Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- PART I What are charities, and why do we argue about them?
- PART II Changing the world
- PART III Improving lives and communities
- PART IV A junior partner in the welfare state?
- PART V Preserving the past, preparing for the future
- PART VI The way ahead
- Postscript
- Notes
- Index
14 - Charities as pioneers
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2021
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of abbreviations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- PART I What are charities, and why do we argue about them?
- PART II Changing the world
- PART III Improving lives and communities
- PART IV A junior partner in the welfare state?
- PART V Preserving the past, preparing for the future
- PART VI The way ahead
- Postscript
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Decisions about which services the state should provide, and whether it can afford to do so, lie at the heart of politics and depend on ideology and the level of taxation that governments deem appropriate. Politicians of all stripes accept that the public purse is not bottomless, and that hard decisions must be made about how to allocate resources. Once the decisions are made, however, some social needs are inevitably left out and some publicly funded services are usually capable of improvement. This is the home territory of many charities; they try, with varying success, to fill in the gaps in provision, and they pioneer improvement in delivery methods and press for increases in funding.
Many well-known organisations fall into this bracket, including, for example, Macmillan Cancer Support, the MS Society, Missing People and Crisis; behind them stand hundreds of smaller charities, few of them household names, that provide help for the homeless or refugees, run foodbanks or provide supplementary health services. They receive little or no public funding, and if they did not exist it is arguable whether the state would consider their services so essential that it would step in and provide them instead. But many such charities are a lifeline to those who use them, and this chapter looks at the work of four of them. Some of the case study charities presented in this chapter were winners or shortlisted in the Charity Awards run by Civil Society Media.
The question of supplementary services was addressed by Lord Beveridge in the middle of the 20th century:
Even after the extension of social insurance in 1946, many urgent needs of many citizens will remain … and can be met only or best by voluntary action … Voluntary action is needed to do things which the state should not do, in the giving of advice, or in organising the use of leisure. It is needed to do things which the state is most unlikely to do. It is needed to pioneer ahead of the state and make experiments. It is needed to get services rendered which cannot be got by paying for them …
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- What Have Charities Ever Done for Us?The Stories behind the Headlines, pp. 199 - 212Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2021