Well spotted! Damn those evil lefties!

There’s a deeply sarcastic piece on Hopi Sen’s blog today that deserves reading too: http://hopisen.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/wei-overboard/

“Those wicked lefties, crushing the good society with their lingering belief that funding charities and community groups is preferable to taking away their funding!”

Have to say I’ve been surprised at the number of “charities” who claim they will suffer because of the cuts programme. An organisation that is funded, even partly, by public money, as opposed to private donations, is not IMHO a charity, it is an arm of the state. There might be good reasons why it is funded by the state, but I think we should stop calling organistions charities when they are not.

The gift that keeps on giving – because we’re worth it!

The con that keeps on conning – because we’re daft enough to swallow it.

What unutterable drivel.

@2 “An organisation that is funded, even partly, by public money, as opposed to private donations, is not IMHO a charity, it is an arm of the state.”

Would you like the state to out carry out its own research regarding social, economic, scientifc and health issues? Or would give the responsibility to NGOs familiar with the relevent areas and with a (limited) degree of independence?

I don’t deny that there are cases of charities doing the state’s bidding or holding their tongues against their better judgement to keep their funding and positions of influence, or charities which were only created and only hold the status for tax/administrative/corrupt purposes. But the simplistic idea posited here and by sites like fake charities that the primary reason governments give money to charities is make them act as sockpuppets is absurd. The fact that fakecharities doesn’t require evidence that a charity has actually managed to successfully influence policy before it’s listed as fake suggests they know this.

It borders on conspiraloonacy to assume that government is going to make all of its funding conditional on supporting its agendas; not least because governments benefit more from gaining informed, accurate pictures of social problems than gaining self-reinforcing falsehoods. Plus it’s not as if governments don’t frequently ignore the recommendations of reports they’ve commissioned charities to compile.

“Would you like the state to out carry out its own research regarding social, economic, scientifc and health issues? Or would give the responsibility to NGOs familiar with the relevent areas and with a (limited) degree of independence?”

Er no, I would like the state to employ its own experts supplemented with bought in expertise where needed – I don’t see what that has to do with charity though, it is basically outsourcing.

“But the simplistic idea posited here and by sites like fake charities that the primary reason governments give money to charities is make them act as sockpuppets is absurd”

As is the idea that the state would fund them for purely altrusitic reasons, would not interfere in any way in their running, or expect anything in return. More seriously, if you stop thinking of it as state funding and as taxpayers money, the question of accountability comes up, as in most people don’t elect government to decide which charity to support.

“The fact that fakecharities doesn’t require evidence that a charity has actually managed to successfully influence policy before it’s listed as fake suggests they know this.”

I’ve never visted the site but would you deny that for example ash (one example there are many others), which advertises itself as “the anti-smoking charity” has influenced governmnet policy ? It is in effect a state funded pressure group, which is completely undemocratic and unethical.

“It borders on conspiraloonacy to assume that government is going to make all of its funding conditional on supporting its agendas; not least because governments benefit more from gaining informed, accurate pictures of social problems than gaining self-reinforcing falsehoods”.

You mean evidence based policy ? Don’t make me laugh

“Plus it’s not as if governments don’t frequently ignore the recommendations of reports they’ve commissioned charities to compile”.

You are talking as though the sole purpose of charity is to inform government policy – like some cuddly form of management consultancy – presumably as a prelude to government “solving” the problem, whilst simulatanously arguing that some “charity” is effectively state agency ?

Informing government policy is the role of the civil service and where they cannot do it that it can be bought in – something that commercial organistions do routinelty I would have no issue with that, what I’m questioning is the need for the suppliers of that advice to be called charities.

Hah!

“Good Society ultimately becomes a cover for Big Government.”

Wow, yes, gosh. And what is Big Society a cover for?

(Hint: it’s not Good Government.)

@5 Matt Munro

A lot of what you say makes sense – the idea of a government-funded charity advocating principles that support the government’s agenda is at best pathetic. However, would you be happy with scrapping the charity entirely (or at least its government funding), and the government instead using that funding to do the same work as the charity, but in the name of the state instead?

@Matt

I run part of a charity that, from time to time, does work for the Government, who pays us for it. The current Government does, for example.

The simple reason they do this is that we are the best in the country at providing the necessary services that we provide and we also do it inexpensively as well because we are not in it for the money.

Thus, although we are not dependent on Government funding, when they absolutely, positively want the best people for the job, they call us and we get paid (a very reasonable amount) to do it, assuming we’re not busy doing something else, because we are not a large organisation.

When they want people who are not so good, they call the kind of people who moan on websites about charities getting money from the Government, and when those people have exercised every ounce of their talent and ability, they end up calling us anyway to fix the mess.

Hope that helps.

@ 8 I doubt your organisation could afford my expertise

Whether you want to call organisations that recieve some money from the taxpayer as “charities” or something else doesn’t detract from the point that such organisations are having funding cut or eliminated, and as a result will not be able to provide the very services Cameron et al want their ‘big society’ to do.

Liverpool rejects “Big Society”: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-12357450

@8

Matt, having had the ‘pleasure’ of reading your output frequently, there is absolutely no job that you are capable of doing for me.

We need people who are honest, understand the limits of their expertise, have some obvious knowledge and are capable of unbiased examination of information that might challenge their views. They are only four of the skills you have never displayed in all the time you’ve wasted posting on this site.

Ken, any chance of a job

I’m hiring at the moment, planeshift! But one thing Matt does have right is that we probably can’t afford him; charitable wages are not great, unfortunately.

Also, I was unfair on Matt there – I have no reason to doubt his honesty, so apologies, Matt. I’m still not hiring you, though.

As far as the rest of your point goes, public money drying up has had an interesting effect on us – we’re getting *more* requests from public bodies to do work (because we’re very good value and a lot of the profit-generating orgs are pulling out), but they are often at rates that don’t even cover opportunity costs. We have also been getting requests to collaborate with all sorts of people, where by ‘collaborate’, they often mean ‘we will do all the work, and they will get all the money’