Dormant accounts funding to open in June in N Ireland
Howard Lake | 10 March 2020 | News
The Community Fund in Northern Ireland say they expect to open the Dormant Accounts Fund for applications in June 2020.
Dormant accounts are UK bank and building society accounts that have been untouched for 15 or more years, and where banks and building societies are unable to trace the customer who owns the account. Around £16 million has accrued from dormant accounts in Northern Ireland in the past 10 years.
‘We will be sharing our plans for this fund with the Department of Finance in March, who will then lay the strategic action plan in the Northern Ireland Assembly,’ the Community Fund says.
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Consultation on dormant accounts
The plans for the Dormant accounts funding have developed following a consultation over the last few months which was framed around a number of questions:
- What are the existing barriers to resilience in the VCSE sector?
- In what ways does the sector need to build its capacity?
- What does a sustainable third sector look like?
- How could this funding support the sector to build its capacity and sustainability?
To allow for the greatest impact over a sustained period of time, the Community Fund say they will adopt a tiered and phased approach will allow them to both respond to some of the immediate needs of the voluntary sector while also identifying opportunities for longer term support and development.
‘In the first phase, we plan to offer small, flexible and responsive grant funding to build the core resilience of individual organisations,’ the Community Fund says.
‘We are also planning to support larger strategic investments that leverage other funding, enable collaboration and new creative approaches to long term sustainability,’ the Community Fund adds.
Understanding how dormant accounts funding works
In developing their funding guidelines, the Community Fund say they have used wider learning including how dormant accounts have been delivered across the UK and Ireland to develop the programme in Northern Ireland. They have also looked at other funding streams and pieces of work on resilience, capacity and sustainability of the third sector more broadly to inform their approach.
The Community Fund caution that despite the pressures on the voluntary sector they the Dormant Accounts funding can’t be used to fill the gaps left by a reduction of other sources of funding.
‘It won’t provide core costs for organisations to keep their lights on – this funding has to be used to encourage a change in mindset, providing time and space for organisations to lift their heads from day to day delivery to effectively plan for the future,’ the Community Fund says.
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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.