To think that the charitable sector in the UK is unnecessarily fragmented?

[legalalien]

I've read a few articles recently about the need for improved careers advice /CV assistance in schools and the fact that cuts to school budgets are likely to lead some schools to reduce services in this area.

Hmm - I thought - sounds like an area that would be ripe for volunteering - wonder what's out there (it occurred to me that for a particular school there would be some merit in setting up eg a facebook group whose members were the particular school's sixth formers and a selected group of experienced professional volunteers who could provide advice).

So I googled to see what was out there - and there seem to be about five million different charities / local authority initiatives / private sector initiatives by recruitment and publishing firms, blah, blah - and much of the material in terms of online advice is incredibly duplicative. There's so much out there that if I was trying to find help (or to volunteer in some way) I wouldn't know where to start.

In other areas there also seem to be numerous charities all covering similar ground.

Is it just me? Or is this horrendously inefficient? Is there some room for merger activity in the charitable sector (I seem to recall the charities commission encouraging this a while ago). And if not, is that for good reasons or because individual charities have individual personalities involved? Genuine question, and from someone without experience in the charitable sector.

I used to work and volunteer for a small local charity (three...supposedly...part-time employees) and can see the advantages. We kept salaries to a minimum and all worked more hours than we were paid for. The close personal relationship between staff, volunteers and the people we worked with, many of whom had emotional issues, was really special. It was particularly important that the people we worked with could ring the office and know that they would be speaking to X, and that X would know who they were. I'm not implying that larger charities don't do their best, but it must be harder to cultivate that kind of personal and fairly sacrificial ethos in a bigger, more 'corporate' organisation. There's surely space for different sized organisations filling different niches.

PS I should add that there was no way we could have afforded consultants or similar. All our literature was designed in house for example and churned out on the office printer. Volunteers did our one big annual mailing.

Private consultancies are often big expensive wastes of time, as they often are in all sectors.

So what if that site defines a 'fake charity' in that way. I don't.

It just shows how little people know about the funding and workings of charities. Many charities have always received government funding. It's not a secret.

I love the charity sector, so much variety.

As other posters have said most charities are established because someone has a personal passion about something, usually a specific need that isn't being met in any other way. In the eraly stages such a charity is often small, dynamic, flexible and supported by hundreds and hundreds of hours of volunteer time.

Then one day, they meet a couple of other small charities who have very similar aims and approaches, and they decide that if they join together they can achieve more. This brings with it the necessity for some structure, perhaps a couple of paid posts, some specific policies on recruitment, fundraising, disbersment of funds etc. And so some (small) beauracracy creeps in.

Often, the way to reduce the proportion of time and money spent on bureaucracy and administration is to become larger, so the charity might expand and become regional, or even national. This might have the added advantage of enabling the charity to secure more funding.

Then the now national charity finds it has sufficient resources either to meet all of the need in one specific area, or to meet fewer needs across a wider range. So it needs to agree criteria for how it offers services. Perhaps more staff are required to administer this approach. Almost certainly some people will be excluded from recieving services.

So a new small, dynamic charity is formed to address the issues of people whose needs are not being met by existing services. And so the cycle continues.

Is is wrong, or wasteful? Well undoubtedly sometimes it is wasteful, it certainly takes up a lot of people's time, but it's a wonderful dymanic cycle of growth and development and entreprenurial spirit.

"Though if you had 'one big charity' you'd then have to deal with them only helping those they approved of or applying conditions (as churches do)".

No the vast majority of churches don't apply any conditions actually, and I can say this having been involved in various church-based charitable initiatives (a soup run undertaken by one church, a drop in centre for the homeless run by the local Churches Together etc etc) and having worked and volunteered for two different Christian ethos charities. In fact I've yet to come across a church that DID apply conditions or limit aid to those they 'approved of'.

Personally when it comes to volunteering, I think it has to be something that really motivates you, in whatever way.

I found an activity that I really enjoy, and matched that with a charity that has a client group I empathise with, and a working ethos that I would support.

Unfortunately I've also seen examples of charities with volunteers who are poorly trained, who have skills energy experience and enthusiasm that are not well applied. If you want to volunteer, look around until you find something that feels right for you.

Another thought (at the risk of sounding like some sort of junior policy person looking for ideas). Does the government (central or local) provide any sort of "shared services" for small charities and would it be feasible or useful for them to do so (I'm thinking along the lines of negotiating with IT/stationery/printing suppliers etc in bulk to make services available to registered charities at a cheaper cost. Which is supposed to be what happens in central government, although i suspect that as with lots of large private sector organisations various bits of the organisation go out on a frolic when it comes to procurement). Just strikes me that if funding for small charities is tight, then providing things like shared service centres / admin support might have some merit. Or does this happen already (again, apologies for ignorance...)

pointydog I think it depends what you describe as 'private consultancies'. In the last year for a fee of less than £2K I supported a small community charity through a process for them to get EU funding of £186,000. I have also helped to establish a new charity that are now providing long term counselling to people on low incomes (a service that was cut from a previous national charity). I have worked with a large national charity to reduce £5m of costs from their budget. I didn't think any of those were a waste of time

Most small charities would not dream of using private consultants. Normally the money they do have is carefully spent. But some private consultancies may be useful for small charities.

For example, if you have a HR problem you probably can't afford to have a HR employee, so it can be more cost effective to buy in HR advice when you really need it. And if someone for example lodges a case against you at an industrial tribunal, then you do need HR advice.

Similarly if you employ staff and are merging with another charity, you will probably have to pay someone external to do some of the work legally required such as undertake due diligence ot draw up the legal transfer document that allows you legally to merge.

Also IME there are many more private consultancies touting for work from the 3rd sector, than the actual work available.

I bhave worked for local government and now for a small local charity. I get better deals on most things as a local charity than the local government do. So there may be a few avenues for reducing costs, but they will be very few.

What would help is to provide free or very subsidised legal advice centrally. Small charities don't have the money to employ a HR person and buying in advice can be expensive. It is also an area where small committed local charities can get themselves into a mess if they can't afford any advice.

There is free HR advice on the net for standard situations e.g. making people redundant. But as soon as your situation is more specific you have to pay for advice e.g. when taking out a lease on a building.

legalalien many charities stop short of full merger, but share 'back-office services' in the way that you describe.

legalalien - small local charities usually don't have enough back office services to be able to share it. For example, they may have one part time admin/receptionist who deals with all visitors and the rest of the staff being volunteers/staff working directly providing the charitable service. If you have only 1 person whose job is also to cover reception, it gets hard to share this, unless you can share a reception with others.

lesley33 - have you ever thought of contacting Law Works?

Otherwise, many of the big City law firms do quite a lot of pro bono work for small charities, always worth firing off an email to the pro bono officer of one of them and see where you get to!

We have had pro bono work through Business in the Community. But you can only use them once in a 12 month period.

I didn't know about Law Works, so thanks I will follow that up.

I live in the north of England. We have tried approaching a few of the bigger law firms for pro bono support, but have always been told they already do this though Business in the Community.

In that case our charity was a 'fake charity' because it received almost 100% of its income from the European Social Fund. When that ended it applied for the government funding but lost out to a big multinational charity.

Some of the big mutinationals operate the same as businesses, and employ vast amounts of staff, have huge budgets, and will also use consultants. They are charities to some extent in name only, but as they are registered as a charity (ie have a charity number) they can receive donations. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Big companies like these tender for government contracts etc. They are usually the ones that have the clout to bid although I would not say they are necessarily the best ones for the job.

However, even the big multinationals will still run grass-roots projects that you can get involved with.

WRT smaller charities, using consultants, many do because as has already been pointed out, they often cannot afford to employ people directly. So, we had an HR consultant, database consultant, IT consultant and Health & Satefy consultant. When it closed down we had to have HR/redundancy consultants.

As charities grow they have to compete in a fierce market so undoubtedly they will employ marketing consultants and lawyers etc. Charities have to operate like businesses in a capitalist market, they are not all sitting around weaving etc.

I don't know about unnecessarily fragmented, but the charity sector is HUGE so there will always be a range of different organisations, doing a range of different things. Charities are not alway just concerned with fundraising and volunteering, they are active in areas from delivering health services to promoting music festivals, and (as Chris's link points out) undertaking political lobbying. The crucial difference they all share is that they are not allowed to make a profit (that it taken out of the charity) and that they don't have shareholders who demand ever-increasing efficiencies in defence of their dividends. This gives the charity sector a totally different feel to the traditional business sector, even if they may be doing similar things.