Growing the Social Economy through Collaboration, not Competition

Over a number of years Oxford City Council’s Economic Development Team have developed strong working relationships with a number of local partners and has worked collaboratively to address the opportunities, gaps and needs of the social economy support sector as a whole.

The council took a decision to invest £35,100 of its UKSPF allocation to extend and strengthen the work of these local partners, to help deliver a number of outputs and outcomes identified in its UKSPF investment plan, including:

• Social and local businesses receiving non-financial support
• potential entrepreneurs supported to be business ready
• training sessions for community ambassadors
• support socially excluded people accessing support

Why was a grant used?

Rather than follow a competitive procurement approach for contracting these services, the council took a decision to direct award the funding as a grant to a coalition of local partners and co-develop the scope of services through a transparent and open dialogue.

The question of value for money was addressed by fixing the amount of funding available, and working in dialogue with partners to estimate the outputs and outcomes that were achievable, then ensuring that the input costs represented fair compensation, based on local and national market rates.

As asset-locked social enterprises coming together to work for a shared purpose, there was no commercial, ‘profit- making’ incentive for partners to overstate costs or narrowly target performance at the expense of quality – any surplus generated would be put towards increasing the delivery of outcomes within the available financial envelope. This impact has been further extended by the fact that partners were able to contribute significant match funding/ resources to the partnership.

By removing the competitive process and direct awarding the funding, the council was able to co-develop the programme of activity, without undermining the intention of partners to work together to further their shared aims. It was felt that a competitive procurement approach which put partners in competition for a limited amount of funding would be less conducive to the strategic goal of building a thriving and interconnected connected local support system.

The service design approach was heavily influenced by Power to Change’s lessons on growing the Social Economy; as well as research by Refugee Resource in Oxford, which found that entrepreneurs from global majority backgrounds are less likely to access mainstream business development support offers, and the findings of the Owned by Oxford Report. These sources all emphasise the importance of support that is tailored, local, and delivered through trusted relationships, as well as the (social) value of collaboration across different elements of the system.

The joint initiative was guided by a set of comprehensive aims and objectives designed to bolster Oxford’s social economy and foster positive impacts on the local economy, society, and environment.