The Gio project held a workshop last week at Merci to find out what effects third sector organisations are feeling due to the downturn and what support they might need to get them through this difficult time.  Watch out for the photos on Flickr as soon as I manage to download them. Some of the key points raised were that organisations found it difficult to say that there had been an increase in demand due to the recession as demand was already too great to cope with in the first place.  Other experiences included increasingly late payments from statutory funders, which were causing huge problems with cash flow and never mind the resources it takes to chase these late payments time and time again.  Not surprisingly people talked about funding opportunities becoming more and more scarce with demand and competition increasing along with the scrutiny that applying organisations have to go through and still being turned down.People thought that there should be more help for organisations going through the commissioning process and that they need to have a more of a voice over what goes into the tender documents.  One main gripe was that organisations often don't know who to talk to about commissioning opportunities that are coming up and are often batted from pillar to post without any success.  Groups on the whole found that grants from statutory bodies allowed them to be flexible and innovative with the work they were doing but that the change to commissioning would not allow this.A full report from the workshop will be available soon on the website.  Keep your eyes peeled!