To say that some charities shouldn’t exist?

People like to be able to donate their money by choice to causes they feel good about, ultimately. Money to charity feels like you are giving and money to tax feels like they are taking away

I’m sure loads of people would happily donate £10 a month to a good bank but would resent paying an extra £10 in tax even if it prevented people needing the food banks in the first place.

Happens at all levels - you get insanely rich people dodging as much tax as they can then setting up charitable foundations with the proceeds. Really they’d probably do more good just paying the tax.

This conversation tickles me because I once failed an interview for an air ambulance charity. It was a technical role, but they wanted me to talk about my passion for air ambulance services.

I mean, nobody thinks they're a bad idea, surely? And it had nothing to do with my ability to reform their database.

It is really interesting isn't it that people place different value on things depending on how they are delivered. They will actively donate to fund £500,000 to save 1 person in an air ambulance but would bulk at paying extra tax to do the same. It may or may not make sense to spend the money but people view of on the same spend is different.

Yes, another way to look at this is to turn the question around.

The government decides it is going to find something with a certain amount of money, maybe medical research, or an education benefit.

But if there are people who want to personally give more towards those things, or help those people directly, is the government really going to stop them?

That makes no sense.

Yes - a slightly different case is the air ambulance. That would never pass a government cost-benefit analysis (i.e. the money could save a lot more lives if spent elsewhere, so the government can't in good faith fund it). But people want to fund an air ambulance and I'm glad they can do so. Government should not have the monopoly on providing social support.

The charity of which I'm a trustee, supports the very people that government actively doesn't want to help. The new one might be more minded to, but won't be able to because money, and because they need to maintain a policy that the voters continue to want.

Charities will always be needed to help the unpopular poor.

That has had a huge financial impact on households. Two workers, even on relatively low earnings can often jog along steadily, especially if their housing is affordable. I know several families in that category who can pay their bills, feed and clothe their kids. Single earners however, with or without children, can have it tough, as can single pensioners. Also households who have moved away from wider family, and have no help with childcare.

There are so many scenarios where help is needed. Sometimes that might include a bit of self help too.

It's always someone else's fault.

What about the breakdown of the family unit?

But the food supply IS stable and adequate? It just costs significantly more than it did 5 years ago due to global factors that the uk government has minimal ability to influence.

In an ideal world the demand would not exist.

But given there is homelessness, I don't see why a government solution is preferable to a charitable one.

Charity: done freely, both expresses and builds social bonds, giver and receiver often feel they both benefit.

Government: done under compulsion (via tax, ultimately with threat of prison), makes these social issues 'someone else's problem'.

Govt needs to pick up the slack, but a situation where charity plays a large role is not, in itself, bad.

A good example of twisting everything back to being the government’s fault. The primary reason wages are low in the uk is lack of economic growth, which ultimately comes from the private sector not government. Private business isn’t a problem for government to fix, but a resource to be encouraged.

And no one here is suggesting that the government should be feeding everyone!

It IS government responsibility to enact policies to ensure as far as possible that there is a stable and adequate food supply for the UK.

You don't think the government does anything? What about benefits and social housing? But the government doesn't have a bottomless pit of money so charities get set up.
I thought you were going to argue that some charities shouldn't exist because something like 90% of donations goes towards administration rather than the beneficiaries.

And why do we have so many people reliant on benefits? For 2 reasons:

Companies know they can get away with paying less than people need to live because they know that their employees can claim top up benefits.

Successive governments have failed to manage the economy properly and have failed to invest in activities that will keep the prices of essentials stable.

By increasing the minimum wage and employers national insurance, the government is trying to gradually shift the responsibility back onto employers to pay their staff enough to live on.

Mermaids shouldn't exist.

I have worked in the charitable sector for 25+ years. Most charities would love not to exist (big and small) because there are no people in need.

I have never ever seen things as dire as they are now. Less and less people meet the statutory thresholds for any kind of support, so more are turning to charities. Charity staff are dealing with situations that they really should not have to.

Combine that with a lack of funding - many charities are having statutory funding cut, and normal sources of income (trusts, individual donations), are simply drying up.

I can foresee a situation where a lot of charities close in the coming years - not because there is no need but they simply cannot continue - no funding, burnt out staff - the sector is facing a huge crisis. And yet you still get people on threads like this bemoaning that people who work for charities actually get paid.

Even if we move the threshold of who/what deserves government support there will always be some people on the wrong side of that line, though. Unless you are suggesting the government should be feeding everyone?

personally I think there are far too many reliant on the state already. I fully support a safety net, but far too many seem to think the government should fix their problems.

No I haven’t - there was not a need to distribute food to the poor in the 80s/90s UK. The church did a harvest festival collection each year and it was given to an old persons home, which was a lovely gesture but the residents were not in poverty.

When my mum was widowed in the 80s, our income suddenly plummeted as dad was the main earner. The benefits system acted as a proper safety net until we were able to get our lives back together. There was no need for people to buy food for us, or for us to use a food bank even if they had existed. That would have been soul destroying at an already sad time.

Today, someone widowed with children in similar circumstances would find universal credit insufficient to cover basic costs and I understand that there is a five week gap whilst the claim is processed.

I think that would be a fairly common perspective, but I am not convinced it actually works that way in practice. In practice what it seems to give us is these bloated charities which can almost develop a parasitic quality, and which operate as quasi arms of the state. With a professional third sector cohort that run the organizations themselves.

And it seems like the people who have the most input into which charitable organizations get funded is the PMC - not the poor.

Not to mention that time and even expertise that ends up being involved in things like grant writing, or grass roots organizations trying to fill a need they see around them, and doing acrobatics to try and fit their grant applications into whatever the government has decided it's priorities are that year in such a way that it will address the need that they are actually trying to serve.

It's also true now that some charities are "popular" and get funding out of all proportion, while others not so much. Breast cancer vs mental health is one example - some cancers have huge fund raising apparatus. Programs for prisoners of course don't get much, and a lot of tsupport they get is from religious organizations. I don't see any of that changing because the state is distributing the money tbh.

You are missing her point which is that the need to distribute food is not new. It was just accomplished through differernt means.

Sometimes it's just that new ways to fill a need are developed. It's not that the need is new, it's that someone thinks of a new way to approach the problem.

Or perhaps more commonly, changes in society or technology make a new solution possible or effective.

The way we distribute food now is really a lot different even than the 1960s, and so is what we eat.

Therearea lso economic elements, despite our complaints about high food prices as a proportion of salary we have long been in an era of very cheap food. Farmers don't really get properly compensated either, we are used to paying less than the costs of production in a lot of cases. OTOH, housing prices have gone through the roof compared to the past.

I'm not sure if that has made a difference but I think it makes sense that as other things change workable responses will also change.

A lot of food used to be distributed to those in need less formally for example through churches - it's easy to underestimate how much social work of that time they managed.

Maybe you are young so food banks have always been in your world but this is not correct.

The number of food banks in the UK before the 2007 financial crisis were absolutely tiny and were located in the most deprived areas in the UK. The financial crisis made life more expensive for most of us but affected the poorest the most. Since then, there has been substantial inflation affecting essentials - housing, food and energy especially. Today there are more food banks than there are branches of macdonalds, and almost every place is served by at least one.

Successive governments have failed to keep a lid on housing costs, made policies that have actively eroded the UK’s food security, and have left us all exposed to these ridiculous energy prices. In the meantime, exploitative businesses have paid wages that are not enough to live on whilst expecting their staff to claim benefits (paid by the public).

Also now they exist maybe it’s quite an easy way for richer people to give without actually giving money?

I do find the proliferation of food banks interesting. Within living memory we had a period of grinding poverty and very high unemployment especially in the North (the Thatcher era). Boys from the Blackstuff, gis a job etc. 3 million unemployed. Benefits not as generous as now. Literally no jobs in some areas. However I personally don’t remember such widespread, organised food banks as there are now. There might have been the odd church run thing, or Salvation Army, some Catholic charities like St. Vincent De Paul etc. But nothing of the size and scale we have today. I’m not saying food banks aren’t needed. I just think there’s been a huge change in society. Maybe there are more wealthy early retirees to staff them as volunteers whereas in the past people stopped work due to ill health or carried on.

Many of them have certainly become hubs for other things, some offer hot meals, breakfasts, debt advice etc..

Regarding food banks - their provision is not a new thing.

We have always provided needy families with free food, whether through families, neighbours, and particularly, churches. Nowadays, it is just more organised, but it is the same type of people who are boots on the ground.

The need for foodbanks is very complex. Why don't families have enough money? We've always managed job loss and other unforeseen circumstances, but what is the reason for the perceived dramatic increase in demand? It is not always the government's fault, apart from condoning an overall breakdown in society.