The Woodcraft Folk - Funding

Funding

Woodcraft Folk is paid for by weekly subscription from children and young people, adult memberships paid yearly and groups pay annual national registration fees. Woodcraft Folk has also from its start received substantial support from the Cooperative Movement and is part of Cooperatives UK

Woodcraft Folk used to receive a yearly subsidy from the Department for Education and Skills. In 2005, however, Woodcraft folk lost this grant. The department said that the organisation's claim for a grant lacked detail and that they did not have “sufficiently robust outcome indicators”, meaning that it did not represent a “good value for money”, although some members of Woodcraft Folk have claimed that the real reason the funding was stopped is the group's strong stance against the Iraq War. This was the first time in 40 years the organisation was denied funding by the department. The grant money provided a fifth of the funds that helped to pay for Woodcraft Folk's full-time staff and headquarters.

Woodcraft Folk campaigned to get its funding back and before the May 2005 election was offered a seconded employee from the Department for Education and Skills starting in 2006 for a year and a return to limited funding the year after.

Woodcraft Folk also receives sporadic funding from grant providers for project work it undertakes such as the London Training grant from the City Bridge Trust. Other recent grants include those for Global Village 2006 from the Department for International Development and the Cooperative Group and for the 18 month Climate Challenge project, C-Change, from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (see http://www.switchonswitchoff.org/).