Open sequencefree opened 11 months ago
@crowbot @zarino @emilyk383 @ashapond
After our meeting w/Changeworks | 2023-11-06 - Morven Masterton, Strategic Innovator and Service Lead...
I'm working on 🔥 Neighbourhood Warmth concept doc for Changeworks_NLCF Climate and Energy Fund_mySociety_Nov 2023 based on this strand of their work...
City focus – Trying to launch a project with Edinburgh City Council – met DM Labs via this – likely delivering a community engagement strategy for them in this financial year, then might be able to test different approaches to implementing that strategy, in a few different areas, next financial year.
So that we can structure our thoughts in a way that mirrors the Climate and Energy Fund's headings...
And try to share with Morven ahead of another possible call this Friday 10 Nov, along with an explanation that we're not sure we'll apply for the fund as we're awaiting a Lottery decision on a request for extension(?) to our current funding that would prevent us from applying to this if granted.
Grateful for a 👍 on this post if you're happy with that approach please!
@sequencefree sounds good to me, and I think that’s an ok summary of where we’re at re: Climate & Energy Fund.
great to see all this project thinking and partnership preparation! just to clarify that we don't know whether having a current grant from NLCF means that we can't apply for another (CAF) grant - I've asked this in a few emails but haven't yet got a response (from Andriana in the CAF team). Will keep chasing!
@ashapond @alicewilliams36 @emilyk383 @zarino
Comments welcome on 1st draft of 🏠 Neighbourhood Warmth brief for potential partners_NLCF Climate and Energy Fund_Nov 2023.
Tried to trim, reduce jargon and generalise. But it's maybe light on what we'd expect from a community engagement organisation. There may be a tension because I think we'd ultimately like to find out if Neighbourhood Warmth could sort of stand on its own two feet without too much active community engagement, but I suppose we might discover that anyway if people start involving others organically. Lots of projects in this space seem to have community champions, so might be something to consider there. I'm going to try and speak to HUBBUB again soon and mine our call notes with them, as they've shared a fair bit of experience on this front and I'd like to double-check that they're not planning to carry on working in this area. Call notes FYI:
Also instead of keeping the area scale question wide open as suggested in my email (pasted below), I've hinted at smaller-scale definitions of "areas" as I suspect the concept of place-based community is more meaningful at those levels in this context.
For simplicity's sake and given the time we have to get partners on board I'm thinking that we'd ideally partner with one home energy services supplier and one community engagement organisation that can both work in all three areas during the two years.
@alicewilliams36 Realise this contrasts with your suggestion of "3+ names of community partners in different areas of the UK" – assuming you're thinking quite far-flung areas! If we go down that route I think we might need to partner with an equivalent number of home energy services suppliers or one or two that span a fairly wide area e.g. https://www.futureproof.uk.net/our-services/ Could be tricky to find both types of partners in overlapping places, in the quantity we'd ideally like! And I suppose we risk herding cats if we have 7 partners in total!
Anyway, three areas is somewhat arbitrary but based on HUBBUB's experience I think it's a reasonable level of ambition and given Andriana seemed interested in their work I figure it's a sensible level at which to pitch.
There are placeholders and estimates in the document above (under the Outcomes sections) that may be somewhat dependent on where we work, what sort of supply of home energy services is available there and what challenges we encourage teams to tackle. Something we can firm up with partners I imagine.
I'll start adding to the checklist in the description of this ticket and trying to arrange calls while we finalise this document. Assuming I'll be the only essential attendee but please let me know if you'd like to join calls as essential or optional.
Ta!
Thanks Alice!
Happy to develop a brief.
One complication I'm anticipating is that we might now need viable partnerships to include a provider of home energy services + community engagement groups, and that the latter need to operate within the service deliver area of the former.
Partnering with Changeworks is attractive because: they're big enough that we could theoretically expand from 1 local authority area in year 1, to 3 areas in year 2. they have at least one relationship with a community engagement group (EdinBRIC). That said, I think they managed our expectations about scaling their whole house retrofit service by suggesting that the supply chain doesn't exist outside of Edinburgh and Glasgow.
To maximise potential partners I wonder if we should hyperlocalise the thinking in 🔥 Neighbourhood Warmth concept doc for Changeworks_NLCF Climate and Energy Fund_Nov 2023 so that we're working in 1 neighbourhood area (apprx. 30k people) in year 1, then scaling to 3 neighbourhood areas in year 2?
If we were to take that approach I think it opens the door a bit wider to partner with individual organisations that deliver home energy services and community engagement e.g. community energy organisations that may only operate in one local authority area.
Will make a start and keep this question somewhat open for now but just wanted ton share my thinking in case I set off in an unhelpful direction. Assuming that sounds sensible I'll add a link to a draft brief to this ticket and build up the list of potential partners there too: Explore National Lottery Community Fund Climate and Energy Fund opportunity
Thanks!
Siôn
By 26 Feb – Follow-up meetings with partners for NLCF bid.
By 8 Mar – Add thoughts to Stage 2 doc.
Next steps
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