Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Neighbourhood Challenge?
What areas will be in the programme?
Why is this programme limited to England only? Isn't NESTA a UK-wide national endowment?
How long will the programme run for?
How will NESTA decide which areas to include?
What do we mean by low social capital?
What is community organising?
What is a challenge prize?
What is social enterprise?

What is the Neighbourhood Challenge?

The Neighbourhood Challenge is a programme from NESTA and the Big Lottery Fund, to support community-led innovation. It aims to show how community organisations – when equipped with the right skills, practical tools and small, catalytic amounts of money – can galvanise people to work together to create innovative responses to local priorities, particularly in neighbourhoods with low levels of social capital.

Each of the 17 chosen groups are trialing their approach to stimulating and supporting community led action in a way that suits their particular local circumstances. Some have chosen to apply specialist methods of community organising or campaigning, others are working to develop social or community enterprises, others are working to trial challenge prizes which aim to provoke and reward community led action.

NESTA is also providing the practical tools and high-quality training needed for participating organisations to help people to address their passions and priorities. We also provide micro-finance to support the development of local projects and establish local challenge prizes to incentivise community-led innovation.

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What areas will be in the programme?

We are working with 17 areas across England. To see a map of the 17 areas go to our Neighbourhood Challenge homepage.

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Why is this programme limited to England only? Isn’t NESTA a UK-wide national endowment?

NESTA has a national remit and works in all parts of the UK to promote innovation. Individual programmes will often focus on one part of the UK, reflecting the particular policy context and specific challenges that apply.

The Neighbourhood Challenge is focused on England only in the first instance. We are actively exploring opportunities for extending the scope of the programme to other parts of the UK.

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How long will the programme run for?

The Neighbourhood Challenge launched on 26 October 2010 with a call for Community Organisations to express their interest in taking part.  The selected Community Organisations began work at a local level in late April 2011, finishing in April 2012.

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How have NESTA decided which areas to include?

NESTA reviewed the expressions of interest from community organisations against the published criteria.  Up to 30 community organisations were invited to workshops in December to contribute to the detailed design of the programme, supported to develop their idea and to refine their proposal. 

Based on the revised proposals, NESTA selected 17 organisations to be part of the programme.

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What do we mean by low social capital?

The Neighbourhood Challenge will focus particularly on how best to galvanize community-led action in neighbourhoods with low levels of social capital. 

Social capital is a way of measuring the strength of the connections, relationships and trust between people. A neighbourhood with low social capital might be one where relatively few people get involved in community activity.

We are not prescribing how social capital should be defined, but we are asking community organisations to explain how they have assessed neighbourhoods to have low levels of social capital.

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What is community organising?

Broadly speaking, community organising is the process of galvanizing people to bring about community-led action. There are many different approaches and methods for community organising, many of which have a long legacy of successful work by many organisations in the UK and internationally.

Through the Neighbourhood Challenge, NESTA wants to learn about a range of different approaches to community organising and we are not prescribing which approaches will be tested through the programme.  We want community organisations to tell us what approaches would be most effective in their areas.

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What is a challenge prize?

Challenge prizes are a way of finding and rewarding solutions to a specific problem. They use very open entry criteria to encourage lots of ideas to be submitted. They set a specific goal or ‘challenge’ and offer an incentive (often a financial prize) that will be given to the people who either best or first achieve that goal.

It is appropriate to use a challenge prize when you can specify what the particular challenge is you are looking to solve, particularly there might be lots of people who could potentially solve it, and where it is not clear what the best solution might be.

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What is social enterprise?

A social enterprise is a business or service with social objectives rather than solely financial objectives. The approach aims to generate an income and to reinvest financial surplus generated through the business in order to meet its own social objectives.

Social entrepreneurs are individuals with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social problems. They could be anybody from any community with the drive to trial their idea to solving a social problem through an enterprise approach.

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