Post by Hannah Underwood

If more power, funding and responsibility are going to flow through regions and communities, what practical infrastructure do we need to use it well? Andy Burnham speech yesterday added more heat to a signal that’s already getting louder: 🏃‍♀️ Devolution is accelerating. 🗺️ Place-based funding matters. 🤓 Social value is getting more serious. 💪 Local evidence will become more powerful. And community power needs more than good intentions and warm words. It needs infrastructure. Not just roads, buildings and broadband. Community intelligence infrastructure. The practical ability for VCSEs, funders, employers and public bodies to understand need, target investment, evidence change and learn TOGETHER. Because right now, too much community insight is fragmented, underused or invisible. VCSE organisations hold deep knowledge about people, places and inequalities. But many are expected to evidence more, influence more and collaborate more without the data confidence, tools, capacity or shared infrastructure to do it on fair terms. At the same time, funders, anchor institutions and public sector suppliers are under growing pressure to demonstrate real social value and community benefit. But they often lack the shared intelligence needed to direct resources well. Or indeed to work together to understand how we create shared outcomes for people and places. That is of course how the real change happens. Together, not in siloes. ⚠️ That gap matters. Without investment in data maturity, community-level insight and shared learning, devolution risks raising expectations on communities without giving them the infrastructure to shape decisions. Through How Might We Community, I’m exploring how a first wave of North East cross-sector cohorts could build and test the blueprint for that capability. 👩‍🔧 Strengthening VCSE data confidence. 📈 Improving impact evidence. 🙋 Supporting more serious social value. 🙌 Helping partners make better decisions together. Not data for data’s sake. Data in service of community power. The North East has so many of the ingredients: brilliant community organisations, ambitious funders, a new mayoral authority, growing tech and data capability, and deep civic pride. The opportunity now is to connect those assets into practical infrastructure communities can actually use. Because the North East should not just be asking for more devolved power. We should be building the civic intelligence infrastructure to use it well. And I believe the North East can become the leading testbed for this vital work. Who else is thinking about this? Tris Lumley Kim McGuinness Dr Charlotte Carpenter Kye Lockwood, FRSA Tony Underwood Cate Kalson Kristi Mansfield Sarah Sinclair Adam Hill, Charlotte Harrison Thomas Walters Nadine Smith Jen McKevitt ***** I'm Hannah Underwood: I talk about curiosity, data, charities, open infrastructure, cross-sector collaboration and unashamedly striving to change our worlds for the better.