Supporting Community Run Venues

From LearningHearts

Community run venues encompass a range of models and legal structures that vary between countries. They are distinct from commercially run premises in that they are primarily socially motivated. They are also distinct from government run facilities in that they are controlled by the community themselves. Although they may employ staff they usually rely heavily on volunteers for both the management and day to day running of the venue. To undertake this task community run venues require support in three key areas:

• Charitable or foundation status may bring with it reporting and accountabilityrequirements. In addition, there are often democratic or engagement processassociated with running venues for the benefit of the wider community.
• The management of venues accessible to the public is increasing governed by arange of legislation. Such legislation is designed to cover health and safety,safeguarding issues as well as address public order issues (such as late nightopening and sale of alcohol). In many areas such legislation was not createdwith community run venues in mind and it therefore may fit poorly there model.
• Community venues usually rely on income generated from the hire of theirbuilding to provide a substantial part of their running and maintenance costs.This is essentially a business process, indeed it may be one of the earliestsocial enterprise models, requiring business planning, marketing and financialskills. Self-generated funds are usually insufficient to cover large scalecapital development costs. This therefore also introduces a requirement foreffective grant bidding and fundraising skills.

The combination of these three factors in many ways make community run venues unique and often the requirements of each element can conflict. This creates high capacity requirements for volunteers and the need for support from specially skilled advisors.

Case Studies

ACRE Village Hall Information Sheets (English/England)

To help village halls in England deal with the large volume of legislation they must comply with ACRE the Rural Community Council nation body maintains a series of information sheets for volunteers running community buildings. These are available to individual groups via their local RCC.

More Information Available at http://www.acre.org.uk