Get Ready for that Local Authority Contract

Recommendations for Improvements

February 2008

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Finance Hub
c/o Charities Aid Foundation
St Andrew's House
18-20 St Andrew Street
London
EC4A 3AY
E-mail: financehub@cafonline.org
Tel: 020 7832 3016
Web: www.financehub.org.uk

SCEDU
53 Mowbray Street
Sheffield
S3 8EN
E-mail: sdt@scedu.org.uk
Tel: 0114 281 4168
Web: www.scedu.org.uk

Pelican
Consult Pelican LLP
101 Avondale Road
Wavertree
Liverpool
L15 3HF
E-mail: info@consultpelican.co.uk
Web: http://www.consultpelican.co.uk

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Content list

1. Executive Summary 4
2. Introduction 5
3. Infrastructure organisations 6
4. Frontline Organisations 7
5. Funders / policy makers (including recommendations to Capacitybuilders) 8

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1. Executive Summary

o The work has produced useful results that will benefit from increased and
continued dissemination to the sector and to public sector buyers.

o The benchmarks need implementing to realise their value.

o Support from strategic funders could help the implementation of the

benchmarks.

o The benchmarks should be reviewed in due course and compared against the
private sector.

o Messages on contracting for third sector organisations need to be clear from

central government, Capacitybuilders, infrastructure organisations and public
sector buyers.

o Support needs to be targeted at what works, for instance the case studies
and the benchmarks identify what the characteristics of successfully
contracting organisations are.

o The work and evidence collected emphasises that third sector organisations
are successful when they focus on delivering what the customer (i.e. the
agency who is paying for the service) wants and competing as effective
businesses that know their direct and indirect costs and can price their
services accordingly. This message needs to be relayed to the sector and
replace the current focus on ‘proving added value’, ‘social impact’, or ‘full cost
recovery’.

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2. Introduction
SCEDU would recommend that the findings from this piece of work are marketed
widely to the third sector and public sector bodies beyond the life of the Finance Hub
and SCEDU’s contract. The work to date provides a good grounding of information
for the sector which in due course should be developed and expanded upon to keep
it relevant and up to date.

Learning from existing organisations and their successes and failures is an approach
that SCEDU would recommend is continued with this and other work in the field to
avoid duplication and assist with learning from what works.

Communication of this work beyond the third sector should be undertaken including
to public sector commissioners and procurement departments.

An online resource, such as the Get Ready weblog used during this contract, would
provide an area where documents and resources could be kept up to date and
provide a forum for interaction and shared learning between interested people.

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3. Infrastructure organisations

The case studies show examples where infrastructure organisations have been
useful in enabling and supporting front line organisations to win contracts.

With the right targeted support and information infrastructure organisations can be
well placed to continue and increase this role.

However infrastructure needs to ensure that it is providing the right information and
the right support for front line organisations. Many existing services provided by
traditional infrastructure is not tailored towards contracting and in some cases may
even be counter productive to encouraging organisations to get ready for contracts.1

The benchmarks make it clear that front line organisations need to operate as
effective businesses that can deliver what is required in a tender brief and who have
the necessary accepted policies and quality standards in place.

SCEDU would recommend that infrastructure organisations study the work from this
contract and acclimatise themselves particularly with the benchmarks document and
the case studies.

It would be beneficial to distribute the findings to front line organisations via

infrastructure organisations.

It would be useful to focus new and refocus existing support services to take account
of the findings and especially the benchmarks.

SCEDU would recommend that infrastructure organisations follow the principles of

benchmarking by learning from successful front line organisations in their
geographical area and reviewing their own support services annually to ensure that it
remains relevant. Infrastructure organisations should focus training and any support
on quality standards and systems that are currently recognised by public sector
buyers instead of relying on non-recognised third sector systems.2

1
Whilst developing the case studies and communicating with infrastructure organisations across the
country it was clear there was often a lack of understanding about contracting and procurement and a
general confusion with funding.
2
The case study organisations often had implemented or were in the process of implementing
standards such as Customer First, ISOs, Investors in People. Public sector procurement departments
on the whole were not aware of, or recognised, things such as Piqasso and social accounts.

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3. Frontline organisations

Learning from other people’s successes and failures can help you, as a front line
organisation, avoid similar situations and learn from what works. The case studies
show that organisations and individuals also learn from experience by trying new
ventures, experimentation and trial and error. Therefore if you want to be successful
with contracting, whilst this work will provide you with a good mechanism to move
towards becoming “tender ready”, ultimately trial and error will have to be employed
at some point.

If you work for, are involved with or lead a third sector organisation following the
benchmarks of success will give you an idea of how your organisation shapes up
compared to others.

SCEDU would recommend analysing how well your organisation currently meets the
benchmarks and creating a plan of action for areas that need working on. It may be
that there are areas above and beyond the benchmarks that are specific to your area
of business that will also need to be viewed.

An internal organisational assessment and a product and service assessment will

help you further benchmark your current strengths and weaknesses, and identify
your customers3. Resources available under each benchmark are listed in the
benchmark document that can help with this.

Evidence from this work shows that focusing heavily on “social impact” and “floor
targets” is not a good message to send to the sector. Organisations case studied in
this work show that they won contracts through being reliable, well run businesses
rather than focusing solely on trying to evidence any impact that is above and beyond
a tender specification.

3
See: the SCEDU Tender Readiness Toolkit. http://www.scedu.org.uk/toolkit.htm

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4. Funders / policy makers (including recommendations to
capacitybuilders)

Benchmarking as a concept and a mechanism is still in its infancy in the third sector,
despite longer use elsewhere. SCEDU would recommend that the ‘benchmarks of
success’ work is widely distributed to infrastructure organisations, front line
organisations, opinion formers and public sector buyers at the soonest opportunity.

SCEDU proposes the following future points for maximising the Benchmarks of
Success:

1
National support to help organisations put the benchmarks into practice. Regional
training on the benchmarks to disseminate to the widest possible audience and target
key third sector suppliers who want to get ready for contracting. This should focus on
areas raised in the benchmarks such as understanding the tendering process,
developing a track record, sales techniques and developing the right systems and
policies. A series of targeted training seminars using the materials developed for
FH13 would assist organisations to implement the benchmarks.

2
A two year longitudinal study into a sample of organisations following the
benchmarks would test the benchmarks in practice and their effectiveness. This
would highlight any areas that need adding to or bringing up to date. It would also
enable future case studies to be undertaken that encompass the journey
organisations make getting ready for contracting and then winning and delivering
contracts. This would provide a further bank of evidence for how the third sector can
supply the public sector and provide more learning materials for other third sector
organisations. It should be noted that getting ready to win contracts, and then
actually winning and successfully delivering them does not usually happen over night
and can take a substantial amount of time for any business or organisation as the
case studies show. Therefore a longitudinal study would track the progress of
organisations and would provide important data for testing the benchmarks and for
directing targeted support services in future.

3
A comparative study between third sector suppliers and private sector suppliers.
Lessons should be documented and learnt from private sector contractors who have
been successful growing their business through winning and delivering private sector
contracts. This would help to break down barriers between the sectors and avoid an
insular approach. A benchmarking process involving the private sector would help
test SCEDU’s benchmarks and refine them against a wider pool of evidence.

4
Explore partnering organisations at different stages of the journey of preparing for
contracts with organisations that have been successful. This ‘mentoring’ process
would help front line organisations to have a face to face contact with someone who
had already been through the process and could assist that organisiaton.

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Review the current benchmarks in one year’s time and at further intervals following
that in light of new findings. Further consultation and feeding in the evidence from
points 1-4 above would ensure the benchmarks remain effective and up to date.

Case studies

SCEDU has produced 12 case studies of third sector organisations with public sector
contracts.

The case studies produced provide good examples of a range of third sector
organisations supplying the public sector. However SCEDU would recommend that
further case studies are developed especially some in the south east.

Case studies on contracting by their nature date fairly quickly, although the learning
from these can still be applied and relevant. However there is value in keeping
examples up to date. It would be useful for the sector, in due course, if further case
studies were developed, possibly even submitted by organisations themselves and
posted to some central online resource such as the online get ready weblog.4

Bringing these case studies to life through presentation of them at events by the
organisations themselves was beneficial at the Get Ready seminar and would be a
good further use of them.

Floor targets work

A clear scope for further work into floor targets and their correlation to contracting will
be vital if any further work is to be undertaken. The area is clearly changing
massively and there is a lot of disparate work being undertaken into connected areas
such as social clauses, social impact, local area agreements and third sector
procurement. Keeping the sector and front line organisations up to date with these
changes will be a challenge as will prioritising what information is relevant to help
third sector organisations “get ready for contracting”.

However despite all of this contracting continues regardless. In the short and
medium term work of this nature will not necessarily help third sector organisations
that want to become tender ready, or indeed turn around a tender application.

Capacitybuilders, central government and other commissioners of work aimed at the

third sector and indeed the sector itself need to be clear and consistent about
information provided to the sector.

Evidence from this work shows that focusing heavily on “social impact” and “floor
targets” is not a good message to send to the sector5. Organisations case studied in
this work show that they won contracts through being reliable, well run businesses
rather than focusing solely on trying to evidence any impact that is above and beyond
a tender specification.

Get Ready Seminar

4
http://contracting.wordpress.com
5
These areas did not come up as priorities for case studied organisation’s that had won public sector
contracts

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The seminar event held in Sheffield to communicate the findings was well received
by the sector and included representatives from far afield as well as the Office of the
Third Sector. There was interest from other areas of the country and requests to
hold further seminars around the country sadly had to be declined due to time and
financial constraints.

Requests from organisations from other parts of the country to run the event in their
locality show an enthusiasm for the information and a thirst for the sort of information
covered in the event.

SCEDU would recommend holding similar regional seminar events around the
country to reach a wider audience and would suggest that these could also contain
work undertaken for FH12. This could help to cascade the learning to other
organisations and infrastructure bodies around the country and keep the up the
current momentum around this work.

The participation of one of the case studied organisations was deemed very
beneficial from the feedback and should be a key part of any future events.

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