Sir Stuart Etherington and the 4th Sector!

Stuart is absolutely right (Civil Society News 15/2) to highlight the dangers of current government policy that will allow a small number of for profit companies to dominate the provision of public service which were previously the baliwick of smaller, innovative charities focussing, not on profit, but on delivering the best possible services and outcomes for beneficiaries.

What's worse is the cognative dissonance being shown by the coalition, in supposedly promoting and encouraging "the big society" whilst retreating from and slashing the funding for such services. The reality is that we have a big society which needs investment. As it is we'll finish up with a smaller society which will penalize those least able to speak up and complain.

NCVO reckon there's £2bn coming out of the sector, Cathy Pharoah says £3bn. By my sums I reckon that it'll be closer to £5bn by the time you include all the small local authority grants and funding to community organisations that is being wiped out.

21st Century Philanthropy

There is some really interesting research begining to emerge about how and why people are giving (or not). My pal Beth Breeze has just published the 2010 Million Pound Donors report which follows hard on the heels of Cathy Pharoah's Family Foundation Report. The latter comments that the top 100 family trusts account for £1.4bn of donations whilst the former talks of £1.5bn of £1m+ gifts in last year alone. Some hefty numbers indeed and an indication that giving, at high levels, is remaining buoyant even if the seriously well off feel poor when their portfolios have fallen from £100m to £80m.

What does seem to have slipped below the radar is a Report from CAF about British Indian Donors. At 1m of the UK population with the top 200 accounting for £7bn (and growing 5% a year) this is a section of the population largely ignored by UK charities large and small.

Me thinks that we could be doing a whole lot more about our multi-cultural society.

Green Shoots or what?

How interesting that our erstwhile Institute Chairman is going to be the one to replace the legendary Giles Pegram at the NSPCC. Actually I think it's a very shrewd move! Although Paul hasn't been at RNIB all that long he is one of a few younger directors of fundraising who have the insight and understanding of this sector to go on investing when fainter ( and ofter older) hearts who ought to know better, are cutting budgets as a knee jerk reaction.

Even the recent CAF/NCVO survery of UK giving is hesitant to say more than there have been fewer large donations in the last 12 months; whilst Cathy Pharoah in the new Charity Monitor talks about very small growth and "real terms" declines. My own research amongst 30 charties involved in major gift programmes shows a very patchy picture which accords with what NfPSynergy predicted about the recession 12 months ago.

In the face of some grants and contracts being cut and some declines in individual giving fundraisers need to cross their legs and hold their nerves. Overall budgets may need to be trimmed in the short term but cutting investment makes no sense at all. What's more those fundraisers bowing to such cuts are doing the profession a lot of harm.