Understanding the idea of ‘grant dependency’ in the voluntary and community sector

Abstract

The sustainability of voluntary organisations and community groups has become an increasingly salient aspect of recent debates in the voluntary sector in the U.K., alongside a growing interest in the pursuit of more entrepreneurial community-based activity. These developments have coincided with the emergence of new ways of framing discussions around finance and funding in the sector. This article begins a process of unravelling and making sense of these new discourses. It takes as its starting point an illustrative discussion of the emergence and use of the idea of ‘grant dependency’ and provides a theoretical account of how and why this new language has developed.