Tag: third sector

Funding charity – survival of the fittest?

Lots in the papers about the damage being done to the voluntary sector by cuts in public funding, which has started another round of the “are charities too dependent on state funding?” debate.

Harry Cole is arguing in the Guardian that cuts will allow market forces to prevail, with “good” charities surviving while their flabbier, lazier  brethren – the ones who can’t wean themselves off the tit of public funding –  go to the wall.  In the end we will just have the charities that the public wants to pay for.  His link to the story was followed appropriately, in my Twitter stream, by a tweet from the RSPCA listing the impressive number of warders and rescue centres they fund completely from public donation.

Well, I’m tempted to say that that’s all very well for the RSPCA.  The British public are always happy to give  to puppies and kittens with  a hard luck story. (I’ve been talked into re-homing 3 rescue cats myself.  I’m not immune to the madness).

You know who doesn’t do so well out of public giving?  Drug addicts.  And old people, particularly those with dementia.  Refugees aren’t high on the list.  Nor are victims of domestic violence.  Or ex-offenders.

Fundraising works fine when you’re promoting a service the public feel emotionally warm about – cancer, children, abused donkeys – (the top ten charities by donation in 2006 were Cancer Research UK, Oxfam, National Trust, British Heart Foundation, RNLI, NSPCC, Salvation Army, Macmillan Cancer Relief, RSPCA, Save the Children).  We are surpassingly generous in times of natural disaster.  But services many – shall we say less-photogenic – people depend on wouldn’t exist if it was left up to us to put our hands in our pockets.

Calling them charities is a misnomer these days.  Lots of third sector/ voluntary sector bodies are effectively small businesses working as not for profit arms of the public services.  I can’t say I mind.  Personally I care more about private sector companies making sizeable profits from government contracts to provide public services, but I guess a mixed-economy of providers is a good thing.  What we’re really talking about when we mention cuts to voluntary sector funding is cutting the services that the voluntary sector provides.  I’d much rather the focus was on that rather than arguing about whether we need a survival of the fittest, fight to the death funding strategy for charities.

Big Society – what next?

The news that Liverpool is pulling out of a Big Society pilot project, blaming cuts and central government inaction, was met with a certain amount of grim satisfaction yesterday.  It seemed like vindication for those who’ve been arguing that the Big Soc is incompatible with the cuts affecting the voluntary sector.    The announcement that Big Society head honcho, Nat Wei is cutting down on his voluntary hours because he needs time to earn a living got a similar response.  People are lining up to say “I told you so” about the  failure of the Big Society (look, I can do it too) without being able to offer an alternative vision of how to provide public services  at a time of swingeing cuts (no, I haven’t got one either).

The Big Soc has always been hampered by its supporters’ inability to explain how it would actually work.  The best summary I’ve heard of the problems with the BS was provided by Anna Coote from NEF at an RSA event at which the audience lined up to condemn the flakiness of the idea – and, if memory serves, the BS defender talked about the importance of people talking to each other on buses.  In the absence of a convincing narrative about how the Big Soc would work in real communities with serious problems, it’s been too easy for its opponents to paint it as a fig leaf for cuts.  (As one respondent to a  Third Sector/LGC survey of attitudes to the BS said “It might work in Ambridge, but not in the real world”)

So, we’re all agreed.  It was a difficult idea raising lots of practical problems, and it’s not going down well.  Rather than carping, though,  I’m intrigued by what happens next.  Given that the Tories aren’t going to change their minds and release more funds to support services, how are they to be delivered in future?  There’s obviously a role for public, private and third sectors to work together – how is that to be done?  Does it matter if it’s done differently in different locations (the chaos that Nicholas Boles said he would welcome in place of central planning)? Can a practical structure now be hung onto the smaller government/bigger communities/locally driven  idea, which many people find appealing when it’s explained properly.  What’s the transition plan?  If the objective is to get from central planning/central funding to locally provided, tailored services,  how do we get from A to B without decimating services en route?  Is the government completely the wrong institution to be driving this at all (a point made in CIPRtv’s examination of communications issues around the Big Society)?  And (another opportunity for me to say I told you so), how come the comms around this central plank of government policy has been handled so very badly that almost no-one seems to understand what the Big Society is all about?

Delivering the Big Society on a wing and a prayer

 When it was  elected the government pledged to: “support the creation and expansion of mutuals, cooperatives, charities and social enterprises, and support these groups to have much greater involvement in the running of public services”  (Cabinet Office, Building the Big Society, May 2010)

But

  • Capacitybuilders, the government agency responsible for supporting the third sector has just lost £1.3m of its budget
  • NCVO has revealed the results of  crowd-sourcing the reality of government cuts to the  sector – 700 responses to date, showing cuts of up to 90%  to some programmes of work
  • Charities warn that cuts threaten the Big Society idea:  What the government says it wants to achieve with the big society and how it is behaving are two different things. All this has created a lack of trust. Within weeks of this government starting out it has destroyed its relationship with the sector through its dishonesty.

“So is the big society a romantic Tory aspiration or cynical political sophistry? Follow the money and the story unfolds. Far from finding themselves cherished, charities are taking a hard hit from the first round of cuts”. (Polly Toynbee, The Big Society is a Big, Fat Lie )

I’ve been planning a post about the role of the sector  in a mixed economy of local service providers,  and the need for it to be properly funded,  for ages  but couldn’t get the right words into the right order.  Then I found this, so, with thanks to Progress, here’s the thing:   ” If local groups are to deliver more in the way of services, they need to coordinate their work with others in the same boat and work in consortia; to share good and best practice both in commissioning and delivery; and have access to capacity-building processes and skill development. They need to be genuine partners to local authorities to work on common programmes.  All these are under threat from a cuts agenda which regards back office functions as less important and therefore more readily discardable. “