Since 2017, the Lincolnshire Open research and Innovation Centre has been supporting businesses to access the information that they need to grow and develop.
We have supported more than 160 business with their journeys to starting up, growing, developing, innovating and scaling up, so we wanted to share how we have done this with various business types and sectors.
LORIC Support for the VCFSE Sector
Over the course of various projects, LORIC has provided research and data analysis support to a large number of voluntary, community, faith, and social enterprise organisations across Greater Lincolnshire, including: ACTS Trust, GoGro CIC, Lincolnshire Action Trust, Voluntary Centre Services, The Lincolnshire Refugee Doctor Project, Every-One and Shine.
How have we helped?
LORIC has been able to support these organisations in variety of ways, including hosting focus groups, conducting interviews, and creating surveys to gather stakeholder feedback in order to support them in understanding the social value of their projects and services.
We have also conducted desk-top research, analysed in-house project data, and identified lists of potential events that the organisations may want to be involved amongst a whole host of other things. You can read some case studies about how we worked to support these organisations here.
Examples of projects undertaken:
- Involved BGU students in focus groups to give feedback on marketing materials for a CIC
- Undertaken statistical analysis of baseline and end of project data for a wellbeing project run by a CIC
- Carried out a Social Return on Investment evaluation for food related community projects, including cooking projects and food banks
- Analysed feedback-form data from service users for a mental health intervention programme
If your VCFSE organisation could do with a boost, you may be eligible to receive FREE bespoke support via one of our UK Shared Prosperity Fund projects.
Funding is currently in place for businesses based in North East Lincolnshire, East Lindsey, Boston and South Holland. To check eligibility and to let us know what your organisation would like support with, please complete one of our short forms, and we will be in touch.
FOR SOUTH EAST LINCOLNSHIRE (Boston, South Holland or East Lindsey) CLICK HERE https://lnkd.in/eUBr5JNi
FOR NORTH EAST LINCOLNSHIRE CLICK HERE https://lnkd.in/eQ37h5wS
“The information LORIC helped us to obtain enabled her to develop our SROI report and ‘social value’ which we have used to evidence the greater value for money that we always knew sent ripples beyond the lives of our beneficiaries but weren’t able to demonstrate – now we can!”
Go Gro CIC
“The support from LORIC has been extremely beneficial and allowed us at Night Light to unpick potential barriers to people accessing our cafes. It also has enabled us to identify the impact we are having in the community. Having a professional analysis completed in this way, has empowered us to produce competent data and explanations when reporting to potential funders”.
Night Light Cafe Coordinator, ACTS Trust
“Partnering with LORIC to develop a data baseline for the programme has been key to unlocking the insight from which we will build a social enterprise growth approach. Voluntary Centre Services is not merely the only beneficiary though – as a local infrastructure organisation we serve communities, community groups and volunteers and the support from LORIC will impact our service plans”
VCS Local Access Programme Co-ordinator