Subject: Charity Talks - are there too many charities?
The latest HSBC-sponsored Charity Talk saw RNIB's Chief Executive, Lesley-Anne Alexander discuss the topic of mergers, exploring how to negate the high risks traditionally involved in voluntary sector merger processes.
This was followed by Stuart Etherington, Chief Executive of NCVO who commented on how the vibrancy of the voluntary sector might be affected by this drive to merge or share services.
Share your thoughts on what role mergers, joint working, partnerships and shared services might play in this new era of austerity for the voluntary sector...
This comment was last edited on Jun 09, 2010
Probably, no one can answer the question "are there too many charities as every charity has been formed out of some kind of necessity. I may a not like one, which is most probably because I don't know enough about that particular charity or feel threat for my charity.
To some extent, the market would determine who survives and how long. Therefore, the merger will be the natural outcome. Recently, I have been involved with a charity to find a merger partner. In this particular example, the services charity provided was highly demanded as well as a lot of funding was available. However, the problem was the composition of funding, precisely the charity didn't have enough unrestricted income to match its restricted funding. We eventually found a partner who had plenty of unrestricted money but lack of the restricted funded project. This was a win-win situation for both and as a whole making bigger impact to its beneficiaries.
While sharing services is a good idea, but I haven't found many examples (other than few isolated cases) where this concept is working in the charity. In my view, charities are not good at taking prompt decisions. The current funding cut, recession is in a way forcing charities to take a hard look on what they do and alternative way of doing work. Cost Reduction and efficiency savings is a areas charities are exploring more and more for their survival.
Everyone knows the finite amount of funding available to charities. Therefore, various issues e.g. sharing services, outsourcing and merger are increasingly becoming the common practice. There is nothing wrong as long as these processes can maximise the impact on charity beneficiaries, thats what we should be after.
Golam Morshed
This comment was last edited on Jul 26, 2010
The potential underlying question here may be, 'When is a charity a Charity, and when does the Charity become a huge multi-national business?'
We have all seen and/or know of charities where the Chief Exec commands a salary commensurate with top industry ... and so do the senior staff, whilst the unpaid bvolunteers at the bottom of the pile do 95% of the work! Those at the top travel First Class, whilst many of those at the bottom pay their own way!
A Charity to my mind, is an organisation which exists for the benefit of the community, and not for the huge salaries paid out to some of their employees because they can talk a good job, but would not be touched with a bargepole in any other sector!
Now that talk is of amalgamation! If the Charity is not viable, and can not be rtun by volunteers, then, forget about the uproar and the bleats of 'unfairness', they should cease trading because they have run their course, relying upon the 'Dissolution Clause' in their Constitution to distribute their assets to 'organisations with the same or similar Aims and Objectives'.
Of course each Charity must be run as a business. However they should not be competing with established companies, local or national governments for the supply of goods or services to the public.
Tin hat on and ducking down now 
OSD
