of children playing in natural environments. www.playengland.org.uk/playnaturally The Demos report People Make Play looks at the impact of staffed play provision on children, families and communities. www.playengland.org.uk/peoplemakeplay Useful resources * The quotes in this briefing are taken from an external evaluation report A journey not a destination: evaluating the impact of Quality in Play (Ludemos, 2010)
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Using quality assurance for funding success - Play England

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