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Many ethnic minority voluntary organisations fail because they do not have money for day-to-day running costs, says a new survey.

The three-year Fundraising Sustainability Project highlights problems surrounding gaining access to funds.

Among its findings were that ethnic minority organisations do not use organisations such as councils for voluntary service as a resource, and many felt they had to be twice as good as other organisations to attract funding.

Home Office minister Angela Eagle told delegates at a conference for ethnic minority organisations in London earlier this month, where the initial findings of the survey were unveiled, that the government had to ensure that ethnic minority groups had the same access to financial support as other groups. "The active community unit has doubled the amount of money going into ethnic minority groups from £812,000 in 1999-2000 to £1,959,000 in 2001-2. But the sector still does not receive its fair share," she said.

Maggie Taylor, who worked on the project, said: "The problem for these groups is that they don't know who is going to fund their core costs. Funders want to fund projects but not the infrastructure."