Administration services

Tender description

Access is seeking a strategic partner to deliver grant management services for charities and social enterprises in England for access's Enterprise Development Programme and other potential programmes over the 4-year remaining period of our current strategy and potentially beyond. Access is seeking a strategic partner to support the foundation’s work with essential grant management services. This role will predominately be to deliver grant management services for the Enterprise Development Programme (EDP) over the next 4 years. However as our programmes evolve we expect our strategic partner to play a flexible role in working with access to deliver other programmes and support as may be developed. We anticipate that the minimum value of grants to be managed through this contract to be 10 250 000 GBP but may be greater than that. The EDP provides a broad range of support to help charities and social enterprises make a transition to new enterprise models, or grow existing ones, with a focus on the models which are best enabled by access to finance, and on enabling organisations to utilise the tool social investment as part of that transition. The strategic partner is expected to undertake the following roles: Working strategically with access and EDP partners: — work with Access and the sector partners involved in the programme to design relevant grant products, — play a central role in the EDP partnership, contributing ideas to the further development of the programme both in relation to grant products and also in relation to other aspects of the programme as appropriate, — support the EDP partnership in how best to facilitate easy navigation for charities and social enterprises through the menu of support and to other relevant source of support. Promoting the programme and managing applications: — design and deliver appropriate marketing strategies in partnership with sector specialist networks, — advise on the best approach to managing demand and attracting high quality applications via either open application periods or specific windows, — manage the end to end customer journey for applicants and grantees, setting clear expectations about timescales for decisions and feedback and the work involved, — design and provide a simple and proportionate online application process for each grant product with support from access’s learning partner. Decision making: — develop and operate a proportionate and robust decision making process for each grant product, minimising turnaround times for decisions and setting clear expectations for applicants, — for unsuccessful applicants, provide feedback on how their application can be improved and/or signpost to other relevant sources of support. Awarding and managing grants: — for successful applicants, undertake appropriate due diligence checks to ensure appropriate use of public money, and provide relevant grant documentation for the charity to sign, establishing necessary milestones and with clear reporting requirements, — manage payment processes of grants in trances as appropriate to grantees. Draw downs from access would be made against a quarterly forecast of expected grants to be made to grantees, — gather monitoring information and data from grantees to ensure compliance with grant terms and conditions and to facilitate learning about the programme, and make this information and data available to Access, our learning partner and other EDP partners, — make data and information about the performance of the grant programme available to be published, — ensure adherence to all relevant laws, regulations (including State Aid), requirements upon Access (as per our grant agreement with DCMS) and best practice for grant making, — ensure high levels of customer service and respond to feedback from charities and social enterprises, as well as other stakeholders, about the programme.