UnLimited still awaiting approval

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By Alex Klaushofer

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The launch of UnLimited, the new body formed to manage a Millennium Commission endowment fund of £100m, has been delayed again until the autumn.

The new charity, which will award £4.5m a year in small grants to individual social entrepreneurs, should have launched in September 2001. Then, as reported in Lottery Monitor last December, the start date was put back to this summer. But UnLimited has yet to receive final approval from the Millennium Commission – now likely to happen at a meeting in the second half of September.

Millennium Commission advisers scrutinising UnLimited’s business plan recommended adjustments in areas such as contingency planning ahead of final approval. Erica Roberts, Awards Director, Millennium Commission, said: ‘They’re not fundamental concerns, they’re about the ordering and timing of activities.’ Once the application has been signed off by the MC, the DCMS and the National Audit Office, UnLimited will register with the Charity Commissioners to set itself up as a trust. This, Roberts said, could take four to eight weeks. UnLimited’s chief executive, John Rafferty, said: ‘We anticipate that the Commission will give final approval by September, and when they do we will open the application lines.’ The Millennium Commission cited the appointment of social entrepreneur Rosalind Copisarow as chief executive of UnLimited last September as one reason for the delay. The idea was that Street UK, the micro-credit organisation founded by Copisarow, would merge with the new charity. But by December it had been decided that the marriage was unfeasible and Copisarow left UnLimited. ‘It was considered better for the two start-up companies to have some dedicated support at the early stages,’ she said.

Rafferty, taking a secondment from his role as chief executive of TimeBank, the Prince’s Trust body which promotes voluntary work, stepped in at the turn of the year as UnLimited’s new boss. ‘I’ll see them through. And before September, I’ll advise the management board as to their long-term executive management needs,’ Rafferty said.