Poll: charities don’t buy Big Society vision


by Sunny Hundal    
5:54 pm - October 6th 2010

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A Charities Aid Foundation survey says only a minority of charities believe the big society is achievable, even with sufficient funding.

The Third Sector magazine reported this week that less than half of charities surveyed by the Charities Aid Foundation believe that Prime Minister David Cameron’s big society vision will work, even if given sufficient resources.

Forty-six per cent of the 266 CAF charity customers polled in August said they thought the big society ideas were achievable if they were provided with sufficient funds.

The same poll found that two-thirds of charities feared their finances would be hit in the coming year. Of those, 56% expected an increase in costs and 43% believed they would be hit by public sector cuts.

41% predicted a drop in voluntary donations, and 38% said they thought there would be an increase in demand for their services.

Most significantly, just over a fifth of those polled thought government plans for the big society would empower local communities and encourage more people to volunteer.

More here

(via @donpaskini)

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About the author
Sunny Hundal is editor of LC. Also: on Twitter, at Pickled Politics and Guardian CIF.
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Reader comments


1. Tim Worstall

My word, that is a surprise, isn’t it?

Charity bureaucrats think that giving less money to charity bureaucrats to play with is a jolly bad idea.

Film at 11.

Real actual research on the effects of government grants on charitable fundraising here:

http://papers.nber.org/papers/w16372

2. Planeshift

Not really tim, consider this:

“less than half of charities surveyed by the Charities Aid Foundation believe that Prime Minister David Cameron’s big society vision will work, even if given sufficient resources.”

look at the last 5 words. It means “even if you give us the money, it still isn’t achievable”

Also note, films are not always shown at 11.

3. Chaise Guevara

@2

“less than half of charities surveyed by the Charities Aid Foundation believe that Prime Minister David Cameron’s big society vision will work, even if given sufficient resources.”

Presumably because charities know they need manpower as well as money (and don’t assume that volunteers cout as ‘resources’).

Although I await with bated breath the millions of volunteer workers arising from that massive group of people who have always wanted to help others and have been impatiently waiting for the Prime Minister to ask them.

4. Charlieman

All credit to the Charities Aid Foundation for conducting this survey, but the results are difficult to find. There is an article entitled “Many charities support the Government’s ‘Big Society’ vision but the majority are worried about their funding” at http://www.cafonline.org/default.aspx?page=19530.

From the above article, we can determine that the survey was conducted amongst customers of CAF’s banking facility, a service for small charities that might otherwise find it difficult to get a good deal. Thus, we can assume that the respondents were from small organisations (most likely delivering modest help to local people or to a specific group of people). It appears to be a self selecting survey (conducted online) and the detailed breakdown that you expect from a professional poll is absent.

With those caveats, I think the results are interesting. They aren’t the knock down “No to Big Society” that Sunny implies in the OP, and I think that “46% believe Big Society is achievable if given the resources” is pretty good. Most Prime Ministers who achieved a 46% endorsement in a poll would be delighted. The “don’t knows” are not quoted (at least in the reports that I have seen) and given fears about the future and citizen donations, I would not expect respondents to be optimistic.

Note to Tim Worstall: my take is that the respondents were representatives of small charities rather than bureaucrats at large bodies that heavily depend on the public purse.

5. Planeshift

“know they need manpower as well as money ”

You realise that this thing called money enables you to buy manpower ;-)

6. Chaise Guevara

@5

Yes, of course, but many charities (probably most of them) have a business model that relies on most of their workers being volunteers; the money goes on the services they provide, including facilitating said volunteers, plus a few full-time staff, advertising and admin and other general overheads.

As such, the difference in income they’d need to used paid staff would be collosal. I suspect that many people interviewed will have assumed they’d be using their standard business model and thinking “yes, you could give us money to [e.g.] buy more food to give to the homeless, put we just don’t have enough people to distribute it.”


Reactions: Twitter, blogs
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