“Without collaboration charities aren’t going to grow to scale, and aren’t going to win contracts,” “Unless you incentivise people to work together they will flap round uselessly like a bird with a broken wing.” “At the moment there are too many small charities doing too much of the same thing” Phillip Blond speaking at a fringe meeting of the Conservative Party Conference. Phillip describes himself as an ‘internationally recognised political thinker and social and economic commentator.’ Based on these words it is no surprise that Phillip does not describe himself as an authority on the work of charities! What is disturbing is that as one of the influential voices in the Conservative Party that these views are feeding the party’s already inadequate grasp of charities and their role in Britain in 2013.

The Conservative Party conference like all of the large party conferences includes a wide range of activities outside of the main debating hall. A number of fringe meetings also take place covering a range of issues, some of which are hosted by organisations that have no connections with the party itself. These meetings can take place away from the ‘secure zone’ of the conference which means that in principle people who are not conference goers can attend and contribute to, others are within the zone which means that only those already signed up to attend the conference are able to participate. The cost of participation varies but for charities it could be as much as £525, or for people wanting to attend only fringe events £450.  According to this report, one of these fringe meetings was organised by a charity National Association for Voluntary & Community Action (NAVCA) and a political thinktank ResPublica which took place last Sunday within the secure zone. The meeting was on the subject The Future of Public Services: Commissioning for innovation and the organisers suggested using the hashtag #futurepublicservices for tweeting purposes. The  speakers were Nick Hurd MP, Minister for Civil Society, Roger Evans AM, Deputy Chair of the London Assembly, Joe Irvin, Chief Executive, NAVCA, Indy Johar, Chief Executive, The Hub. All of this is in any case of academic interest as very few charities would consider spending £500 to attend a party conference, particularly as this may in the future be seen as part of a lobbying action.

As I have written previously there are some 163,000 charities in England and Wales, of these only 10,000 have an annual income of more than £500,000. Some of these charities will be large enough to play the bureaucratic game that government agencies insist is the point of entry for the commissioning of services, and a few will be interested in being commissioned to do so. The final numbers of those actually filling in the wasteful Pre-Qualification Questionnaires that Governments insist on as part of their commissioning process, will be very small. A PQQ can take many hours to complete and it simply allows the government agency concerned to understand the charity (or group of charities) through a lens of the governments choosing. Often these questionnaires are written by people who do not understand the charitable world themselves. This is not unique to charities, many of the PQQs that are provided to businesses wanting to tender for government contracts are equally wasteful of time for the businesses concerned, and written by people who have no experience of running businesses. The thrust of Phillips comments appear to be that working together is best. Sadly the PQQs are often unsuited for consortia to use, even where this may be one of the demands that the government agency is making of the organisations they wish to do business with.

In terms of the 153,000 charities that are too small to participate directly in commissioning activity, a few do work with others on such contracts, but the majority have no idea what commissioning is, nor do they want to be commissioned. They are simply focused on delivering good quality services to people in need, or people with a particular common interest. If as Phillip Blond suggests there are charities that are flapping around with broken wings, the question is who broke these fragile wings that would otherwise allow these small charities to take to the sky? It is certain that many charities could work together more effectively, however despite Phillips assertion this is a constant matter of debate amongst many charities that I am in touch with. However one of the real threats to many charities from working even more effectively than they do, is that successive Governments insist on changing priorities and the basis of delivering services. Sometimes even within the term of the same government!

On Wednesday I was at a meeting of foodbanks in Brighton & Hove sharing good practice and avoiding unnecessary duplication. Phillip Blond may see these as lots of broken wings, I see them as a 20 flowers that are blooming. Some of them are charities, some of them are not. Each of them is battling in local communities to ensure that families and individuals are able to access emergency food. To link these foodbanks together formally in order to compete for attention by the government could easily take 12 – 18 months of meetings, time that none of them have to spare. What they do have in common however is a complete distaste for the comments made by one of Nick Hurds colleagues, David Freud. I wrote about his comments here. If Phillip has any influence perhaps he could speak to David Freud and ask him to reconsider our invitation to see for himself how foodbanks operate. That would go some way to mending a few broken wings!