20/01/2010 – Campaigning Research Grants Cancelled
The decision of the Office of the Third Sector in late 2009 to cancel Campaigning Research grants to 32 small charities was a blow to the voluntary and community sector. Angela Smith, the third sector Minister admitted that her decision was a clear breach of the Compact and that it damaged the small charities who had been promised this funding.
Now the OTS has added insult to injury by rejecting a majority of the applications for the tiny amount of compensation that they were prepared to concede to each organisation after making such a serious mistake. The 32 charities concerned were asked to jump through ridiculous hoops to receive a measly £1,000! Having applied for this laughably small "compensation", a majority were then turned down even for this on utterly spurious grounds.
Having put substantial time and effort into both the original application and then the application for compensation only to be left with nothing at all goes well beyond a joke. The fact that each of the 32 charities had initially been told that they had been successful in applying for money under this scheme means that each one of them is likely to have wasted at least £1000 of management, project development, finance and other planning time. This should have been acknowledged and repaid to each organisation without further ado. To be asked to present detailed proof down to very last penny of this expenditure is a further example of the bureaucratic madness that Government often subjects us to.
Posted by Andy Gregg