Tania Mason interviewed a Shaw Trust spokesman who asked not to be named, for her feature on service delivery charities in April's Charity Finance. This is the edited transcript of his comments.

Charities like Shaw Trust that rely predominantly on government funding have been able to weather the storm, either by maintaining or enhancing their position. In a way we’re the exception to the rule in charities, as any charity that overly relies on local government funding may have found it difficult if the sector they operate in has suffered from reducing budgets , but for us most of our income is from central government - £53m from DWP made up of £30m for Work Choice and £23m for the Work Programme.

Our turnover has been relatively stable because Work Choice and Work Programme contracts are five years in length so this has enabled us to plan a lot more.  Longer contracts mean we’ve got more certainty to help us invest in staff and invest in properties etc; previously a lot of DWP contracts were two or three years, which meant it was more challenging for us to plan for the long term.  

Payment by results has been challenging for a lot of charities and actually for the employments services sector as a whole we’ve been in fortunate position of being able to bid as a prime contractor on Work Choice and Work Programme and we see ourselves on same level as private sector organisations that were bidding for those DWP contracts.  It’s not about the sector; our size, expertise and experience mean we can bid for those contracts on that sort of scale. We have a lot of expertise in supply chain management and payment by results, and now that this is being replicated in the Ministry of Justice and skills contracts we’ve been able to be ahead of the curve in being able to adjust to that environment.