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| DSC Director of Policy and Research Ben Wittenberg examines imminent changes in the funding and political climate, and argues that we will need to make tough decisions on how to maintain our independence so we can continue to change things for the better. |
For parts of the voluntary sector, it appears that everything is changing.
Over the last few years we’ve seen a huge increase in government intervention (money and policy) in some areas of the sector, resulting in new opportunities to deliver public services, but also new threats in the form of new funding mechanisms (procurement rather than grants), new competition (with the private sector and between small and large charities), and many organisations now face clear challenges to their independence.
But then the financial world imploded and now we’re facing huge cuts in public spending, recession driven leaps in demand for support and services, and a general sense of panic in some parts of the sector, and rabbit in headlights pre-election paralysis in others.
Whatever happens there will certainly be more changes afoot after the election. Whoever wins we will quickly get an idea of the reality of spending cuts – where and how much.
We will lose some national infrastructure in the post-election quangogeddon, although that may be quickly replaced by the Social White-elephant Investment Bank.
If the Conservatives win we could be looking at a radically different local agenda, with far more power being devolved to Local Authorities (LAs).
The opportunity for the sector could be massive, if not evenly experienced. More power to engaged and informed LAs that are working effectively with their local voluntary sector could be fantastic. More power to those at the other end of the spectrum could be a disaster.
Dealing with change on this scale forces us to make decisions. We in the sector are no strangers to taking tough decisions, but given how much of the change we are currently facing is driven by government, it is even more important that the impact on our independence is at the core of our decision making.
Bad money can be worse than no money, and there is bad money out there - money with strings that demands unreasonable concessions, and money for work that is not in the long term interests of either your organisation or the people you serve.
However, the good news is that most of us are used to change, and that most of the change we see is peripheral to what we exist to achieve.
The people and causes we exist to support will still need us. They’ll still need us to do more with less, to adapt to external changes and pressures without getting distracted from helping them, and they’ll need us to keep coming up with solutions to the problems that regularly threaten to derail our best plans to change things for the better.
by Ben Wittenberg, Director of Policy and Research, Directory of Social Change