First payments from £100m Transition Fund announced
Francis Maude, Minister for the Cabinet Office, and Nick Hurd, Minister for Civil Society, today announced the first round of payments from a £100m fund aimed at supporting charities to prepare for opportunities brought about by the Big Society.
The Transition Fund, delivered by the BIG Lottery Fund, is aimed at funding the necessary changes that charities will need to make to relieve themselves of grant dependency and take advantage of the opportunities made available by changes in public sector commissioning. Such changes might include restructuring, scaling-up, merging or looking to diversify income streams.
Nick Hurd said:
"I am pleased to be able to start offering immediate support from the £100m Transition Fund. The funding we are announcing today will play a key role in helping organisations to prepare for future opportunities that will be opened up by public service reform.
"The organisations that we are awarding funding to today are the first of many such awards and reflect the incredible diversity of the civil society sector, showing an innovative approach to the challenges they face - from setting up social enterprise arms to re-designing public services to proposing mergers."
Chief Executive of the BIG Lottery Fund, Peter Wanless said:
"Working closely with the voluntary and community sector we understand the pressing and important need for this fund. We have used our grant making expertise to ensure that the Transition Fund money can make a difference to these organisations and enable them to respond to their new operating environment as quickly as possible.
"This is just the start of the awards, there will be many more over the coming months. Government is keen to get this transitional support to frontline organisations as soon as possible."
A total of £1.7m was awarded to 18 organisations in this first round of awards. Among these were North East Social Enterprise Partnership members Building Futures East, a Newcastle based organisation that delivers vocational and personal development training and work experience opportunities to disadvantaged communities, and Middlesbrough Environment City Trust.
Dr. Mark Fishpool, Director of Middlesbrough Environment City Trust, said:
"Our organisation is a grass-roots charity working to promote healthy and sustainable lifestyles in Middlesbrough. The Transition Fund will enable us to alter our business model to allow us to generate income through delivering contracts rather than relying on grants.
"As Bikeability cycling trainers, we will use the Transition Fund to look at developing a partnership with Teesside University that will involve training up students as Bikeability instructors. We also hope to use the Fund to develop a horticultural and food-growing trading arm that will train staff and volunteers as trainers and assessors in order to deliver contracted work."