Reaching Further: Lessons for Funder Practice

Published: 2022

This report sets out eight lessons in funder practice from the work of Lloyds Bank Foundation for England and Wales from 2018 to 2022. During the five years of their strategy Reaching Further, the collision of unprecedented social, health and economic crises brought both the strength and fragility of civil society into sharp focus – funders and…

One pandemic, many responses

Published: 2022

This is the third report from Local Trust’s research study exploring how 26 communities across England responded to the COVID-19 crisis.

It follows Strong than anyone thought, published in September 2020, which looked at the initial lockdown period and Now they see us, published in August 2021, which saw the communities adapting to a…

Rapid research COVID-19 Briefing #16: Community responses to COVID-19 – Connecting communities? How relationships have mattered in community responses to COVID-19

Published: 2022

This briefing, the 16th in a series seeking to understand how communities across England respond to COVID-19 and how they recover, explores the importance of ‘relational working’. It argues that approaches which rely on relationships to work, but also pay attention to the importance of relationships to the people that community groups …

The Power of Community: Learning from Bristol’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic

Published: 2022

During 2021, Voscur worked with academics and students from the University of Bristol to investigate how the sector had adapted to ensure delivery of vital services during Covid-19.

With many in our sector unable to deliver vital services by established means, we wanted to find out how our colleagues from across the sector had continued to ful…

Understanding local patterns of volunteer activity during COVID-19

Published: 2021

The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport commissioned The Young Foundation to undertake an initial scoping study to identify some of the ways in which volunteers were mobilised at local levels during the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of the research was:

to identify some of the ways in which volunteer groups operated and develo…

Rapid research COVID-19 Briefing #15: Community responses to COVID-19 – Changing community needs and looking to the future

Published: 2021

The pandemic has been accompanied by a searching analysis of its multi-faceted challenges, uneven consequences and intensifying social needs. Looking ahead, it is thought that a ‘long shadow’ of impact will be cast over the coming ‘COVID decade’. But how are needs experienced at community level identified and understood? This briefing a…

Understanding vaccine hesitancy through communities of place

Published: 2021

A new UK-US collaborative study examining vaccine engagement highlights the importance of tapping into local knowledge and leadership in efforts to improve Covid-19 vaccine take-up.

The research was funded by the British Academy, the Social Science Research Council, and the UK’s Science and Innovation Network in the&…

Rapid research COVID-19 Briefing #14: Community responses to COVID-19 – Sustaining community action

Published: 2021

There is a growing body of evidence on how communities have responded to COVID-19, highlighting an early surge in community action and the subsequent power of communities to meet the needs of residents during crises. More recently, however, as the pandemic has continued longer than anyone imagined, there is increasing evidence pointing towards …

Charities responding to COVID: Summer 2021 Update

Published: 2021

This report builds two previous reports- published by Lloyds Bank Foundation in May and December 2020 respectively and how small charities have fared since the first national lockdown in March 2020. This provides a snapshot of the experiences of small charities throughout the crisis.

In it, Lloyds Bank Foundation share their findings of how ch…