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Community Development Exchange faces closure 1

Finance | Vibeka Mair | 17 Aug 2012

Community Development Exchange plans to close, after struggling to survive without its government strategic partner funding, which was axed last year.

Community Development Exchange (CDX) had received around £250,000 each year from the Office for Civil Society’s strategic partner programme, equating to around 87 per cent of its total income.

The funding was cut last April, as the Office for Civil Society slashed the number of its strategic partners from 40 to a maximum of 15, and tightened the criteria for programme funding, including that grants should not compromise more than a quarter of a partner organisation’s total income.

In a statement this week on CDX’s website, the trustees say the loss of strategic partner funding has led to the charity’s demise:

“National charities such as CDX have faced severe challenges in the past year, after strategic partner funding was withdrawn by the government from April 2011,” says the statement. “Since then, we have been surviving on our dwindling reserves and despite strenuous efforts to secure alternative sources of finance through funding bids, training and paid talks, this has sadly proved impossible.

“This situation has led to the unavoidable step of preparing to wind-up CDX as a formal entity.”

The trustees will propose the voluntary dissolution of CDX at the charity’s next annual general meeting in September. If the dissolution resolution is passed at the AGM, CDX will be dissolved by the end of March 2013.

Until then, CDX will no longer seek payment for new membership, as part of a strategy to move towards a less structured organisation, which it calls the “starfish”.

CDX is the second former strategic partner to close after losing funding, Youth Action Network, which received 15 per cent of its £1m income from the OCS, closed last year.

A number of former and current strategic partners cut staff, or merged as a result of the Office for Civil Society’s rationalisation of the programme.

The most recent mooted merger is between NCVO and Volunteering England who have been strategic partners of the Cabinet Office since April 2011.

There are now only nine strategic partners that will receive funding until 2014 – when the government will close the programme.

The nine organisations who will see out the strategic partner programme until 2014 are –

They will each receive the full amount in 2011/12, three-quarters of the amounts in 2012/13, and half the amount in 2013/14.
 

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