The charitable sector in England and Wales is a large and complex group of organisations. According to the charity commission which acts as the regulator for the sector there are a total of 163,000 charities with a combined income of nearly 61Bn. There are nearly 2000 large charities with a combined income of £42Bn or a average of £21M per charity. This group includes such giants as Oxfam (£385M), Save The Children (£333M), Wellcome Trust (£242M), Red Cross (£200M), RNLI (£175M), Age UK (£168M), NSPCC (£136M) and RSPB (£120M). At the other end of the spectrum are 69,098 charities with a combined income of £230M or an average of £3,300 per charity which will include many that in the last year had no income at all.

I can confidently state that there is no similarity in operational terms between a charity with an income of £21M and one with an income of £3,300, my own experience includes acting as chair for one charity with £7M income and one that last year had an income of less than £1,000. With this breadth of organisational difference it is very unhelpful for any commentator to speak about the charitable sector as though all are the same. Yet far too often, well meaning men and women are reported as though this is exactly what they have done. Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick is a Cross Bench Peer, a very experienced civil servant and trustee of several charities. He previously helped to steer the merger of two charities to establish Catch 22 (£48M) and is also KPMG International’s Global Head of Corporate Citizenship. He spoke at a Westminster Social Policy Forum meeting on Monday, these meetings appear to cost £190 for those attending, so they are presumably not aimed at small charities. As part of his talk Michael Hastings is reported to have said the charity sector could not continue to stand apart from engagement with both the private sector and the government: “The three things need to be equal legs of a stool – only then can we achieve outcomes, solutions, deliverables and ends.”  He issued what he called “a big wake-up call” to all three sectors. The charity sector must “stop being bunker-minded”.  The corporate world must accept that “duties to public purpose are intrinsic to your profit-making activities”. Thirdly, he said, government should “stop separating us and allow us to join together for common outcomes”.

I know from nearly 15 years experience that there are huge opportunities for joint working between these three sectors. However one of the first challenge is to understand that none of these three sectors demonstrate any form of homogeneity. The partnership between Uckfield foodbank and Ashdown Audio Visual would be one excellent example. The AV company has donated space in its premises to the foodbank and the local authority  (Wealden District Council) is facilitating this by agreeing a complex arrangement over business rate relief on the part of the building that the foodbank is using. At another level Sussex Central YMCA has worked hard to establish partnerships with Freedom Leisure, MITIE, Mears and British Airways amongst others and work on many issues in partnership with many local authorities in Sussex. From where I stand I do see plenty of evidence of bunker mentality, but usually this is not an attitude that begins with the  charities. One of the greatest challenges is that often where innovation is being developed, it is central government demands that causes local government to withdraw. There are also many examples where businesses appear unwilling to even begin the conversation. A specific example is the establishment of the Local Economic Partnerships (LEPs) which have a strong element of public and private cooperation, yet the Government have all but excluded the involvement of charities and there is little evidence of the businesses recognising the value of charities in these discussions. Perhaps Michael Hastings could use his influence with the Government to challenge them over this particular bunker made for two.