The Cabinet Office has awarded a further £150,000 to Society Network Foundation since 1 April this year, and gave Big Society Network £350,000 last year, on top of the £199,900 Social Action Fund money paid in 2011/12, Nick Hurd has confirmed.
This brings to just under £1.2m the total statutory funding given to the two organisations by the Cabinet Office and Nesta, when it was a non-departmental public body, since their launch in 2010.
Hurd made the disclosures in response to a Parliamentary question from his shadow, Gareth Thomas MP. Thomas has accused the government of frittering money away on "Big Society vanity projects" that produce no social outcomes while genuine established voluntary organisations are facing hardship.
The Cabinet Office would not say what the latest grants were for or whether they were awarded following a competitive pitch, referring queries to Big Society Network who did not respond by deadline.
Hurd wrote: “In 2010/11 the Cabinet Office did not pay any grant to the Big Society Network. In 2011/12, £199,900 was paid in grant funding to BSN. The following year £350,000 was paid to BSN. For 2013/14 no payments have been allocated to BSN.
“In addition to grant funding, a contract for £12,000 of services was awarded in 2012/13.
“In the current financial year the Cabinet Office has awarded grant funding of £150,000 to the Society Network Foundation which is the charitable arm of the Big Society Network.”
Together with the £1.8m awarded to the two organisations from the Big Lottery Fund since March 2011, this brings to over £3m the total statutory and lottery money paid to them. None of this money has yet appeared in any published accounts and BSN’s latest balance sheet shows a deficit of £180,000.
Hurd: 1,412 applied to Social Action Fund
Thomas had also asked about the Social Action Fund, which awarded a grant of £199,900 to one of BSN or SNF – the Social Investment Business, which administers the Fund, says it was paid to SNF while Hurd says it was paid to BSN. But neither organisation met the published criteria of providing two years’ published accounts, and Thomas asked whether any applicants successfully obtained funding despite not meeting the criteria or the deadline.
Hurd replied that 1,412 applications were made to the Fund, and that the Cabinet Office and Social Investment Business had agreed to expand one of the criterion for the Fund “following comments that it was too narrow for newly-formed organisations”.
The Cabinet Office has already confirmed that the project the grant was meant to fund never launched and is now on hold.
Thomas letters to funders
Thomas has now written to Nesta, BIG and Social Investment Business seeking more information on their reasons for giving grants to BSN and SNF. Click here for more on this.
