A Cabinet Office fund may have cost the sector more in application costs than it received in grants, a charity chief executive has claimed.
Richard Caulfield, chief executive of Voluntary Sector North West, obtained figures on the Democratic Engagement Innovation Fund, a £4.2m fund to encourage young people to become involved in democracy, using the Freedom of Information Act.
Caulfield’s figures showed it received applications from 139 charitable partnerships. But it gave out grants worth only £216,000 to five organisations.
The rest of the money was split equally between 363 local authorities and other public bodies.
The Cabinet Office said in July 2013 that money from the fund would go to "organisations, neighbourhoods and communities" which had "ideas to get people involved in the democratic process locally and nationally" although some funding "is also being made available to local authorities who have solid and creative ideas".
Caulfield said that his members had been invited to attend workshops and had been encouraged to form partnerships to bid for cash. Bidding for the cash, he said, had been an intensive, time-consuming and expensive process.
“The application process covered the summer,” he said. "Putting together a partnership in August is not easy.
“This process would have involved many more than 139 organisations. It would have involved a considerable amount of senior management time at each of those organisations, which I think probably costs a charity around £500 a day.
“A lot of charities have received follow-up phone calls clarifying their applications and have been asked to submit additional information.
“If it cost more than £1,500 on average to make an application, the fund would have cost the sector more in applications than it received in grants. I think that’s very possible.”
Caulfield said it was extremely unlikely the money would be well spent by local authorities.
“The funding handed out works out at just over £10,000 per local authority,” he said. “My understanding is the money wasn’t even ring-fenced, so it’s pretty questionable how much of that cash even got spent on democratic engagement.
“I’m particularly disappointed because the Cabinet Office are the people who are supposed to be giving advice to the rest of government on how to contract effectively with the voluntary sector.
“They should be at the forefront of good practice with the sector, championing full cost recovery, operating to a realistic timescale and being transparent, not letting us down like this.”
The Cabinet Office did not respond to enquiries.
