Giving Compass' Take:

• Richard Collins highlights the importance of admitting fault in preconceived notions in order to accurately redirect COVID-19 funding to those in need.

• How might pride and excessive stubbornness create issues in actually helping communities in need? How can data play an important role in changing the narrative? What can you do to redirect COVID-19 funding to those most affected in your community?

• Look for vetted funds to help you redirect your COVID-19 funding today.

The pandemic has led to considerable changes to how we act and interact with each other, how we work, how we travel, and how we live our lives. It has also had a considerable impact on people, communities and places.

We here at Sortified have been discussing and examining the impact of Covid-19 and we thought that there was likely to be changes to needs and the issues within our communities. We were really lucky that Lincolnshire Community Foundation shared our thoughts, and commissioned us to look at how Covid-19 had impacted on communities across Greater Lincolnshire, and what that meant for funding crisis response and recovery across the community sector.

The clever folk at NPC built us a huge database that can be analysed and interrogated, but which looked at information based on pre-covid needs, the current position, and future needs. The finished article is an amazing resource, which will enable us to examine the needs and issues in all the places around Greater Lincolnshire, all through a Covid-19 lens.

It turns out though that the pre-covid data also showed that my perceptions and assumptions were wrong. My views on where needs were in Greater Lincolnshire had been incorrect, and as a result I had been aiming support at some of the wrong places, and not supporting places where need really was.

The issue then is, if I was wrong, who else is? Having had a few conversations with folk around the country, it is obvious that we haven’t taken a data-based or evidence led approach, or where we have it isn’t based on recent findings. This means that in lots of places we are getting it wrong, and we need to re-evaluate so that funding is aimed appropriately.

Read the full article about how to appropriately redirect COVID-19 funding by Richard Collins at NPC.