The Voluntaryworks Consortium presently has six members all providing infrastructure services to organisations across Bedfordshire and Luton.

They are:

• Bedford Race Equality Council
• Bedfordshire Advice Forum
• Bedfordshire Rural Communities Charity
• Community and Voluntary Service Mid and North
• Bedfordshire Voluntary Action Luton
• Voluntary and Community Action South Bedfordshire
• Voluntary Organisation Consortium for Children, Young People and Families
• Volunteer Centre Bedford

If you wish to contact individual members of the Consortium you can download the Consortium Contacts List here. 

Overall Functions of the Consortium

In order to deliver the Consortium's vision and achieve its mission members are jointly responsible for undertaking:

• To promote awareness and understanding of the roles of the Consortium and its constituent members across the sector and within other statutory, private and public agencies.
• To work collaboratively to make full and best use of infrastructure resources.
• To seek to develop a stronger representational voice for the sector by working in partnership, thereby increasing recognition by other sectors.
• To identify and respond to opportunities and threats facing the sector.
• To seek to achieve best practice and continuously improve the quality of services delivered through the sector, together with the selection and adoption of appropriate techniques to measure the quality and impact of services.
• To ensure that equality and diversity issues are addressed throughout the Consortium’s work.
• To identify gaps, shortfalls and insecurity in current structures and to reach agreement on ways of tackling them, whether by developing and transforming existing structures and/or by developing new solutions.
• To build partnerships with funders to secure stable solutions to fill those gaps and reduce insecurity in organisations that are working well.
• To establish protocols and mechanisms for joint working that will allow a ‘holistic’ approach to be taken and innovation to be nurtured.
• To co-ordinate and prepare a needs-led Infrastructure Investment Plan (IIP), Strategic Plan, Business Plan and action-based Delivery Plans.
• To seek endorsement of these Plans by the widest possible cross-section of stakeholders, including voluntary and community sector bodies, support agencies, commissioning bodies and likely funders.
• To develop investment proposals for these Plans as required.

Membership Criteria

Membership of the Consortium is open to third sector agencies based in Bedfordshire and Luton that provide infrastructure support services to voluntary organisations, community groups, social enterprises, volunteer-involving organisations and volunteers.  Organisations must be able to demonstrate that they provide at least three of the five following services:

1. the organisation pro-actively identifies needs in the local community and facilitates improvement in service provision to meet those needs;

2. the organisation assists local voluntary and community organisations to function more effectively and deliver quality services to their users, members and constituents;

3. the organisation facilitates effective communication or networking and collaboration amongst local voluntary and community organisations;

4. the organisation enables the diverse views of the sector to be represented to external bodies, developing and facilitating structures that promote effective working relationships and two-way communication;

5. the organisation enhances the sector’s role as an integral part of local planning and policy-making.

Organisations must also be a Signatory to the Consortium’s Partnership Agreement, a copy of which can be downloaded here.

Applying for Membership of the Consortium

Organisations wishing to apply for membership of the Consortium will need to complete an Application Form by downloading the word document here.  They should complete the Application Form, providing basic contact and organisational information as well as describing how the organisation meets the criteria. This should then be emailed to partnerships@action-southbeds.org.uk to enable this to be forwarded to other members of the Consortium, electronically.

The Accountable Body will send an acknowledgement of receipt of the application, usually within five working days.

Membership applications will be dealt with, and decided upon, by the Chairperson in consultation with members. Where there are objections to the application it will be discussed at the next Consortium meeting (meetings take place four to six times a year).

The Chairperson will advise the applicant organisation within 20 working days, following consultation with the members, if the application has been successful or if it is to be referred to the next meeting. In this instance organisations will be invited to attend to discuss their application.

If an applicant is unsuccessful, the Chairperson will write to the organisation, stating why their application has not been accepted. If the unsuccessful organisation wishes to appeal they may send a letter of explanation and /or submit their application for further consideration by the Consortium, which may, at its discretion, seek the opinion or external sources. The decision of the Consortium after this stage of the process shall be final. The Consortium is not able to cover the costs of an organisation applying for membership of the Consortium.

Induction

Successful applicants will be expected to download and study relevant/current documents about the Consortium and its activities from the website before meeting with the Chairperson and/or the Accountable Body. This should take place before attending (formerly) their first Consortium Meeting.

As part of their induction, organisations will also be provided with additional documentation, including dates of future meetings, budgets, monitoring and reporting arrangements etc. and asked to sign the Consortium’s Partnership Agreement.

If you would have any queries or would like further clarification on any of the above detail please contact partnerships@action-centralbeds.org.uk