Reforms in EU Funding - Gifts in kind and volunteering are expected to count towards match-funding

Members of the European Parliament have agreed to consider simplifying the way the European Commission funds charities and allowing them to count gifts in kind and volunteering towards match-funding targets.

Filippo Addarii, executive director of the Euclid network (a European network of third sector leaders who have been asked to produce a briefing paper) said the commission would publish new financial regulations at the end of 2010.

Addarii said he hoped the new regulations would include reforms to charity funding, including permission to measure the value of gifts in kind and volunteering, and to use them, rather than cash donations, to meet the commission's requirement that the value of its funding is matched by donations from elsewhere.

He said the reforms could also include increasing from 7% to 20% cent the proportion of grants from the commission that can be spent on indirect costs such as overheads, and scrapping the rule that charities cannot make a surplus from running services using European funding.