Federation Projects

Capacity Strengthening Pilot Project

The Capacity Strengthening Project was conceptualised as a result of trends and facts emerging from annual statistical analysis of budget services’ operations, from the 2003 findings in the social audit of the Federation, and from feedback by District Representatives and management committee workshops.

This feedback indicated a continuing decline in volunteer budget advisers over the preceding 10 years; the reliance on voluntary efforts raised quality concerns and conflicts in auditing and advocacy; and significant service viability issues around recruitment, training and funding were identified. To address these trends in budgeting and to increase support to community budget organisations the Capacity Strengthening pilot project was proposed. The pilot project was backed financially in collaboration between the Federation, Child, Youth and Family and the Tindall Foundation and a three year trial began in 2004. 

The pilot project outcomes have now been measured over the 36 month period from February 2004 to January 2007. The results achieved combined with feedback from key informants clearly identifies that the Capacity Strengthening Pilot Project has proven to be successful in addressing and reversing the declining trends in budgeting by providing our membership with hands-on support to help improve their services and ultimately their communities.

The work achieved by the part-time Field Officers during the pilot project has been nothing short of extraordinary and they must be commended for their hard-working, passionate and diligent efforts sometimes in demanding circumstances.

In many ways the results have exceeded our expectations. That said, there are still areas in which further achievements can be realised and our efforts to date consolidated. The Federation’s overall three year performance of the pilot project and the fundamental development work accomplished places us in good stead to further build on these foundations by expanding and rolling out the Field Officers into all regions throughout New Zealand.

The full three-year Capacity Strengthening Pilot Project report can be read here:

Capacity Strengthening Pilot Project Report.pdf

Client Voices

Financial Planning for Change (FP4C)

Federation Social Audit

The Federation National Committee decided to commission a social audit starting with discussions in November 2000.  The reasons were:

1.     We had for some time been discussing ways of measuring our effectiveness with clients as a quality control measure.

2.     We had been discussing ways of confirming our value and effectiveness to funders.

3.    The Tindall Foundation had suggested the ‘social audit’ model to us as they were wanting to assess the effectiveness of the funding they were putting into the NZFFBS and Penny-Wise Trust; this therefore seemed a possible source of funding for it.

4.    Child, Youth and Family were discussing moving towards measuring ‘outcomes’ instead of outputs and social auditing seemed to be in line with that thinking.  It therefore seemed that it would position us and the services well for future funding in their eyes.  It also suggested another possible funding source.

The Executive Summary can be located here:

Social Audit - Executive Summary - 2002.pdf

And the full 66 page Social Audit can be found here:

Social Audit 2002.pdf

© 2007 New Zealand Federation of Family Budgeting Services Inc.