DfES bows to sector pressure to extend grants deadline
Howard Lake | 12 January 2007 | News
The Department for Education and Skills has extended its deadline for applications for the Children, Young People and Families grants after organisations complained they were not given enough time to complete their applications.
The original deadline of 3 January has now been moved to 19 January to allow organisations to file their applications properly. Some organisations were not notified of the 3 January date until as late as 19 December.
Saskia Daggett, manager of the Compact Advocacy Programme (CAP) said that the DfES should have realised that some organisations would be working in partnership with schools to complete their applications, which would have made meeting the orginal deadline impossible.
Advertisement
However, she said the DfES had behaved responsibly in this case. They did listen to us and spoke to individual organisations directly, which was exactly the right thing to do, she said.
The Children, Young People and Families grant provides a very important source of funding for many voluntary and community groups. It is therefore crucial that the DfES adheres to the Compact’s funding code, which explicity states organisations should have enough time to respond and that notification of funding decisions needs to be timely.
The Compact Advocacy Programme is now looking at future Compact compliance. Daggett said: We will be looking at the DfES as a whole and how it works with the voluntary sector. Other departments are much more in tune with the Compact and the voluntary sector.
She said that CAP would be looking for more leadership from the Learning and Skills Councils, for example and hoped that the Department will start working together properly with the voluntary sector to implement the Compact.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.