Fishburn Hedges

29.06.2011

The Prime Minister continues to find it difficult to get across his Big Society message.  In yet another speech on the project on 23 May, David Cameron was as passionate as ever on the subject, saying that “the Big Society holds the key to transforming our economy, our society, and our country's future”. 

He wasn’t helped in getting the country to focus on the subject when Lord Nat Wei, the government’s Big Society adviser, announced the following day that he was quitting the role.  This prompted Labour to claim that the Big Society was “once again descending into farce”.

The shame of it is that the subject is far too important for it to be allowed to become a party-political football.

 Regardless of our personal political views, it should matter to all of us - and particularly to responsible business leaders - that the Prime Minister’s ambition to build a bigger, stronger society is realised.  Because, as he says, as a nation “we can't keep tolerating the wasted lives and wasted potential that comes when talent is held back by circumstance…in the end, the things that make up a strong society - strong families, strong communities, strong relationships - are the things that make life worth living”.  And they are also, of course, prerequisites for a prosperous economy and thriving businesses.

But how do we build the Big Society?

I believe that the key lies in re-energising and modernising the role of charities in our national life.  Generating more support for charities, and encouraging them to build closer, mutually beneficial relationships with for-profit business, so that both can operate in tandem to serve citizens.

So we must figure out the answer to the following two questions.  Firstly, in a world where the boundaries of the commercial, public and charity sectors are becoming ever-more blurred, what is distinctive about the work of charities?  And secondly, where does the heartland of the charity sector lie, and what must we do to rejuvenate it in a hugely challenging financial climate and at a time of great change in the political environment?

As with all good exams, there is no one right answer to these questions. Some would say that the key to safeguarding the future of the voluntary sector is to ensure that service-providing charities are fairly treated – perhaps even protected – as the delivery of public services is thrown open to a range of competing providers and is subject to the discipline of payment-by-results.

Others would argue that every possible encouragement should be given to driving-up standards of efficiency in the sector.  Following this line of argument, forms of charitable activity that can be shown to provide strong social returns, should be driven to scale through a relentless process of mergers and acquisitions, and the encouragement of consortium operations with business.  The largest charities should become even larger and grow market share in order to drive economies of scale in their operations.

A fast-emerging line of further argument holds that the traditional constitutional form of charity has had its day and that the future of civil society is to be found in the concept of social enterprise.  Supporters of social enterprise believe that innovation, and the creation of profit to be ploughed back into the organisation for social good, are alien concepts to the traditional charitable form.  They believe that solutions to the problems of contemporary society need new structures and new ways of thinking which charities are ill-equipped to deliver. 

All of these arguments have their merits – and their downsides.  But, in my view, the single most important way of preserving and developing the strength of the charity sector is to remove the barriers which deter individuals from becoming involved in community action at a local level.  The high level of public trust and confidence in charities is driven largely from people’s individual experience in their own neighbourhood.

That is why the publication on 17 May of the report of the Red Tape Task Force, led by Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, is potentially one of the most important documents to have emerged in Whitehall in the first year of the coalition government.  I declare an interest.  I was a member of the Task Force.  I saw at first hand the evidence that huge numbers of volunteers, including many potential trustees, are deterred from giving their time and money to charities and voluntary groups because of the myriad of rules and regulations with which they would have to contend.

There are, of course, good reasons why CRB checks, health and safety requirements, and licensing of activities on community premises were established in the first place.  But in these, and so many other areas, we have allowed red tape and an insidious fear of being sued if one takes on a voluntary postion, to dominate.  One of the key recommendations of the Task Force is that reforms to the law should be considered to clarify the extent of charity trustee and volunteer liability to encourage more involvement and participation.

And this is where business can come in.  In a world where there is less bureaucracy and fear of potential liability attached to volunteering, the stage will be set for an exponential increase in employee volunteering schemes.  Vigorous, new momentum from this source would provide a much-needed adrenalin shot to the whole of the charity sector. 

In this context, the Business in the Community programme creating ‘Business Connectors’ to help business work in partnership with local charities and community organisations has a vital role to play.  It is an initiative that deserves strong support from big business.

If Lord Hodgson’s recommendations can be actioned effectively, and if the Business Connectors programme takes hold, we will re-energise the charity sector.  And we will all have gone a long way to answering the exam question – how do we best build the Big Society?

Written by Andrew Hind

Andrew Hind is editor of Charity Finance magazine, and former chief executive of the Charity Commission.

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