If they take money from taxation, they aren’t part of the voluntary sector, by definition.

@1 – I don’t think that’s right. Lots of organisations rely on both volunteer labour and public funding.

Nick,

If people work for them, voluntarily, for free, then they are voluntary sector.

Whether they are independent charities or an arm of the state is a different question.

Rowan, when Nick says “by definition”, what he means is “by my own special definition, which differs from the actual definition used by everyone else”.

Would you define a private company that took some government contracts as similarly “not part of the private sector by definition”?

What about a private company that takes part in a government job creation scheme and so gets government money raised from taxation to partially pay a new employee?

What about a private company that installs insulation and reduces the cost to customers by applying for the various government grants available for insulation?

And if a private company can do all that, why can’t an organisation in the voluntary sector?

Would you define a private company that took some government contracts as similarly “not part of the private sector by definition”?

I think a private company that had a third or more of its revenue as a direct state grant would be blurring the line between private company and parastatal.

If they take money from taxation, they aren’t part of the voluntary sector, by definition.

By your definition you mean.

Tim J: I think you’d have to be earning substantially more than a third of long-term income from the government for that to be the case.

If you’re a private sector landlord, and most of your tenants suddenly lose their jobs because the local factory closes, and they claim housing benefit, have you suddenly become a parastatal landlord instead? How many of your tenants have to be out of work for how long before you do? If your tenants then get a job at the local hospital, are you still parastatal or does filtering the government money through their pockets sufficiently privatise it? (And if you are parastatal, does that make the builder you hire to maintain your houses also parastatal or not?)

I think there’s more to it that the proportion of money taken from state sources.

Hmmm, so if the government is cutting aid to the voluntary sector, what has happened to the “Big Society”?

Oh yes, I forgot, BS is DIY services for free. My bad.

8 – I think if the income were in the form of a direct state grant, then you’re looking at a parastatal. Not that there’s anything especially wrong with being a parastatal.

Companies that are wholly or substantially reliant on the state for their income are a different sort of animal to those that aren’t – their incentives are different and their strategies will be different.

What about farmers, who get paid thousands in subsidies? Are they scroungers?

I like Coalition-bashing as much as anyone. But I think there’s a distinction to be made here between cuts because of the national environment, and cuts to individual organisations – which may well be because of other factors.

Say I’m a funder, and I commissioned a counselling service for troubled young people in my town from a voluntary provider. A year or so later, I come back, and rather than the 150 young people I wanted them to see, based on how many young people I thought might need counselling in a year, they only saw 20. Might I not be justified in taking away their funding?

Now nothing justifies the Croydon approach of indiscriminately taking pretty much all the funding from the voluntary sector in a their town. But, whisper it, some voluntary organisations aren’t very good – and that’s not something you can necessarily tell by the name of the organisation. (So, for example, we all want domestic violence to end and women to be safe. However, if Xtown Domestic Violence Service isn’t very good, then taking the money off them and giving it to another organisation or doing it in-house at the council might be a better way of ending DV. Unfortunately in the howling of “Xtown Council doesn’t care about victims of DV!” I doubt anyone will notice…)

Okay, so, at the moment, I doubt that masses of grants to voluntary organisations are being reviewed because councils and funders want to find more effective ways of helping people. I imagine instead they’re being reviewed as councils think the pain of forcing vol orgs to make their staff redundant is easier to take than the pain of having to make their own staff redundant. But the point stands: voluntary organisations are not entitled to be immune from scrutiny of performance. And they are also not immune to being subject to prioritisation: in this funding environment I understand a council that – with notice – takes money back from a community arts organisation, however deserving, to fund core and key services such as child protection or social care.

~

Now, the question is, given that commenter 1 thinks that voluntary organisations are nothing of the sort if they take money from the state, and commenter 3 thinks that voluntary organisations are staffed by volunteers, how high are my chances of getting a decent conversation about effectiveness in the voluntary sector?

What about farmers, who get paid thousands in subsidies? Are they scroungers?

It’s certainly hard to argue that farmers’ motivations and methods aren’t massively skewed by the state aid they get.

Ok, a correction. In SO FAR as they accept money from the state, they aren’t voluntary.

I suppose it is possible for an organisation to contain both statutory and voluntary elements, like say, a faith school that provides extra RE classes through voluntary provision. But the fact of government funding a particular projects makes that project statutory, rather than voluntary.

And at 8, yes, they have become para-statal landlords, and they get a jolly good deal out of everyone else by being so too.

Has anybody looked at the document linked to?

The vast majority are small cuts to Arts Council projects copied and pasted from a Guardian spreadsheet. As I have stated here before, I’d abolish the whole thing and get Jarvis Cocker and KT Tunstall to pay for their own Arctic cruises and stop subsidising George Osbornes seat at the Royal Opera House.

Incidentally what about the great news that the UK Film Council has been abolished.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/jul/26/uk-film-council-axed

I understand the man in the photograph claimed over £16k for lunches last year.

Anybody here worried he’ll starve now?

If a charity receives more than 50% of its funds from the government, they’re a quango.

Having said that, many charities do really important work that government, due to its nature or size, cannot do. Some government money should go to them. Although some charities should bloody well learn how to get donations to help them stay afloat.

pagar – indeed I did look at the list, not least because I knew you’d be lurking out there, peering and poking… yep, a lot thus far are arts groups. Don’t arts count? Are you one of the philistines of the opinion that Fred Goodwin’s holiday place and pension fund are better contributors to the human condition than music and pictures (that’s a rhetorical question, btw. I know the answer). And many on the list aren’t arts groups.

And as I say – and the main reason I put this up – the NCVO is continuing to collect this information. Every group is invited to submit their information to it. Arts groups may feature at the moment, because they know they’re in the firing line. When the spending review is in, there will be others on the list who offer other services. Main thing at the moment is that the list is out there and ought to be circulated. I’d keep coming back to it, if I were you. You should find something to your taste in the end.

@Richard Bugger

“BS”

Oh, I see what you did there. You used the abbreviation for Big Society, to imply it is akin to BullShit.

That’s right up there with “Lie Dems”. Congratulations! You’ve just proven you’ve nothing constructive to offer to national politics for the next 15 years your party will be out of government.

I knew you’d be lurking out there, peering and poking

Err Kate, I clicked the link you posted.

Apologies for prying if I was not meant to read it……..

@pagar LOL – yep. I meant to put a note on it saying ‘not for pagar.’

Don’t arts count?

Of course they do.

What I cannot understand is how Michaelangelo, Chekov, Joyce and Milton managed to produce anything without my compulsory sponsorship.

[21] Even renaissance men like Michaelangelo relied on patronage.
In his case dosh/sponsorship came from the church rather than the state – although perhaps like you one or two parishoners grumbled that their weekly contributions were being being wasted on a forerunner to Banksy?
http://www.smartmodernart.com/image-files/christwithcarrierbags.jpg

Artists have ALWAYS relied on benefactors of one sort or another, be it a wealthy individual, or weekly dole cheque.

Your attempt to reduce the cultural benefits we ALL receive (from the arts) to a simple matter of double-entry book keeping would even make Scrooge blush?

@22. Pray tell what cultural benefit I, or you, receive in return for our subsidy of Sex Lives of the Potato Men and Lesbin Vampire Killers?

Definitely with you on the Potato Men thing. Manure. That fish sniffing scene will haunt me forever.

Still, dears – I think you miss the point. Certainly, the arts rely on philanthropy and always have. Doesn’t mean that has to be the case all round and forevermore. The point is that we wouldn’t be having this conversation if the City was now in the process of paying back 2008′s bailout money and refilling the coffers from which it received such generous handouts. We fund City con artists – so why not the Bournemouth philharmonic?

We fund City con artists – so why not the Bournemouth philharmonic?

I know I sound like a juke box on repeat but we really shouldn’t fund either from money we have taken from people at the point of a gun.