CFDG welcomes futurebuilders
Howard Lake | 20 July 2003 | News
The Charity Finance Directors’ Group has given a big welcome to the proposals for futurebuilders and its much needed investment in capital projects.
CFDG particularly welcomed the plans to devote 80% of futurebuilder funds to capital investment. CFDG has argued that investment in efficiency and capital projects has for too long been under funded.
CFDG are keen for the government to invest in the central infrastructure of organisations, or to help small organisations instigate collaborative working projects. “If invested in projects such as these the fund will have a life far beyond its existence,” says the group.
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CFDG are also supportive of the proposed Business Support Function and believe it could be used to encourage small charities to set up joint projects.
However CFDG sounded a note of caution by stating categorically that futurebuilders alone cannot make a huge impact on the objectives it sets out to achieve. Its impact will be much greater if other proposals put forward in the Cross Cutting Review are fully implemented, namely that of full cost recovery, and the effective use of the ACU’s new infrastructure fund.
Shirley Scott, the Chief Executive of CFDG said: “For too long charities have subsidised the cost of investing in capital projects for improving public service delivery by using donated funds. We are pleased that we at last have a fund, in the shape of futurebuilders, that will actually address some of the infrastructural weaknesses in organisations. We are also encouraged by the idea that futurebuilders, with its diverse forms of finance and its pro-active business support function, might itself become an innovative and exemplary funding model. CFDG are pleased that the Treasury have made the most of the futurebuilders opportunity.”
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.