But their role is not confined to the relief of individual need. They also play an essential part in education, medical research, the democratic process, the advancement of rights, the guardianship of culture and heritage, the stability and development of local communities, leisure, the protection of the environment and the delivery of public services. This complex proliferation of organisations and their role in promoting social and economic progress is not always well understood or recognised.
The purpose of this book is to make the breadth and depth of the work of charities more visible and better appreciated by categorising what they do and bringing it to life through case studies and interviews, including examples of their response to the coronavirus emergency. It also sets the historical context, examines recent scandals and criticisms and looks at the case for improvements in the governance, transparency and independence of charities.
Our starting point was almost two decades as journalists writing about the charity world. We went out to discover more about organisations we thought would provide vivid illustrations of particular causes. In some cases, these are large and well known; in others, not: we wanted to showcase charities of all shapes and sizes. We have tried to include the main areas where charities play a significant part, but in this wide and varied landscape there will inevitably be some omissions. We are presenting a sample rather than an inventory. Where we refer to the interviews we conducted for the book, these are distinguished from other sources by use of the present tense.
The demand for the services of charities in the coronavirus emergency increased by 42%, according to an early survey by the Charity Finance Group, while overall income was down by a third. Fundraising events such as the London Marathon were cancelled or scaled down, charity shops were closed for months and donations from individuals fell back. The government responded with a £750 million grant fund, but warned that this would not save every charity. The shape, size and profile of the charity world began to change as, for example, National Health Service (NHS) charities expanded and international development charities came under pressure. One survey by Pro Bono Economics indicated that one in ten charities expected to close by the end of 2020.
The record of charities indicates, however, that they will adapt to the huge economic and social disruptions and play a key role in the long-term recovery. Despite reduced resources and extra demand, they will continue to flag up important questions, raise money from the public and philanthropists, mobilise volunteers and community action, devise new ways of meeting social need, prop up state provision and confirm their essential role in what the welfare state pioneer Lord (William) Beveridge, writing about the future of voluntary action in 1948, called ‘the good society’.
What are charities, and why do we argue about them?
This looks like a big, prestigious organisation: its head office is a modern, eight-storey building opposite the entrance to Moorgate underground station in the City of London. It had an income of £243 million in 2018, which gives it roughly the same turnover as, for example, Caffè Nero, which in that year had nearly 650 coffee shops in the UK and Ireland. There are almost 4,000 staff in this concrete-and-glass building and in branches around the country. The chief executive has a team of seven directors who answer to him and in 2018 was paid a salary of £173,000.1 Not a fat cat by City standards, but undoubtedly a high earner.
So is this a financial or professional services company, perhaps, or a large accountancy practice? No – it’s actually a charity. It’s the British Red Cross, founded in 1870, the work of which ranges from relief in UK disasters, such as flooding, campaigning against modern slavery and supporting refugees. In the COVID-19 epidemic its volunteers freed up hospital beds by helping patients go home after treatment and looking after them. It also helps with overseas disasters, working with the 190-strong International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva.
The chief executive since 2014 is Mike Adamson, who has in the past also worked for a consultancy firm in the private sector and an NHS primary care trust in the public sector. He says the demands of leading a large organisation are similar across the sectors, including extensive travel and work in the evenings and at weekends:
“It eats up lots of time, and you have to be very disciplined in carving out time for other things that are important, including family and friends. But I’ve undoubtedly been happiest in the charity sector. There’s the privilege of trying to make a difference in the world, combined with the freedom of manoeuvre that much of the public sector doesn’t have, and with the independence that you find in the private sector.”
At the other end of the scale from the British Red Cross is the Peak and Northern Footpaths Society, a small charity that was established in 1894 to make sure footpaths are kept open. Its first major success was in 1896, when it established a right of way from Snake to Hayfield, high on the Pennine hills in the north of England. Anyone out walking in Derbyshire, Cheshire and Lancashire is likely to come across the Society’s trademark – the square, green metal signs indicating the paths.
The Society has about 1,200 members, who pay an annual subscription of £15. It owns a small building in Stockport, Cheshire and has no paid staff. Among the membership are about 100 volunteer ‘inspectors’, each of whom checks the footpaths in their local area at least every two years. The charity also has six ‘courts and inquiries officers’, also volunteers, who are familiar with footpath law and take up contentious cases, as when a public right of way is contested by landowners. Then there are about a dozen people who help with office work. “Most of our volunteers are hikers who as they get older want to put something back,” says Dave Brown, secretary of the Society.
“I’d be surprised if any of our volunteers put in less than a day a week, and the inspectors are often walking the paths just for pleasure anyway. If paths are blocked or there are other problems, the volunteers report this to us and we take it up with the highway authorities. We’re very much against having paid staff and prefer to remain entirely as volunteers. A while back, there was a proposal to pay someone, but there was an outraged reaction to that, even though we’re quite well off.”
These two snapshots prefigure the stories later in this book that illustrate in more detail the huge range of charitable activity and the extent to which it underpins many aspects of life in the UK. But the rest of this chapter and the two that follow paint the general picture and describe the context in which charities have to work: their structures, the rules they have to follow and the debates and disputes that surround them and constrain what they do.
How many registered charities?
Charities vary dramatically not only in size and income, but also in the balance between paid staff and volunteers. And there are a huge number of charities: at the start of 2020 there were 168,528 on the register of the Charity Commission for England and Wales.2 Their total income was £80.5 billion – a bit less than the combined annual take of Tesco and Sainsbury’s. In Scotland in 2020 there were another 25,000 registered charities with an income of £14 billion, according to the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator, and in Northern Ireland, which also has a separate regulator, there were more than 6,000 registered charities in 2019, with a total income of £1.9 billion in 2017.
In England and Wales, 43% of charities on the register at the start of 2020 received less than 0.3% of that total income of more than £80 billion. The
