The Arts Council England broke its own grant giving ceiling when it awarded more than £111,000 from its Grants for the Arts programme to the National Funding Scheme.
The NFS accounts for the year ending 30 September 2014 show a £111,187 grant from the Arts Council England, more than double the £48,688 grant made in the previous year. The grant was more than the Arts Council England’s own £100,000 awards ceiling.
The National Funding Scheme’s 2014 accounts also show that the huge Arts Council England grant came in the same period as its four major funders from the year 2013 either greatly reduced, or entirely withdrew, grants.
Innovation charity Nesta cut its funding from £190,000 in the year ending 30 September 2013, to just £10,000 the following year. The Garfield Weston Foundation also cut its funding, halving it from £50,000 to £25,000. The Paul Hamlyn Foundation, who had given the NFS more than £50,000 in 2013, completely withdrew funding altogether.
The National Funding Scheme was registered with the Charity Commission in September 2012, with the object of “promoting charitable giving, fundraising and donations to charities” working in the arts and heritage through its Donate digital fundraising platform.
From 1 July 2015 however, Donate was allowed to “extend scope beyond arts charities” by the Charity Commission. At the time, Seamus Keating, chair of Donate, said the organisation was “hugely fortunate that, the Charity Commission granted us the ability to work outside the sector we launched in”.
Since 2014 Donate has also been taking 45 per cent of Gift Aid from donations made to charities through the platform. On a £100 donation with Gift Aid, charities would receive around £113, which is less than JustGiving (between £122 and £118), Virgin Money Giving (over £120) and MyDonate (£124.8).
Donate charges 2.5 per cent on donations made that are not eligible for Gift Aid.
William Makower, founding trustee of the National Funding Scheme, said that comparisons with other digital fundraising platforms such as JustGiving were unfair.
"We're unique for two reasons, the first being that we are the only one which is a registered charity," he said. "The second being that we are a mobile first versus desktop first fundraising platform.
"Compared to something like JustGiving, we are an immediate giving, multi-channel fundraising. No other fundraising platform gives charities a platform to see all of their donations across all of the different streams."
Makower also said that the NFS had always intended to be a "national, fundraising platform for all charities" and that the arts had seemed the best place to start out and secure initial funding.
Makower also defended the planned introduction of a structured, fee payment system which will come into place with Donate from September.
"With the fee, we never want a charity to pay that fee. We've set it up that so, from September 1st 2015, all charities with an income under £10,000 won't have to pay a fee to use Donate. The larger charities will only end up having to pay the fee if they do not raise enough money through the platform.
"We're not out to make a profit, but as a charity, we do need to wash our face".
Clare Titley, director of philanthropy, Arts Council England, said: “We invested in the NFS as a pilot project to test whether Donate would be a useful and cost-effective platform to promote online giving to arts organisations.
“Projects of this nature take time to develop and often require more than one year’s investment to see if the potential can be reached.
"In this case the initial investment from strategic funds was followed by an award through the open access Grants for the Arts programme as it was decided that the additional time would allow for this platform to be thoroughly tested.”
