Changing landscape
Two very different July conferences on the theme of sector funding confirmed that the cuts agenda has irretrievably changed the statutory funding landscape.
The ‘cake is diminished’ says Office for Civil Society minister Nick Hurd, who spoke at the opening sessions of both the 2010 ACEVO Funding Roadshow and the Institute of Fundraising’s annual National Convention. On the bright side, the new government is going to ‘make it easier to do business with the state’ by cutting red tape and bureaucracy.
For example, the vetting and barring scheme is on hold and mechanisms will be put in place to make third sector tendering for public service delivery contracts less of an uphill task than it is at the moment.The role of the voluntary sector in delivering some of the new contract opportunities, arising from changes to the incapacity benefit regime, will be a challenging one.
In other words, a disability charity will have the opportunity to bid for a DWP contract to, say, provide back-to-work support for disabled jobseekers. This could present conflicts of interest along the lines of those articulated by Who Cares author Nick Seddon in the May edition of Caritas (page 37).
For instance it takes some careful planning to ensure such a contract does not reduce the ability to campaign on behalf of someone who has had their incapacity benefit stopped. On the positive side – the government wants to hear from the sector on how to get the right support to the people most in need, so that opportunity to improve processes and the targeting of support must not be wasted.
One health and medical charity chief executive told Caritas: ‘We are in the process of looking at our capacity to put in for contracts, and that may mean some changes in the way we work. We also need to see what is proposed around the assessments and the consequences, from a campaigning point of view.
I personally do not see a conflict around trying to point out things that are wrong or problematic and also trying to put in place services to make a difference…’This echoes the sentiment of Camila Batmanhelidjh, who expressed her belief that charities should meet their funders as ‘intelligent people wanting to solve things’ and to communicate ‘vision, humanity and generosity’, when she spoke at the National Convention.
In other words, Big Society needs charities to be true to themselves and their beneficiaries, irrespective of where their funding is coming from.
Author: Clarissa Dann
Clarissa Dann was the editor of Caritas as well as an HR and management online service,he People Bulletin until July 2011.
She is now the editor of the specialist trade finance magazine, Trade and Forfaiting Review which can be viewed at www.tfreview.com but does write on charity finance and investment from time to time.
Clarissa has a background in legal and professional publishing, as well as business journalism and holds an MBA from
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