"The proliferation of more and more stringent and prescriptive monitoring requirements is choking the voluntary sector, and forcing its beneficiaries into second place in the pecking order." So says Ben Wittenberg, Director of Policy and Research at the Directory of Social Change in a recent Guardian Online article.
He argues that a trend towards "funding structures more commonly associated with statutory grants and contracts" is a trend towards "bureaucracy and accountability, rather than flexibility and common sense".
He locates the problem in the lack of a reciprocal relationship between funders and recipients; in particular, funders' emphasis on project funding and monitoring. His answer is: "More funding of organisations, rather than projects, would provide more scope for development, more flexibility for the organisations receiving funding, and far less stringent additional monitoring."
Ordinary people still approach the setting up of voluntary organisations ("let's set up a charity") in the expectation that their good heart and their willingness voluntarily to give their time in a 'good cause' were sufficient. Likewise, they imagine that putting on fund-raising events and applying for grants will bring in the income for their 'good works'. I have recently been involved helping set up just such a 'charity': hopefully alerting them to the real task they are taking on without destroying their dream and ambition to make a difference. We were the same in 1992, when Paces was set up.
My experience, certainly during the past 5 years, is that Ben Wittenberg is essentially correct: the burden of 'bureaucracy and accountability' has increased overwhelmingly to the point of having an adverse effect on our capacity to maintain a proper balance in staff time expended as between 'paperwork' and 'service delivery', and how this impacts on the interests of our beneficiaries.
As CEO of a smallish regional charity, I am uncomfortably aware that it is not a simple issue of staff time but also of our morale as individuals and as a whole organisation: increasing demands for accountability which are seen as excessive are counter-productive and corrosive of the very commitment on which the whole charitable intention thrives.
I am reminded of the question once asked of us by an officer of a regionally well known grant-maker, on being approached for a small grant to undertake a Feasibility Study, prior to launching a funding appeal for a modest project: "How do you know you need to do a feasibility study? she asked". The world separates into two camps: those who fall about laughing on hearing this - and those who regard it as a perfectly legitimate question to which a proper answer should be supplied if the application is to go ahead. The latter camp increasingly have the upper hand. (Unable to provide a satisfactory answer, we withdrew the application. The project has not yet gone ahead.)