Real help deal confirmed as new money for the sector
March 2009
The Office of the Third Sector will be three years old in May 2009, and a number of initiatives have taken place...
…as elements of the £515m investment dedicated to third sector programmes, as part of the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review. For instance, the Grassroots Grants programme, establishment of the Commission for the Compact as a non-departmental public body, and the creation of volunteering opportunities for young people through v, the youth volunteering charity.
The whole fund has now been allocated for the remainder of the three-year period and the OTS has confirmed that the bulk of the £42m action plan announced on 9 February 2009 is money ‘new’ to the sector, with some coming from the DoH, the DWP and the rest being the result of cross-department budget reallocations and savings.
Kevin Brennan, OTS Minister, was at pains to point out on the Politics Show (screened on BBC1 on 15 February from Cardiff City Hall) that the money ‘wasn’t available before and it will become available; £16.5m to help charities to modernise, to innovate, to merge if that’s appropriate; £15.5m of grants for the most deprived communities…. £0.5m to train more social entrepreneurs and £10m to develop more volunteering opportunities’.
When provoked by the presenter into commenting on the ‘fairness’ of money being hosed at the banks and the car industry when the sector has a much larger aggregate ‘turnover’, Brennan stated: ‘We’re not trying to nationalise charities, we’re not taking into public ownership shares in charities. We’re trying to support the sector…’
Nick Hurd, the Shadow Minister raised the issue of independence on grounds that over half the sector’s income comes from the State but did not confirm the figure that the Conservatives would have pumped in: ‘We do…want the sector to stand on its own feet and make no apologies for that, that’s why we want to look at Gift Aid and why only one in three people use it…’
Author: Clarissa Dann
Clarissa Dann was the editor of Caritas as well as an HR and management online service,he People Bulletin until July 2011.
She is now the editor of the specialist trade finance magazine, Trade and Forfaiting Review which can be viewed at www.tfreview.com but does write on charity finance and investment from time to time.
Clarissa has a background in legal and professional publishing, as well as business journalism and holds an MBA from Cass Business School. She has been one of the judges for the non-profit category of the Chartered Institute of Marketing's Excellence in Marketing Awards for the second year running.
She has also acted as clerk to the trustees of a small almshouses charity and as a member nominated trustee to a pension scheme of a multinational publishing company.
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