About

What are we working towards?

Community Lincs is a Lincolnshire charity whose activity is driven and shaped by the people it supports. Our mission is to make a positive difference to the lives of Lincolnshire people. Fundamentally everything we do is directed towards giving people the skills, resources, connections and confidence to help them deliver a better future for themselves and the people they care about.

Our organisational outcomes underpin our delivery and directly link to our overall aim. They are:

• Reduce the rural isolation and vulnerability experienced by Lincolnshire people
• Increase community self-reliance through supporting the development of quality services and facilities provided by the VCS
• Increase the skills and confidence of Lincolnshire people
• Make it more affordable to live in rural areas

How are we going to achieve our aims?

We help Lincolnshire people to achieve more and improve their circumstances through targeted project support; technical, governance and legal advice and training; and through the provision of consultancy services.

This may be at a personal level through such things as our community oil buying group, where individuals save money on their fuel bills by allowing us to buy on their behalf. The beauty of this scheme is that those who cannot negotiate a better price for themselves benefit from our collective negotiating even if they only want a little bit of oil. The cheaper price they subsequently get helps them to make their money go further, a form of personal control over their lives.

We also work at a group level, helping community and voluntary groups to run more effectively, by advising the people who set them up and manage them to operate within the law (think health and safety, insurance, child protection etc.) and to plan for their future (feasibility studies, community consultation, funding applications). This allows them to run groups and services that they need and want in a way that suits them, rather than waiting for someone else to (potentially) provide services for them.

Our services are also aimed at whole communities. Through our community and neighbourhood planning services we help people to identify their priorities for future building development and service delivery (both by themselves and by public bodies). We help them to be heard by ‘The Powers that be’ and to influence the decisions that will affect their lives and those of their children, by gathering evidence of  community views and connecting them with the right people in public life. Helping communities to find a voice within the planning and service commissioning systems enables them to have a much greater impact than a few lone voices would have.

At a business level we provide practical support to small businesses and social enterprises through our admin and finance offers, our web design and consultancy services and our group buying programme. We are keenly aware that small businesses form the bedrock of rural communities not only through local employment but in the many ways that they support local community activity. By providing these business support services we help them to concentrate on their day job – getting more customers and delivering their services. From solicitors to training agencies we have found a way to help them all take back control of their working day.