Hidden review of NPO selection process

Some applications to be included in Arts Council England’s (ACE) National Portfolio of regularly funded organisations were assessed without reference to some information, including financial data, supplied by the applicants, according to confidential documents seen by AP. The documents reveal that, as a result of a problem with ACE’s application logging system, the “financial information that non-RFOs were asked to supply… may not have been taken into consideration during the assessment of these applications”. Some additional information supplied by regularly funded organisations (RFOs) was also excluded from the assessment procedure. Of the 66 organisations whose applications were assessed based on incomplete information, 49 subsequently failed to gain NPO funding and 17 went on to be awarded NPO status, with annual grants ranging from £60,000 to £1.1m.

In an attempt to review the impact of its error, ACE launched a “confidential and urgent” internal inquiry to determine whether the mistake had had an impact on any of its decisions, and if it had, what the extent of that impact was. The process took place in a three-day window between 20 and 22 June, during which period ACE’s relationship managers were asked to determine whether the missing information would have changed their assessments of the applications, and if so, to revise those assessments. ACE’s Executive Board, which met on 23 June, was due to decide whether to ask Council to re-take any decisions, but as yet no announcement has been made. The senior ACE staff involved in the review were told to treat the process “in the strictest confidence, informing only those who need to play an active part”, which does not appear to have included any of the organisations whose applications were under review.
AP has contacted some of the organisations whose applications were not taken fully into consideration but none of them was aware that their application was being reviewed, nor had they been advised of the outcome of the review. We asked ACE if some applicants for NPO status had recently had their funding decisions reviewed, and if so, why these were being re-visited so soon after the decisions were made. ACE volunteered no information about the review process, but a spokesperson told AP that “Applicants to the National Portfolio were given until 13 May to submit a complaint… we received 28 complaints, representing around 2% of the 1,333 NPO applications. In line with our complaints procedure… each complaint was investigated by a team of senior managers, including regional and national representatives, on behalf of Alan Davey who used the information to decide whether the complaint should be upheld and if the application needed to be re-assessed… 3 of the 28 complaints had grounds for re-assessment and are therefore currently in the process of re-assessing these applications. It is worth noting that these re-assessments will not necessarily result in an offer of funding – we are simply ensuring that all applications were assessed following our published procedures.”