Developing a Community Investment Fund Approach to Support the Greater Manchester Walking City Region Ambition

GreaterSport is looking for a GM-based partner to provide expertise and administration for a Community Investment Fund (CIF) to support the GM Walking City Region Ambition and wider GM Moving ambitions.

We are looking for an organisation to:

• Administer the fund on our behalf, utilising the learning from previous grant rounds
• Help us to work towards our key priority to integrate physical activity into health and care (see this pharmacy walks initiative for a relevant example)
• Ensure the fund complements existing local grant schemes
• Share any relevant learning arising from your administration of the fund.

If you’re interested in working with us, please review the below brief and send us your proposal by 5pm on Friday 10 June 2022.

Overarching aim of the GM Walking Region Ambition

To make Greater Manchester the first ‘walking region’ in the UK through enabling the greatest number of people possible to routinely walk for pleasure, personal or environmental benefit and travel convenience.

Aims of the GM Walking CIF

To create a grant approach that will provide resource to support the Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise (VCSE) sector to develop and deliver initiatives that:

• Enable everyday walking, empower formal and informal walking, and/or mass walking events, driven from within local communities, and/or
• Support the recruitment of ‘walking champions’ across the system, made up of organisations, community members and volunteers
• Are designed and executed with the long-term sustainability of the initiative in mind.

Please see the following case stories for examples of projects previously funded by the CIF:

• Bolton Lads and Girls Club
• Manchester Deaf Centre
• The Burnside Centre Sole Steppers

Objectives

Potential CIF grant applicants should demonstrate how they would support one or more of the below objectives:

• Support the engagement of individuals and groups that are known to be statistically more likely to be less active, such as people with disabilities, people from ethnic minority backgrounds, people from lower socio-economic groups and people with long-term health conditions
• Recruit walking champions
• Build and increase knowledge, capacity and confidence of local walking volunteers, champions and advocates
• Work with communities to understand key walking destinations, routes and local barriers to walking
• Support the development and use of liveable places and spaces in urban areas
• Support the use, maintenance and/or preservation of Greater Manchester green and blue spaces through increased walking opportunities and removal of barriers
• Engage with communities and businesses to encourage employees to walk to and from work and/or as part of the daily routine
• Work with schools and workplaces to help them develop and implement plans that promote active travel choices
• Provide coherent and consistent information and wayfinding to support travel and exploration on foot

Impacts

Potential CIF applicants should demonstrate how they would increase the health and wellbeing of communities by specifying how they would contribute to one or more of the below impacts:

• Number of new walking champions recruited, trained and deployed
• Increased community cohesion with communities and residents working together to promote walking
• Numbers of people engaged from targeted communities or populations
• Greater public awareness of the benefits of walking
• Increased understanding of the public views and experience of what prevents and enables people walking more
• More informed workforce on the benefits of walking and how to support people to walk more
• Change in attitudes to walking as a form of travel or activity as part of an individual’s daily routine
• Awareness raising to improve knowledge of local walking infrastructure
• Improved skills, knowledge and/or confidence of local walking volunteers, champions and advocates
• Increased political support for walking

Potential criteria for CIF applicants

• Demonstrate engagement of groups that are known to be statistically more likely to be less active, such as people with disabilities, people from ethnic minority backgrounds, people from lower socio-economic groups and people with long-term health conditions
• Demonstrate improvement of voluntary and community sector organisations working to improve health and wellbeing
• Demonstrate how ideas have been initiated from within the community they aim to support
• Explain how ideas have been developed
• Explain how you will try to ensure the long-term sustainability of the project
• Demonstrate understanding of local developments and awareness of existing local plans
• Demonstrate how as an organisation or group you plan to share learning and outcomes of the fund, including through storytelling
• Demonstrate how you would support the wider GM Walking campaign locally
• Demonstrate awareness and understanding of the GM Walking Region Ambition and GM Moving principles, including relevant Walking Region Ambition assets such as the GM Walking Festival
• Be willing to become a member of GM Walking Voice

Schedule

A suggested schedule is provided below:

Resource available

• £100,000 (inclusive of administration costs)

Additional considerations

We would like potential grant applicants (and all successful grant recipients) to be linked into and be able to benefit from our existing suite of GM Walking resources.

We work closely with our evaluation team who will evaluate the CIF initiative on an ongoing basis to gauge the reach and range of investments made, and which approaches appear to be most effective in supporting viable investments.

The organisation administering the fund will be expected to share information and learning to feed into this evaluation.

We will provide support and guidance on the most appropriate means of evaluating the impact of investments made on support for walking, changes in attitudes and increased volumes of walking on an ongoing basis.

Useful information/resources

• gmwalking.co.uk
• @GMWalks (Facebook/Twitter/Instagram)
• GM Moving in Action strategy gmmoving.co.uk
• GM Moving Integrated Health and Care
• GM Walking Voice
• GM Moving in Action: Community Investment Funds report
• Top 10 tips for distributing Community Investment Funds
• GM Walking Ambition Learning Event

Next steps

If you are interested in working with us on this, please provide a proposal (four pages maximum) covering the following to Carole Pollard (carole@gmmoving.co.uk) by 5pm Friday 10 June 2022:

• How you would administer the CIF on behalf of GM Walking
• How you would target potential applicants working with people that are known to be statistically more likely to be less active, such as people with disabilities, people from ethnic minority backgrounds, people from lower socio-economic groups and those with long-term health conditions
• How you would target voluntary and community sector organisations working to improve health and wellbeing
• Your knowledge of existing local grant schemes and how you would ensure the CIF would link in with/complement these
• A breakdown of all costs associated in providing management and administration of this fund
• An example or case study of how you have successfully managed and administered a grant system before

Contact information

If you have any questions please contact Carole at carole@gmmoving.co.uk or on 07793 558965 (normal working hours Tuesday to Thursday each week).