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Capacitybuilders and Futurebuilders to be partners in fund delivery

Finance | Tania Mason | 3 Mar 2009

Delivery of the government fund aimed at charities that wish to merge or collaborate with other charities is being shared by Futurebuilders and Capacitybuilders, in the first instance of the two organisations officially working together.

The £16.5m modernisation fund, comprising loans and grants, is part of the government’s £42.5m sector action plan that sets out to help the sector survive the recession.

Larger charities, those with income of more than £750,000, will be able to apply to Futurebuilders for loans of between £30,000 and £500,000 to help them facilitate mergers. No interest will be payable for up to five years and repayment holidays for the first year may be granted. The application window will open in April and remain open for a year.

Capacitybuilders will deliver the grants, available to organisations with turnover of less than £1m to allow them to obtain business support to explore the benefits of merger, collaboration or restructuring and to help them meet the costs associated with these.

Priority will be given to organisations in areas most affected by the recession and to those working in the areas of family support, debt advice, and homelessness. Applications will be invited from the summer.

First time two organisations worked together

It is the first time the Office of the Third Sector has handed a delivery project jointly to the two organisations, and could be interpreted as a precursor to closer working and potentially a merger, as has been mooted in the past.

In his last job as director of policy and communications at the Housing Corporation, Capacitybuilders’ new chief executive Matt Leach (pictured) was heavily involved in seeing through the merger of the Corporation with English Partnerships to form Communities England.

Shortly after starting in his new role, he told Charity News Alert that he had “heard the calls for a merger” of Capacitybuilders and Futurebuilders but that he had “no plans around that”.

He said the most important thing was to work out how to maximise resources in order to provide the most effective suppport to the sector, and the organisational structures to deliver that would come afterward. “I am very open to new ways of working, but you don’t start with the organisational solution,” he said.

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