Funding Fiascos and Bungling Bureaucracies Part 1

  

Having been on both sides of the funding fence as a grant beneficiary/employee of a funded organisation, and as a Government grant administrator/committee member and assessor, I’d like to think that I have a balanced view of funding decisions and how they are made. I must confess however, that fairly often a decision – and perhaps more importantly how it is made and communicated, makes me wonder if anyone can really understand it.

Recently two decisions made by two different NSW Government Departments have led to the impending closure of two organisations which I have been proud to be involved with.

I am very sorry to see them both go because they are both effective and useful organisations, with more to contribute. Moreover, neither was costing the Government very much considering what they provided for those funds.

This month I will talk about the first example: Community Cultural Development NSW. In 2001 I took on the organisation which was effectively created by ArtsNSW to rise like a phoenix from the ashes of the NSW Community Arts Association. It was, in fact a complete re-purposing of the organisation which was no longer delivering exactly what the Ministry wanted at the time.

By having an effective partnership, however, it wasn’t long before CCDNSW was established as the peak body for community arts and community cultural development in NSW, undertaking arrange of functions around enabling, supporting and encouraging those activities rather than initiating and delivering projects – although some of that happened too.

After I left Frank Panucci was CEO and he and CCDNSW took the lead in preserving community cultural development funding by the Australia Council after the dramatic dissolution of the Community Cultural Development Board. Subsequently Vic Keighery refocused the organisation and created a new structure and set of programs.

For a service organisation and peak body I think it is essential that this process happens on a regular basis. It must be constantly cognisant of the needs of the constituents it services and what its funding partners want it to achieve. Both these things tend to change over time, and if your programs are successful, you will address certain priorities enabling you to switch your attention to others later on.

Vic appears to have done an excellent job of that – canvassing widely and eventually negotiating a three way funding Memorandum of Understanding between CCDNSW, the Australia Council and the NSW Ministry for the Arts. This MOU sets out what the organisation was expected to do. Interestingly, at the insistence of the NSW Ministry for the Arts, this MOU explicitly restricts CCDNSWs project and training activities, stating that ArtsNSW funds may not be used for this purpose.

The unknown factor here, however, is why CCDNSW has remained out of the mechanism used to fund other peak bodies and service organisations within the Arts in NSW. Organisations such as Music NSW, Regional Arts NSW, Museums and Galleries NSW, Accessible Arts, Ausdance NSW etc receive funding on a triennial basis under a negotiated agreement.

A few fortunate project focused organisations such as Information and Cultural Exchange and Big hArt are also funded under this program. Despite establishing this MOU, CCDNSW was to remain in competitive annual grant funding processes and was not invited into the triennial program – apparently because the triennium was already in cycle and there was no scope to expand its budget.

Fast forward two years: The 2009 funding programs are about to close, with a new triennium to start. CCDNSW is still not invited to apply under that program, but again required to compete against project focused organisations for one year program funds. A new criteria regarding audience development is introduced one month before the closing date. This criteria is incredibly hard for a service organisation to the community sector to meet and it clearly demonstrates how CCDNSW is an ‘orange’ competing for funds against ‘apples’ in a funding program designed for ‘apples’.

When you consider this, it is really no surprise that CCDNSW was not successful in obtaining funding under this program.

The real surprise comes from the feedback they received from ArtsNSW staff. This included comments that although CCDNSW was assessed as meeting all the criteria, it didn’t do as well compared to other organisations “because you aren’t proposing to do any projects or training activities”. When it was pointed out that the MOU explicitly prevented them from doing so, ArtsNSW staff claimed that the MOU was invalid because they had never actually signed it. This seems a preposterous claim, when the agreement had been negotiated with three parties and had been in operation for two years.

CCDNSW Chairman Lex Marinos told me that at no stage during the two years had ArtsNSW indicated that they were unhappy with the terms of the MOU. “We were clearly operating under it and reporting against it to them.”

Lex goes on to say a major part of the problem confronting CCDNSW over the past two years is that there is “no strong advocate for the organisation or the community cultural development sector within Arts NSW. There is no great understanding of what we do and why. I would like to know how we can get to a position where we are being dealt with in the same way as the service organisations from other sectors and having triennial funding assessed against our performance against a negotiated agreement. The MOU was supposed to be a step towards that.” Indeed, by definition a three year MOU sounds exactly like a negotiated agreement and a triennial funding arrangement.

It would appear that, instead, the MOU has limited CCDNSW’s activities and set them up for failure against applications better suited to the assessment criteria in the only funding program open to them. At the very least, it seems clear that, once again, the community cultural development and community arts sectors are not receiving the same treatment as other sectors.

Unsurprisingly ArtsNSW is not issuing comment on the matter. The Australia Council, on the other hand, finds itself in a difficult situation, stating that they like and support the work of the organisation and are happy with its performance under the MOU agreed between the three parties – but that same MOU makes Australia Council funding conditional on CCDNSW receiving funding from ArtsNSW!

Thus the decision by ArtsNSW removes all core funding from the organisation and leads directly to its impending closure.

The community cultural development field has responded with disbelief and outrage, posting messages of support on CCDNSW’s website (www.ccdnsw.org) and on face book (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=296273570781&ref=nf).

No-one involved is denying the right of the assessment panels to make their decisions against the advertised criteria, or is asserting that CCDNSW has a special right to ongoing funding. The issues being raised are all about fair and transparent processes. At the core of this is the way CCDNSW has been required to apply to an unsuitable funding program, yet still met criteria designed for other activities – just not as strongly as others, and the failure of ArtsNSW to engage with the organisation directly and to communicate what was wanted from the organisation. It would appear that this decision is a direct result of the organisation not being given a fair go.

Lex explains that despite seeking a meeting with the Minister since the turn of the year, he has not been able to secure one. Excluding CCDNSW from the triennial grants program, as Lex puts it “seems to say that elite arts are more important, while community participation is less important. This is contrary to the stated objectives of the NSW Government State Plan and it smacks of the community sector once again being treated differently to the others.”

He also questions the decision making processes within ArtsNSW, which do not appear to be transparent. “We don’t know how we can get ourselves assessed on a fair footing against the criteria designed for service organisations such as us.”

This was a common theme amongst supporters of CCDNSW I spoke to this week, with many referring to long held reservations about ArtsNSW decision making processes. “They have staff members dealing directly with clients who are also participating on assessment panels – this isn’t peer assessment or even arms length funding as practiced by the Australia Council. By comparison, they are living in the Court of Louis the XIVth.”

I’ll be back next month with a similar tale of the sad fate of Arts Training NSW in Funding Fiascos and Bungling Bureaucracies part two.