This is my first blog post here, so I probably should say hello and a bit about me.
My name is Julie and I own a tiny CIC called Diamonds Community Learning Project CIC. My passion is to use my teaching background to bring learning opportunities to local communities to enable them to learn needed new skills, improve their lives and ultimately facilitate them to take the next steps that they need in their learning journeys (whether that is to get an accreditated qualification in a College or get a job to be able to provide for their families!)
This Summer, I am trying to bring some additional money into my CIC. You see, until the past week, I wasn't sure how I was going to continue doing what I do. Our CIC's Bank Account has £50 in it! Yet, I had several Funding Applications in and was waiting for notifications of the award. A General Election meant the wait was longer than expected.
So, I decided to run "Summer Fun with Julie" where we run Cooking and Craft Workshops for Families in Solihull and Balsall Common. Attempting to reach a brand new audience is very hard. I'm attempting to get more visible on Facebook - but many local Facebook groups don't like people promoting what they are doing. So yesterday, I went to a Family Fun Event in Solihull, just a few miles away, to give out leaflets for some of the families there.
While I was networking with families, I said to one of them, "Much as I would love to be able to deliver everything so that it is free at the point of delivery, I think - if I didn't have the funding - my hubby would tell me off too!" He asked me why I felt that I had to do everything for "free", and my answer has to be something that I work on. But he's right, I shouldn't.
This "free family event" has been funded by Solihull Bid. The food vans and some of the others there, no doubt, had paid to be there in order to sell. The families were having so much fun with face painting, temporary tattoes, sustainable crafts and so much more. And people were paying for the extras!
I own a CIC and have been in the Third Sector - or Charity Sector - since I left my School Teaching job following the birth of my youngest son. I was a School Teacher for fiften years following University. Prior to owning my own CIC, I worked as the Community Teacher for the Charity, St Paul's Crossover, in Birmingham for 9 years. I loved that I could go to different Community Centres, Schools and Children's Centres to help the amazing people who lived in that Community to be able to learn new skills - such as improving their spoken English and use the internet better, sometimes for the first time. My least "liked" part of my job was writing Funding Applications, but it was necessary to do in order to keep being able to deliver the classes to the people who needed them most, in places that they felt safe to go to. I never realised at the time that I would be writing more of them!
You might be wondering what a CIC is. CIC stands for Community Interest Company. it means that any profit that we make goes back into the CIC in order to be able to do more of what we are doing in our community and help them thrive more. (Really, it's a lazy charity - but with a much shorter process to get going). I have an amazing team of Directors who try to keep me focused and not allow me to do every idea that comes into my head!
During the Academic Year, I run classes in Canley, Foleshill and Birmingham in ESOL and Digital Skills. I deliver my classes in Community Centres and local Primary Schools. I also run Workshops to help families and also people living in an Assisted Living Home to Cook and make things on a budget. This relies on me securing funding from a range of sources to facilitate me to cover the needed costs to make them happen.
Increasingly, I feel, I need to explain to people that none of my classes are actually FREE. They have been funded so they can be delivered "free to the user at the point they attend the session/s"!
You see...
(1) I need to keep my qualifications, skills and enhanced DBS uptodate. I want to be able to give the best of me to my learners - so I need to be the best version of me!
(2) I need to ensure that the CIC is uptodate - that we have insurance, a relevant website and uptodate Social Media (and more). My CIC's Facebook Page has to tell its followers, who are usually funders, friends and supporters, what we are currently doing! (I'll share the page with you later. Don't want you to stop reading and focus on my Social Media instead!)
(3) I need to make sure my CIC has money to be able to keep supporting my Communities. That means, I need to identify and apply for Funding from a variety of different places. Even this week, I still have a few applications that I want - or need - to write. My Directors tell me that I should be aiming to write at least one Funding Application every single month.
(4) I need to pay for Room Hire in the venues that we run our sessions/workshops in. This ranges in cost depending on where they are and what that Centre needs to enable them to keep going. (Community based organisations have to work together!)
(5) I need to take the equipment that I need to deliver my sessions. They provide me with tables and chairs. I have to bring the rest of the stuff that I want to use in them. ... I also have to keep my car serviced and full of petrol to carry my resources around in.
(6) If I don't have the equipment/resources, I have to buy more. Tomorrow, for example, I know that some of my families have children with SEND so need safer sharp knives. So I have bought some! I'll be out shopping later today for other things!
(7) I need to provide high quality learning resources, so I need to keep them updated. I find it impossible to simply reuse a printed resource unless I know that it works well. I believe that my students deserve the best! I am always on Canva updating my worksheets and printing them off. (So I need a decent working printer too!)
(8) and all sorts of other things that I haven't thought of yet, but as soon as I press "Publish", I'll think of!
You see, like all Business Owners, we bring so much to what we do.
My work and my time and my skills and all the other things I bring are NOT free. They all cost.
In reality, my classes should never be "free". I should be charging for them. But because they are things that the learners need but come from deprivation, they have to be enabled to access them. Maybe we need to be phrasing it as "These classes are funded by X so they are free to the user at the point of delivery!"?
What do you think? Is there a better way to describe it?
(and for those who've only carried on reading to find out about my Facebook Page, it's www.facebook.com/diamondsclp!)
