The Department for Communities and Local Government is considering turning the £70m Communitybuilders Fund, run by Social Investment Business into an endowment. Sir Stephen Bubb, chair of the Adventure Capital Fund, also run by Social Investment Business, welcomes the news.

At the moment, when we are all so focused on campaigning against cuts and when the political debate still, sadly, features misunderstanding about how civil society organisations are affected by government spending it’s nice to be able to highlight a genuinely positive development in charity finance. Because the prospect of the Communitybuilders Fund being transformed into an endowment is an exciting one for the sector and for the future of efforts to empower people in our most needy communities.

An endowment will release vital funds from the constraints of unhelpful Treasury accounting rules about end-of-financial-year deadlines and allow us to provide finance in a sensible and flexible way to community groups who are attempting to take on significant building and asset-transfer projects. It’s hard to understand why a voluntary organisation planning to turn a derelict building into a community centre who can get a builder to start work on Thursday 31 March is more deserving of support than a group that can’t find a local brickie to start work till the following Monday!

In the current economic climate it is so important that the enthusiasm to innovate isn’t also a casualty, because for services to survive and thrive government, funders and charities all need to be looking for new ways to achieve more with less. By endowing the Communitybuilders Fund to the Adventure Capital Fund, that money is secured for the sector for the future. Loan repayments could be recycled and re-invested into new projects creating an evergreen boon to community organisations at a time when other streams of funding are drying up or being cut. And as managers of an endowment, rather than of a time-limited CLG contract, we can even more effectively leverage finance from other sources – banks, philanthropists, other social investors - to boost the balance sheet and expand the impact the fund can have.

Over the past two years Communitybuilders has invested in range of brilliant projects which are real life illustrations of that (increasingly controversial) phrase ‘Big Society’. The Communitybuilders Fund literally does what it says on the tin: it has supported local people to take over and renovate disused or at risk local landmarks including a lido, a library and a Tudor town hall; and it has financed community centres in our most deprived neighbourhoods bringing exercise classes, childcare and drug and alcohol rehabilitation to the heart of communities not served by anyone else.

As we all try to adapt and change to face this brave new post-Comprehensive Spending Revenue world, it’s clear new ways of financing our good works are needed.  Which is why advancements on things such as the new Big Society Bank and Social Impact Bonds are so important. If done right, this endowment fund – which puts more power and money into the hands of local organisations, and makes investment less about jumping through hoops and more about good business practice – could create a blueprint for how to get the best value from government funds in the future.

Sir Stephen Bubb is chair of the Adventure Capital Fund

(Adventure Capital Fund is the parent charity of the Social Investment Business)