Government endowments all the rage at financial year end

The government is committing more than £150m to social investment in two different departments through  endowments rather than the traditional funding of programmes, it was announced last week.

As exclusively reported by Social Enterprise in February, the government's communities department began to urgently explore the option of an endowment for the £27m remainder of the £70m Communitybuilders fund when it became clear that social enterprises were being forced to draw down the money earlier than they needed to, simply to satisfy Treasury reporting requirements.

The Adventure Capital Fund (ACF), the parent charity of The Social Investment Business, will now own the fund and repayments from the loans will come back to ACF to create an evergreen fund instead of going to the Treasury.

Decentralisation minister Greg Clark called the endowment ‘a victory for common sense’.

Clark said: ‘We need to make sure that every penny available goes to voluntary and community groups at the best time for them… they shouldn’t be forced to distort their plans because of central red tape.

‘The endowment fund for Communitybuilders is a victory for common sense.’

Separately, the government's education department announced that it was creating a £125m Education Endowment Fund to be managed by education charity the The Sutton Trust and venture philanthropists Impetus.

The two organisations will allocate grants to organisations with ideas on how to improve the educational attainment of disadvantaged pupils in underperforming schools.