YouthNet blog
An insight into youth issues, volunteering trends, charity life and more from the UK charity YouthNet
All | Events | Youth | Technology | Volunteering | YouthNet | Charity World
Tuesday Jun 20, 2006
Money, money, money
Another volunteering-related challenge for the new Minister for the Third Sector, Ed Miliband. As well as needing to sort out the outcry over the latest advice on expenses for volunteers on benefits he now needs to deal with a public plea for more funds from Volunteering England (VE).
In a letter to the Minister published on the VE website, the organisation's Chief Executive, Christopher Spence, laments a significant short-fall in their most recent grant.
...the final settlement was 45% less than we asked for and included no allocation for three important strands of work, previously funded as projects, all of which have a direct bearing on Volunteering England's capacity to deliver the ambitious strategy for modernising the volunteering infrastructure nationally, regionally and locally outlined in Building On Success. Officials at the VCGU have also told us that this year there will be no project funding available to supplement strategic grants.
Spence suggests various ways in which money could be carried over and topped up, but it's hard to escape the feeling that there are hard times ahead. The government-funded volunteering sector has enjoyed boom times in recent years with organisations like VE, TimeBank and YouthNet the recipients of many millions of pounds. Last year, for example, around £7 million was spent on the Year of the Volunteer.
With the government as a whole now tightening its belt and new youth volunteering charity ,v, the main focus of attention, Ed Miliband could find that Spence's letter is the first of many that he receives from organisations that feel left out.
And with the Tories apparently putting the Third Sector at the heart of Compassionate Conservatism, don't be surprised to see volunteering sector leaders starting to flirt with that nice Mr Cameron.
Posted by Tom Green ( 8:45 AM ) Link to this post Comments[0]