Can charities be more than a sticking plaster?

In the second article about the ‘future of doing good’, Victoria Winckler asks if the third sector in Wales focuses too much on sticking plaster solutions and not enough on fundamental change.

There’s hardly an ad from a big charity that doesn’t try to tug at the reader’s heart strings. Images of bedraggled children, an older person’s hands agonised by arthritis or a homeless person huddled in a doorway are placed alongside the pleas to donate. These ads, along with much of the ethos of the third  sector as a whole, are based on the idea of ‘need’. Indeed there’s hardly a funder’s application form that doesn’t ask for evidence of weaknesses or problems.

The focus on ‘need’ can have unforeseen consequences.

Focusing uncritically on need means some third sector organisations risk falling into some pretty big bear-traps.

Some organisations might come to believe that the people they help are passive victims, rather than pe0ple who could and should be able to control their own lives.  These ‘victims’ are expected to be unquestioningly grateful for whatever hand-out they receive – an idea which runs very deep.

I came across a good example recently when someone complained bitterly that the recipient of a parcel from a food bank had ‘rejected’ some of  the items in it. The implication was that they didn’t really need it or deserve the parcel if they were going to be picky. But what if the person receiving the food parcel didn’t like tinned pears or was allergic to nuts? Why should he or she have to accept – literally – whatever was put on their plate all because they are poor?

The idea of need also hugely shapes what organisations do.  The charities that tug heart strings typically meet the immediate need. Things like the shelter for homeless people at Christmas, the befriending service for lonely older people and so on.  Less common – and often less popular – are charities that focus on other ways of tackling the problem. These might include prevention, increasing people’s capacity to change their lives, or changing the system.  Yet maybe we need rather more of the prevention, capacity building and system change and rather fewer of the sticking plaster solutions.

Funders of all kinds have a great deal to answer for here.

There is no end of trusts and foundations to support front-line services. Anyone who has ever trawled through a funding directory cannot fail to notice the liking of the majority of funders for ‘hands-on’ activities.

All well and good, but there are many fewer that will support work that gets rid of the need or solves the underlying problem. And so – at worst – the problems or the need never goes away.  Charities – and the people they aim to help – are on a merry-go-round.

Some of the larger charities do of course have some policy capacity that enables them to identify and press for some of the deeper changes that would help. Unfortunately their policy capacity is likely to be regarded as an overhead (and therefore not a good use of funds) while their campaigning for change is increasingly constrained by legislation.

Long-term outcomes matter

Many of the social problems charities address are incredibly complex. Helping someone to change their lives can take many years. Yet, bizarrely, the majority of funding is for projects that are expected to achieve results in, at best, three years. So organisations get locked into quick fixes, even if these aren’t necessarily the best long-term solution. At worst, long-term solutions aren’t even developed or tried out because nobody is up for funding them.

There aren’t obvious answer to the issues here, but at the very least third sector organisations and funders of all kinds should be thinking carefully and critically about them.

Victoria Winckler is Director of the Bevan Foundation. This article is part of a project on ‘The Future of Doing Good’.