| Useful resources |
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Page menu: Advice and information for groups
Advice and information for community groups and projects The following websites provide lots of useful information and services for community and voluntary organisations on a range of issues such as setting up a new group, looking for funding, and supporting volunteers: Support for Groups: a wealth of information for community organisations, including funding updates and information, information on governance issues, running events, setting up a group, managing staff and volunteers, and much, much more. Resource Centre: their website has lots of handy information on funding (see their Favourite Funders), setting up a group (e.g. info on different legal structures, writing a constitution), dealing with money, and much more. You can also visit the Centre to get this information, hire all sorts of equipment, and use their affordable printing service. They’re located at 6 Tilbury Street, Brighton BN2 0GY. Working Together Project: a local organisation that runs loads of useful training courses aimed community organisations (paid staff and volunteers). Courses cover topics such as fundraising, dealing with difficult people & situations, confidence building, boundaries and confidentiality and much more. Community Base Venue Search: looking for a place to hold a meeting or event? Have a look at Community Base Venue Search which has details of hundreds of venues across the city. Making Local Food Work: lots of advice and information for food projects, co-ops and social enterprises. If you’re looking to set up a new initiative such as a buying group, community supported agriculture project or community shop, this is a great starting point. You’ll also find useful information about legal structures and governance issues. They also run training courses on these issues. Get Legal: every group must decide which legal format to take and this is an online one stop shop with all you need to know to get started. Find out what you need to consider before you set up and learn about governance structures. There’s also information to help you work out the best legal form for you, resources where you can get more info, and a decision making tool to help you choose your legal form. Money in Mind: this programme provides free support to small community organisations around managing finances. They can offer advice about setting up or improving your accounts system, independent examination of accounts, help with managing grants and much more. Community and Voluntary Sector Forum (CVSF): if you've not done so already, you should join CVSF. It is free to groups across the city, and membership helps give you a voice in issues affecting the community sector - there's a useful email list too where you can post and receive info to keep up to date with courses, events and issues around Brighton & Hove.
Many funders require projects to have certain policies in place to ensure that they are taking into account the safety of staff, volunteers, people that visit your projects and that they respect diversity. Even if you are not fundraising it is generally considered best practice to have these policies in place so that you can demonstrate you are aware of the issues and taking steps to be as safe and accessible as possible. Moulsecoomb Forest Garden and Wildlife Project have kindly offered to share their organisational policies so that other food growing projects do not have to start from scratch. We have turned these into templates that food projects can adapt to create their own policies. Click on each to download a Word document. We also have a sample risk assessment that we can share - if you'd like to see this please contact Ann on 01273 431718 or email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Health and safety policy (26 kb) Equal opportunities policy (22 kb) Child protection policy (57 kb) Risk strategy (26 kb)
The Harvest website offers lots of information to help you grow your own, including monthly growing tips, a ‘starter pack’ for beginners and other handy resources. We also run training courses on food growing to help you get more of your garden or allotment. There are several local and national organisations offering great advice about growing, have a look here.
Networking and training for food projects in Brighton & Hove There are so many great food projects in our city, but fairly few opportunities for projects to come together to meet each other or share ideas and resources. We think there’s great potential for projects to learn from each other and support each other. Over the year we will be organising occasional networking events and training courses for projects. Look out for networking events coming up this autumn. We're always interested to hear your thoughts on training courses or other resources you'd find useful. Contact Ann with your ideas! |
There's lots of useful guidance out there to help new projects get up and running, as well as handy information for existing projects. Whatever stage your project is at, we've pulled together some resources we think might come in handy.
