Minutes:
Karen Walke of South Yorkshire Funding Advice Bureau (SYFAB) attended the meeting to provide a presentation on the work of SYFAB, which provided advice to Community and Voluntary Sector organisations on funding opportunities. SYFAB provided groups with free access to a database of 200+ organisations providing funding to CVS organisations in South Yorkshire, with the majority of those funders being locally-focused organisations. In addition to this service, SYFAB provided advice and feedback on funding applications and provided training opportunities to CVS organisations.
Ms Walke explained that her role was to build capacity for CVS organisations to successfully apply for funding. This role was currently funded for one year, from August 2017, and the targets for this were monitored by the Stronger Communities team.
The meeting noted that while the cost of the training programmes may not appear to be high, even small costs such as these could be too high for new, small organisations. Ms Walke explained that SYFAB needed to charge for these sessions in order to add to its grant-based income, and while there were charges for the formal training programmes, access to the database and personalised sessions to provide advice on funding applications were free. Ms Walke explained that those services were of more use to new or small organisations, while the formal training sessions were targeted more towards larger, more established organisations.
The meeting agreed that the funding database provided by SYFAB was extremely helpful for all CVS organisations in Barnsley and all organisations should be encouraged to sign up to the database.
RESOLVED:- That the Area Council thanks Ms Walke for her attendance.