ACCORD, University of Technology, Sydney: Government/not-for-profit funding relations

Since October 2003, Orfeus Research has been working with Professor Mark Lyons, Director of ACCORD (Australian Centre for Cooperative Research and Development, University of Technology, Sydney) on a project to identify the features of successful government funding programs of not-for-profit organizations. As part of this project, Orfeus Research was contracted to:

• Conduct a series of telephone interviews with peak organizations to identify government funding programs that appear to not-for-profits to be broadly satisfactory in the way the work
• Conduct a number of focus groups with executives of not-for-profits participating in various government funding programs to further explore their views of government funding programs
• Based on information gathered from interviews and focus groups, identify two programs to write up as case studies. This involved conducting in-depth interviews with participants from not-for-profit organizations and relevant government agencies.

This work is part of a wider project involving researchers from the Centre for Philanthropy and Non-profit Studies at Queensland University of Technology and the Centre for Citizenship and Human Rights at Deakin University. The research findings will form the core of a report to be prepared in 2004 aimed at improving policy making in government funding of not-for-profit organisations.