Bristol Impact Fund: Coordinating council grant streams

This case study is one of five exploring how independent charitable funders and local, regional and national public agencies can work together in a given geographic area.

The case studies are part of IVAR’s wider work on place-based funding approaches, which includes Working in Place: A framework for developing and designing place-based funding approaches and Working in Place: Collaborative funding in practice. 

The Bristol Impact Fund (the Fund) brought together many of Bristol City Council’s voluntary and community sector grants from across the authority into one £3.29m pot with the aim of focusing spend on areas that would make the greatest contribution to reducing disadvantage and tackling inequality, through a lens of building social capacity and capital, and developing community resilience and self-determination. The agreed package was confirmed by the Council in March 2017 and the grants will run from two to four years.

The Fund has two further significant features:

• The criteria for funding and the allocations process were co-designed with the local voluntary and community sector
• Three independent funders were invited into the grant-making process as members of the allocations advisory panel