Federal NFP Grant Funding Still Months Away
21 October 2014 at 11:15 am
The Federal Government is yet to decide on the funding applications of thousands of Not for Profits under the new Department of Social Services Grant scheme – despite many only holding funds until December.
A spokesperson for the Minister for Social Services Kevin Andrews said the assessment of applications for the grant funding rounds that closed on Thursday 24 July are still underway.
“No funding decisions have been made at this time,” the spokesperson said.
“The outcome of the assessment process will be known in the coming months.”
The Department of Social Services had to extend its application deadline for 24 hours after a flood of Not for Profit funding applications caused chaos to its online system back in July.
Thousands of grant applications were made to the Federal Department of Social Services as its new $800 million grants program application process closed.
At the time, welfare peak body ACOSS expressed concerns over the short time frame for applications and that the process that encouraged partnerships and consortiums with other organisations.
“The ability to develop these collaborations have been quite challenging. With so many funding streams opening at the same time there has been significant pressure on organisations to complete their submission,” ACOSS said.
The new grants arrangements, announced in May, collapsed the original 18 grant programs into seven larger programs.
According to Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews at the time, the new grants would include longer-term agreements that would provide greater certainty for the planning of services.
The Minister said as part of the new arrangements, the Government would roll out a streamlined system that added three newly broad-banded programs – Families and Communities, Housing and Homelessness, Disability, Mental Health and Carers – to complement those already existing in Ageing and Aged Care.
As well, it’s understood that the Government’s final McClure report into Welfare Reform will not be released until November. An Interim Report was released in June.
