At a meeting this week I met with
three inspiring charity leaders who are all involved in supporting people on
the margins of society. On a day-to-day basis, they change individual’s lives.
But they are also agents for wider and long-term change: raising awareness of
hidden problems; training professionals and lobbying legislators. But they
explained how hard it is to find funding for awareness raising and influence.
Charities
know they have to influence others to create change. For example, Citizens
Advice helps people sort out problems with benefits or debts. They also collate
all that information and use it as evidence to press for changes in poor money
lending practice or unfair benefit rules. There is a duty to speak up for those
who cannot do so themselves and a strength in numbers. It is also deeply
inefficient to keep supporting people with the same problems time and time
again without seeking to address underlying causes. In a sector which needs to
work with statutory agencies such as social services and the police which
experience high turnover of staff, it also makes more sense to try and change
the terms of contracts and the wording of laws and policies. Because these
remain even when employees come and go.
The public are supportive. In NPC’s Mind
the Gap report on public attitudes* 32% think charities should be lobbying
government and 47% felt that raising awareness of important issues in society
was important.
So what about funders? Just as there is a reluctance to fund
core costs, so there is a reluctance to fund lobbying and policy work. But
surely if we want to bring about long-term change through our funding, we should
also want to fund work to address systemic barriers? There are some funders who
do this such as Barrow Cadbury Trust who “support migrant organisations, campaigners
and networks seeking to promote changes to policy and practice that ensure the
fair treatment of vulnerable groups of refugees, asylum seekers and migrants
and established residents”. And still others use their funds directly to create
change such as the Trust for London’s campaign for a Living Wage. As more
funders cover the costs of monitoring and evaluation within bids, perhaps more
should also include the costs of influencing in order to support lasting change?
*http://www.thinknpc.org/publications/mind-the-gap/
No comments:
Post a Comment