Prime Active Communities CIC (PAC) is a community interest company that specialises in youth and community engagement. They are based in Hattersley and are currently delivering activities locally and in St Peter’s and Hurst wards in Ashton. PAC have been involved in the local delivery of the VRU (Violence Reduction Unit) work known locally as ASPIRE.
PAC have recently lost local authority funding and were looking to source new funding opportunities in order to continue providing their much needed youth services which include: detached youth work, Jam Pot Music project and other creative media activities.
PAC began working with Action Together's Community Development Worker Dawn to develop a funding and sustainability plan. Initial support included linking PAC with the local National Lottery contact Kerri, who advised the group to apply for Awards for All and The Lottery’s Million Hours grant. Dawn supported PAC through the application process including costings, evidence gathering to ensuring all the governing documents were in order.
We were delighted to hear that with the support of Dawn both applications were successful. PAC received £19,000 Awards for All and a further £49,000 from the Million Hours Fund. We are also thrilled to announce that recently they have been awarded £139,000 over three years from Children in Need.
In addition to supporting PAC to apply for funding, it was highlighted that they wanted support to build up their social enterprise offer to create a balance between grants and other available income, such as commissioning opportunities.
PAC’s Director, Mark Turton was able access our eight week Social Economy Accelerator offer and is now receiving one to one business mentoring support from Mantle to focus on growing their income generation as a Social Enterprise, increasing their and trade through commissioned activities and their wider workforce development offer for employment of youth workers.
Mark explains what a difference working with Action Together has made:
We were considering sending a member of staff on a paid training course to upskill them in bid writing, but we haven’t done this as Dawn has worked closely with this member of staff, who is now more confident and skilled in writing funding applications. We have found the one to one practical support has been far more useful than any training and now feel that we are able to apply this to the bids we are completing.
We have also received a lot of support on how to manage our business moving forward. Being part of the Social Economy Accelerator work has been very helpful. What has worked well for us is being with other like minded businesses, hearing other people’s stories and challenges and the peer support we have been able to give and receive.
The one to one support has been invaluable. Jody, from Mantell’s advice has been very useful. As the Director of a similar organisation, she has been able to help us look at our service delivery and start to plan for the future in a more strategic way.
The impact of this is that we feel back on track to deliver what we want to achieve, in particular, our school offer. We are also better able to focus on our main aims, and the social impact and value proposition elements of the support have been invaluable. We have become more engaged in partnership and networking meetings which is a positive.
All of this has a positive impact for the children and young people that we support and work with, and their outcomes moving forward.
