Consider this:
“At the seminar, during a break, I asked one of the speakers when she had most recently heard that the education of children with cerebral palsy was a 'problem', a matter for public debate? As she appeared not to comprehend the question, I suggested she substitute autism, or dyslexia or emotional and behavioural difficulties for cerebral palsy. She then agreed that she was indeed aware of the continuing public discussion about the education of children with autism or dyslexia or educational and behavioural difficulties, but was equally clear that she had never heard of any such public discussion regarding children with cerebral palsy.
Now ...
This week, I stumbled upon some news that had passed me by. “How We’re Building A Greater Scope For Greater Impact” from Scope CEO Mark Atkinson.
Earlier this year, leading disability charity Scope announced a radical new strategy that would mean enormous change for the organisation. Here the charity’s chief executive talks through the plans for this transformation: how they got here, where they’re going, how they’ll do it, and why it matters.
Scope, apparently, is to abandon its charitable status.
This move was hailed in The Guardian by Asheem Singh, former chief executive of Acevo, “the charity and social enterprise leaders network” (When did ACEVO the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations take on “social enterprise leaders?)
Earlier this summer Scope made a landmark decision to stop being a charity and convert to a “social purpose business” with chief executive Mark Atkinson saying that the notion of charity is seen by many to undermine disabled people’s rights. The implication was clear: to achieve a greater impact, Scope must stop being a charity.
Asheem Singh’s argument is clear :
The principle that committees of volunteer trustees should run charities has been at their heart for centuries. But now that charities are spending tens of billions of pounds a year holding up key public services, this model is killing them.
One might respond that the other side of this particular coin is, of course, that the large charities are “in hock” to Government contracts. If, as Mencap has recently pointed out, charities in the care sector are 'on brink of collapse', it may be because they have embraced contracts that cannot be delivered and perhaps ought to be withdrawing from such contracts, withdrawing from “holding up key public services”, a “model that is killing them”.
There's more: in abandoning its charitable status in the voluntary sector, it is also shedding its “regulated and day services”:
Over the coming months we plan to transfer all our regulated and day services to other experienced providers who will invest, develop and grow them over the coming years.
This move will also allow Scope to refocus on doing less, reaching more and having greater impact. It will, however, mean an initial reduction in our annual income by 40% and see the number of employees reduce by two thirds.
The argument that both Mark Atkinson and Asheem Singh (Singh quotes Atkinson word for word) appear to approve is that “The notion of ‘charity’ is seen by many to undermine disabled people’s rights.” Yet behind this is another notion, that some or all Trustees should be paid: “charities cannot be governed by volunteers any more. Unitary boards would see more paid executives working alongside professional and amateur trustees”.
Just read that again. You may have missed it: “professional and amateur”. Asheem Singh means, quite simply, paid and unpaid. (Those who are paid are ‘professional’, those who are ‘professional’ get paid. The others, the ‘amateurs’, do not.)
My cards are already on the table. I am a firm believer in the principle of volunteering and of voluntary association: In defence of the amateur tradition on charity boards (14th August 2015)
If the very largest charities see their future as businesses, albeit so-called ‘social purpose businesses’, then good luck to them. If they wish to pay some or all of their Directors (to name them correctly for they will not be “Trustees” in any meaningful sense), then again good luck to them. But there will still be a need for a model, a charitable model, of voluntary governance, for the vast majority of smaller charities much as we have now. A charity is not a business. You can be one or the other. As Scope has found and Mencap is finding, trying to be both is difficult.
Much is made, by Asheem Singh and others of the debâcle that was Kid’s Company: “One thing is certain: history will judge how we respond to Kids Company” concludes Asheem Singh. It may also, as I wrote here in 2015, In Defence Of The Amateur Tradition On Charity Boards judge us by how we respond to the Board and management failures at Winterbourne View and Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust and closer to home, for me at least, the behaviour of Southern Health in the case of 'LB' (Connor Sparrowhawk). These failures were not down to an excess of volunteering.
So back to my opening paragraph here. The seminar was entitled "Get ready for that local authority contract". There were powerful presentations, including one from the the then Office of the Third Sector urging us to move away from charitable activity, from grants and fundraising, become 'more business-like' and take on contracts, or as Asheem Singh now describes it “holding up key public services”. The seminar and the blog post the paragraph is taken from was in .... 2008 "Where Can I Find The Debate On The Education Of Children With Cerebral Palsy?"
There is a role for charities in public services delivery. There are serious matters that charities face - not least the challenge of reducing their number by encouraging like charities to amalgamate under one Board.
The irony of the Scope strategy quite escapes Mark Atkinson. In his first paragraph, he writes of the foundation of the National Spastics Society as Scope was first known:
Three pioneering, ambitious and determined parents and an equally courageous social worker came together because they shared a dissatisfaction with the education available to their own children, and others with cerebral palsy.
If, with parents today, those three parents "and an equally courageous social worker' were to express, as many of us do, "dissatisfaction with the education available to their own children, and others with cerebral palsy" the last place they should turn to is Scope, the 'social purpose business'. If, as I did in 2008, they were today to ask the question "Where can I find the debate on the education of children with cerebral palsy", the answer is not the social purpose business, shed of its services, that Scope is proposing to become.
Good luck to them. The risk, of course, is that rather than 'greater Scope for social impact', less may simply mean less.
-----------------------------------------
If you are interested, here are a couple of alternative views on volunteering:
"People, Places, Possibilities" by Ralph Broad published by The Centre for Welfare Reform
"Turbo Charging Volunteering: co-production and public service reform". Centre Forum (David Boyle May 2014),