Dependence on state funding and submission to chilling narratives from government, media and the regulator has caused charities to lose their radical identities, the outgoing chief executive of the Lloyds Bank Foundation for England and Wales said yesterday.
Delivering a lecture called ‘Reflections forward: Perspectives on leadership in a changing context’ at Bayes Business School, Paul Streets said the UK was full of “remarkable charities doing remarkable things”, paying particular tribute to the determined and innovative work of small, local organisations.
But he said a “roller coaster” of government funding pots and cuts across administrations had destabilised the sector, with the implementation of austerity creating “a downward trajectory that accelerated in recent years with Covid-19”.
Streets said this was compounded by efforts to limit the sector’s ability to campaign from a government “that for some time has thought we should just shut up and go away”, the media and the Charity Commission.
He said the regulator “keeps changing its mind” on how charities can speak out, “depending on who is in the chair”.
He said: “Under the previous two chairs we were told to shut up and keep quiet. Under the current one we are encouraged to campaign just so long as we do it kindly.
“This ambivalent approach – ‘do this, don’t do this, OK you can, OK you can’t’ – it’s almost perfectly designed to confuse us. It’s a very effective silencer.”
These pressures on the sector were underpinned by an increasing reliance on public funding, particularly among large charities, said Streets, who announced last year that he would retire from the Lloyds Bank Foundation in May after 10 years in the role.
“Over the last 30 to 40 years I have seen many charities become almost completely dependent on the state, locally and nationally,” he said.
“Some of the biggest charities in the country are almost proud to be completely publicly funded. They are competitive, they are happy to consume and spit out local charities.
“Many have virtually no voluntary income and they are obsessed with scale. Frankly, they are more like Serco than Samaritans.”
And Streets said that the expansion of contracting had compromised the sector’s ability to both provide quality services and speak out.
“While large service-providing charities tell me they remain influential, our ability to comment at national level is inevitably compromised by our dependence on public funding and our seeming wish to mirror the state at times,” he said.
“Sometimes it feels like we have been co-opted into a system that on the one hand provides substandard care for the poorest and most vulnerable, and on the other provides substandard terms and conditions for those on the front line of provision.”
Instead of trying to mirror public services, Streets said, charities needed to go back to their “radical and activist” roots, and recognise that effecting change on huge and complex issues means reaching beyond individual cause areas.
And, he said, the sector needed to remove itself from the state. “If we are to be effective we need some detachment from the state and we need to be independent of it – and, indeed, any party or any controlling, dominant funder,” he said.
Streets challenged the audience to “look to your roots to rediscover that activism, that radicalism, those people in the room determined to make a difference and do things differently”.
He said: “I believe we’re up to the task, but I think it will take quiet, persistent, determined but purposeful anger. We have to be bolder, more confident, more strident to maximise our impact. It will not win us any friends in government, left or right, but we should keep our eyes on the long term.
“So go forth, advocate, be stroppy, be proud and be proud of being woke. The country needs this sector more than any of you could possibly believe.”