British charities: time for a national conversation
The Royal National Lifeboat Association recently celebrated its 200th birthday. With two centuries of saving lives at sea, based on a volunteer workforce and public donations, it is an institution admired around the world. And yet, like other great national charities such as the National Trust, the RNLA has been criticised by some in the Government. Why our charities should be so undervalued and under-appreciated by ministers and others in government is a mystery left unexplained by commentators and policymakers in Britain today.
Our country has a proud 1,500 year old tradition of charity. Indeed our charity laws and systems form the basis of legislation and practices for non-profits across the world. Charities form one of the backbones of our national wellbeing, providing essential services, driving social change and underpinning a vibrant democracy through an active civil society. We are a diverse sector: small, local and voluntary as well as large national and international bodies with significant professional staffs and multi-million pound turnovers. We can appear a loose and baggy monster, but one that delivers, campaigns, acts within and sometimes at the edge of the law. But we are part of the very fabric of our national life.
It is important to ask in what state the nation would be without its charitable institutions.
Government has largely ignored charities and indeed criticises them frequently, particularly where they have advocated social change. Sometimes it seems that activism is a dirty word; yet this country should celebrate the six million people who volunteer regularly in charity and in community organisations. And the Government has been slow to offer financial support when charities themselves have suffered the effects of the cost of living crisis. Paradoxically, despite the fact that the pandemic and the subsequent spike in inflation showed the need for stronger communities and volunteering, charities were not seen as essential in driving solutions alongside the state.
Dialogue between the Government and the voluntary sector has been paltry. Far from charities being seen as crucial to harnessing community activity, they are seen as marginal and hostile. As a result, the response of many charity leaders to the Government has been overly critical. For some years now, charities have been marginalised. Under the Blair and Cameron administrations, charities had more favourable attention, whether that was through the third sector initiatives under Blair or Cameron’s “Big Society” schemes.
At one stage there was a third sector minister in the Cabinet office – Ed Miliband initially took the role under Tony Blair. But this post has now been relegated to ministerial obscurity as a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Civil Society, Heritage, Tourism and Growth. The majority of time in this current office is spent in organising Eurovision, rather than overseeing the development of Britain’s largest third sector organisations and promoting their voice in Parliament or internationally.
This Government, like its predecessors, wants to improve the efficiency of our public sector. But charities are often better at providing citizen-focused services in many areas of the public sector, from health and social care to education or the environment, sports, arts and heritage. Charities are playing an increasing role in delivery of public services and their role could be expanded to improve those services.
When I led the Association of Chief Executive of Voluntary Organisations (ACEVO), I worked with the Cabinet Office in developing a scheme with health and care charities to relieve the pressure on casualty departments and to ensure the speedy discharge of the elderly. Many frail, elderly people end up in hospital, even though they do not have the kind of health needs which require a hospital bed. Despite the success of this pilot, the NHS continues to ignore the role charities could play in solving the problem of bed-blocking.
Charities are also superb in providing rehabilitation services which keep people away from reoffending. We know our prisons are now full. Not expanding the work that charities do in keeping people out of prison seems a tragic lost opportunity. Community cohesion is a major problem in an increasingly fragmented society, yet voluntary organisation, staff of cash and are folding.
A bold new deal between the state and the third sector is needed. As the political parties develop their manifestos, we can only hope that they will look at ways in which government can enhance what charity has to offer the nation. In an intervention recently, Sir Keir Starmer made a speech about the role of the third sector. This was notable by its singularity. It would be good to hear from the other party leaders on their approaches.
The problem expands outside the political sphere. Charity is an almost non-existent area for academic research. I suspect the fact that charities are under-researched helps to explain why they are undervalued and often misunderstood. Similarly, the political and media narrative on their role in society is either non-existent or skewed to political ends. That’s why we have established a new research Institute in Oxford to help tackle this oversight. The Gradel Institute of Charity at New College in Oxford is currently recruiting a team of academics to produce research that highlights the importance of charity to our nation and also provides practical support to charity practitioners, aiming to enhance the effectiveness of their organisations. It will be led on the academic side by Professor Peter Frumkin, who is a noted expert in the field from the University of Pennsylvania, working together with me from my experiences as a leading third-sector spokesperson.
British charities can be pillars of the establishment or advocates for the great unwashed. In churches and refugee camps, bowls clubs and hostels, their staff and volunteers can be seen saving lives or producing life-saving medical research – from campaigning for disability rights to manning the lifeboat station. They can be making tea in the local museum or running an Oxbridge college. Is it not time that we redirected the conversation on charities in this country, and reformed our institutions to reflect that role and follow through its promises?
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