Intelligent funding
It is good to see that the Cabinet Office wants the sector’s views on how to reduce the deficit and that the ideas will be made available online.
At this stage there is every reason to believe that this is a genuine and well-meant consultation process. But there is no getting away from the fact that capacity remains a huge worry for those charities venturing forth into the space of the rolled-back state.
Leading from the front, the Charity Commission is to lose 60 jobs by next March, and faces a £900,000 budget reduction for 2010/11. But this critical source of free information and guidance (not to mention free regulatory services – a luxury not enjoyed by the users of Companies House) is at risk when the sector most needs it.
In a post-election speech to the Charity 40 Group back in May, Dame Suzi Leather acknowledged what charities have already been through in terms of restructuring pain, but reminded delegates that unlike the banks, there would be no government bail-out of charity failures.
She said: ‘it would be laughable to expect that… the collapse of even quite high numbers of charities will bring an influx of public assistance. So charities are on their own. We, the regulator can’t save you but we can help you.’ Outgoing chief executive Andrew Hind’s replacement Sam Younger is going to have to cut the remaining cloth.
It’s all very well removing ‘red tape’ and clunky barriers to getting things done, but, as Mike Whitlam observes (see page 11), the government ‘could put relatively small amounts of resource into supporting large and small civil society bodies’.
In other words, the Treasury’s Spending Review due for publication on 20 October covering the 2011/12 to 2014/15 period cannot assume that charities will deliver cheaper and better targeted public services with no financial help at all.
The sector is hardly taking a ‘not in my backyard’ approach to reducing the £148bn debt burden and, as indicated last month in this magazine, the retreat of the state does create significant opportunities. Whitlam is right – a relatively small amount of money could deliver a bigger win for the government in terms of alternative public service delivery.
Deciding where to put it is one of its biggest challenges.Charitable foundations are in a brilliant position to share their expertise with the government on how to be an effective funder.
The analysis of what has worked or not worked across different categories of grantee is core to good grantmaking (see page 37 of this issue), but the tricky question of impact measurement and over what period remains. This was something the MOPSU project I reported on last month was trying to get at – let’s just hope that intelligence of this kind escapes the knife.
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
There are no comments on this article. Be the first to comment.