But Hands Across Canberra chief executive Peter Gordon said talks were at an early stage, and he insisted he was also talking to other organisations about renting space. He would not name them.

The Labor Club is controlled by the Labor Party and owns a building on City Walk next door to its city club, where Volunteering ACT also has office space.

Hands Across Canberra, currently operating from Mr Gordon’s home, is about to expand massively, with Chief Minister Andrew Barr signing the group to administer his new $5 million Chief Minister’s Charitable Fund, announced in the June budget. Mr Barr is also looking at giving the group control of some of the $7.6 million given to community groups each year by the city’s clubs.

Asked whether Hands Across Canberra would rent space commercially, at reduced rent or free, Mr Gordon said no details had been worked out with talks at an early stage, but decisions to be made “soon”. The option had not yet gone to his board, Mr Gordon said.

Hands Across Canberra was set up in 2010, modelled on the Melbourne Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation, and Mr Gordon said it had been working for some time towards this year’s announcement from Mr Barr of funding.

He would not provide the deed of agreement signed with the government, but said the $5 million included an amount for administration, which he would not disclose, and of the remainder, one-quarter would be distributed in funds over the coming three years, and three-quarters would be invested.

This year the group distributed $150,000 in grants to vulnerable people, and last year $200,000.

Mr Gordon, a former public servant in the ACT economic development directorate during Ted Quinlan’s tenure as Treasurer, is the only paid employee of Hands Across Canberra. He said he had a part-time paid position, but he would not disclose details. Decisions about staffing under the vastly increased budget were yet to be made, he said.

Accounts filed with the Australian charities regulator show Hands Across Canberra and its associated trust have incurred no employee expenses since 2014. Between 2014 and 2017 Hands Across Canberra recorded $274,000 in “other expenses/payments” (not including the grants it gave out), according to the filings.

The charity’s trust deed says remuneration for the trustee running the fund should not exceed 1.056 per cent of the fund’s gross value each year.

Mr Gordon said the group wanted an office in the city so it had a more accessible site, where community organisations could meet and where Hands Across Canberra could become “a much more visible part of the community”.

Asked about the perception of renting or using space in a building owned by the Labor Club in light of the government funding to be administered at arm's length, Mr Gordon said it was “a fair enough question”, but one for the board to consider.

“As the Chief Minister’s Charitable Fund grows it will have a financial relationship with all sorts of organisations across Canberra and how it manages those relationships in an open, transparent and effective manner is incredibly important to the board that manages that money, so we wouldn’t do anything that jeopardies the independence and integrity,” he said.

Mr Gordon said the idea for Hands Across Canberra had come a decade ago from former senior public servant Sandra Lambert, who was on the board for some years. Now, the board includes Community Services Directorate head Michael De'Ath.

It had always planned to build a substantial investment fund though donations from government and business, and when the "treasured responsibility" of managing the new Chief Minister’s Charitable Fund had been given to the group in the budget, “no one was able to say weren’t the appropriate independent broadly based transparent, accountable body to do that”.

Clubs ACT has raised concerns about Mr Barr’s proposal to also send some of the compulsory community contributions from the city’s clubs to Hands Across Canberra.

Last month, Mr Barr said if Canberra Casino operated poker machines, “their community contributions … would go into this fund”.

“Equally, we will look at opportunities with the existing poker machines in the city at the moment, to direct some of the community contributions from those into this fund," he said.

But Mr Gordon said that was entirely a matter between the clubs and the government. If some of the money did end up being managed by Hands Across Canberra, it would be managed within the group’s constitution which specified that its money went to help vulnerable people. As a result, the group did not fund the arts, animals, or groups such as scouts to do their normal work, only funding activities involving helping vulnerable people.

Hands Across Canberra board chairwoman Diane Kargas could not be reached.