 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
After Thoughts,
by Jane Taylor
back to the contents page
Make sure you receive your fair share of lottery cash - take out a no-obligation trial subscription
today.
Journalists will tell you their worst dread is to have no news. But it’s not true: far worse is to have news and nowhere to put it! Which is a bit how I feel about this month’s Lottery Monitor. There is a lot going on right now for you to know about, but some of it is just going to have to wait a few weeks. The big news, of course, is the prospect of merger between the Community Fund and the New Opportunities Fund, which I have covered in some detail, because it is a very significant move. It is too early in the process to judge whether it is a good idea, but as the voluntary sector has already highlighted, there are some baseline markers for a happy marriage. The two main, prosaic ones are: effective assurances about the continuation of voluntary sector funding at decent levels; and effective guarantees of ‘independence’ for the new distributor (in reality no NDPB can be truly independent, but the new body’s grant-making needs to be seen to be far less government-directed than with NOF currently). I also doubt that the new distributor can fully succed without reconfiguring lottery arrangements for the devolved nations. I haven’t mentioned additionality because, as regular readers will know, I don’t care much for the fig leaf that it is,nor for some of the perverse consequences it has visited upon voluntary groups and local authorities. But I think the biggest challenge for the putative new distributor will be to articulate a credible, distinctive central purpose, which pushes the work of lottery funding on to the next phase. I What do I mean? OK, here are some very sketchy first thoughts. I do see the potential for a really interesting phase, in which the lottery helps to drive a new set of relationships between the state and a vital, modern and differentiated voluntary and community sector. It is possible to see, emerging from the crazy paving of government initiatives, links between LSPs, the Treasury cross-cutting review on service delivery, the best of NOF’s innovation programmes, the compact, the embryonic volcomgrants database, the range of schemes promoting social enterprise and community financial instruments, and the various departmental pots of community funding. Possibly the key concept – used in the CF/NOF draft for the new distributor – is ‘community funding network’, which brings the roles and potential of the voluntary sector centre-stage in policy, is strategic and delivery terms. This may all be wildly over the top. But a NOF/CF merger will create a powerful funding body, which will also inherit non-lottery funding streams; and it needs a suitably big ambition to convert suspicion and hostility into cautious support.
We’ll meet again
I owe Neil White an apology. Neil (lottery officer at Surrey CC) and I met at a NOF Open Board meeting in July 2001. Little did either of us know it was destined to be the last one ever. It was only my first; Neil was an old hand. By rights we should have had a reunion last summer, but NOF mysteriously abandoned the meeting, thwarting our rendezvous. NOF later explained that they didn’t think they could justify the £8,000 cost for the levels of accountability achieved by the occasion. But they invited me to observe a future board meeting, which I gladly did on January 21, where I sat, without Neil, feeling privileged, guilty and a little lonely. NOF is anxious to be seen as open, so it has organised a touring roadshow of its board as part of its regular outreach events, where members will be available for Q&A sessions with the public. The first of these is on 11 March at Reading Town Hall. Contact NOF on 020 7211 1785 to secure your seat. I urge readers in the region to go, and someone say hello to Neil for me.