Is a charity 'fake' if it accepts State funding?

Harry Cole, writing here in the Guardian a few days ago, is one of a number of people who think that there is something fake about charities that accept contracts from the state to deliver services. His view is that we should be wholly or mostly funded by donations. Harry says:

"If a group can depend on the constant supply of gold from upstairs, then they don't need to bother putting their full efforts into fundraising and therefore lose out on the accountability and trust that comes from loyal donors, willing to withdraw their support if unhappy with results."

I'd like to make three points:

1. If charities can't properly demonstrate the impact and value of what we do, then no-one is going to give us the money to do it - no-matter how persuasively we ask. Any charity with state contracts can tell you that there is precious little gold, and we are held rigorously accountable - and rightly so - for every penny we earn. We are equally accountable to our beneficiaries and our donors.

2. The British public is generous, but it does not have the money, the will and the vision to fund all the vital services that charities deliver so well for their beneficiaries. Those of us working in stigmatised areas will tell you how precious our donors are to us because they are rare. I work for an HIV and sexual health charity and we're patient zero for the condition where "you've only yourself to blame".

So it's not easy raising money for an unpopular cause, and believe me, we raise as much  as we can. But some charities can't exist effectively if they rely solely on the popularity contest of public donations to fund their vital work. State funding is usually granted only on the basis of population need without the filter of personal interest.

3. Life for many of our beneficiaries is getting harder day by day as the recession bites into their personal finances and the services they rely on are being cut from under their feet. The cuts are limiting our ability to help, and levels of fundraised income are coming down, not filling the gap.

Have a look at this list of UK donors' most popular charities, just published by Third Sector. Excellent organisations, all of them, but this could be the limit of the voluntary sector without national or local state funding. And what a grim prosepct that would be for some of the most marginalised people in our society. Animals, bless them, would continue to do quite nicely.

 The top 20 fundraising charities, 2009/10

CHARITY	RANK 09/10	RANK 08/09	FUNDRAISED INCOME £(M)
Cancer Research UK	1	1	378.756
British Heart Foundation	2	3	195.671
Oxfam	3	2	182.300
Royal National Lifeboat Institution	4	4	145.600
NSPCC	5	5	123.719
Macmillan Cancer Support	6	6	117.963
British Red Cross Society	7	8	116.428
RSPCA	8	10	115.993
Salvation Army Trust	9	7	109.843
Sightsavers International	10	11	97.227
PDSA (People's Dispensary for Sick Animals)	11	15	79.023
Marie Curie Cancer Care	12	13	77.372
Save the Children (UK)	13	9	77.203
Royal Society for the Protection of Birds	14	16	74.059
Royal National Institute of Blind People	15	20	68.302
National Trust	16	12	67.699
Christian Aid	17	17	67.623
Royal British Legion	18	19	62.504
Dogs Trust	19	26	55.241
Guide Dogs for the Blind Association	20	18	54.457

Lansley: why wrapping is important

I couldn't help but feel sorry for Andrew Lansley, forced to stand up in parliament and defend his controversial NHS reforms earlier today because he's failed to explain the need for change, or for the changes he wants to make.

It's a lose/lose situation. Unless you can clearly articulate the case for what you want to do as well as the 'where, when, who and why', very few people will support you. So big ideas flounder for want of a clear exposition. Good communicators know this instinctively, and it's not hard to get right.

It's been said that Lansley knows everything, but can't say it in three sentences. I saw the same inability to make a compelling case - or indeed any kind of case - for a key policy when Lord Wei told a Conservative party conference fringe meeting that Big Society 'stops you feeling small'.  Really??  Who knew?

So regardless of what you think about the proposed NHS reforms, Lansley's experience today should remind us all that we ignore the message at our peril.

My mother often says "if you buy a bunch of roses, do you smell the wrapping?".  Fair point, but every now and then, it really helps if you know how to wrap. Write yourown hip hop joke here ;-)

The voluntary sector's double-dip recession, and why we'll survive it

There's a big debate among those observing the impact of cuts and 'Big Society' about what's happening to the voluntary sector, and whose fault that is.  Some say that the Government should stop Local Authorities and PCTs from cutting any charity's contracts, something David Cameron is unlikely - and actually unable - to do.

Others, like Mary Dejevsky, writing here in the Independent recently, think that charities should be wholly funded from donations and that there is something 'uncharitable' about accepting contracts from the state to deliver services.

I don't agree entirely with either position.  It's unrealistic to think the voluntary sector can be wholly protected from the harsh economic environment the rest of the country is trying to weather. It's equally unrealistic to think that the public has the money, will and vision to fund everything that charities deliver so well for their beneficiaries.

And let's not forget that the third sector has transformed the way many services are now delivered through our innovation and example - our contracts are awarded because funders believe we're the best organisations to deliver their services, and they learn from what we do.

But for the voluntary sector, this recession has a very long tail.  Our recession began when the housing market froze, and our legacy income froze with it. (People didn’t stop dying, but executors couldn’t dispose of estates) Low interest rates have meant less money for charitable Trusts to disburse, and companies have turned much of their charitable budgets into time off for staff to volunteer. That’s welcome support, but it doesn’t pay the bills.

The private sector may be beginning to see the green shoots of recovery, but charities with statutory funding are now facing the second wave of pressures on income. It’s been well documented that the volutary sector is being hard hit by some Local Authorities and PCTs seeking to pass cuts in their budgets down the chain.

And what about the famed generosity of the British public that charities have come to rely on so heavily? We're still giving, but donations from individuals are also now being hit.  A friend said to me recently, “I don’t know anyone who isn’t either redundant, at risk of it, or worried they’ll be next.  Everyone’s hanging on to every penny they have, and donating to charity is a long way down the list.” 

What is most worrying is that that at the same time, life for many of our beneficiaries is getting more difficult day by day.  We know that the recession hits our beneficiaries – the most vulnerable in society – the hardest, while limiting our ability to help.

So as we worry about how to continue to support our beneficiaries, about funding and redundancies, let's remember that many charities were born in difficult times. We're a resilient sector because of the vision, strength and passion of our colleagues and volunteers, our members and supporters. One way or another, we'll continue to support our beneficiaries and each other as we go through - and survive - these difficult days.

Evaluating social media: impossible and pointless?

I'm speaking at a conference on social media about how charities can measure and evaluate social media activity.

The first bit is relatively straight-forward: there are lots of free tools which can help you measure activity. I'll point to some of them later on.

The difficult bit is evaluating that activity, particularly if you're a hard-pressed charity with scarce resources.

A journalist I know quoted a social media expert to me last week. "Basically, he said trying to evaluate social media activity is both impossible and pointless. Does that help?".  Well, yes and no, thanks Sam. 

It's only pointless if you just measure activity because that doesn't tell you anything meaningful on its own.  You might have inadvertently created a firestorm on Twitter that generates thousands of tweets.  It'll get your numbers up - but perhaps not in the way your Board expected. 

Or you might not get a huge response, but you still engage with the people you were trying to reach.  So that's a success, albeit not on a grand scale.

Just as the PR industry has moved away from using AVEs to evaluate activity, so we must think harder about what success looks like in social media terms.  So pointless, no.  Difficult, yes, but not, I think, impossible.

What probably is impossible is to know everything that's been said, recommended, blogged or tweeted about your charity and its activities and issues day and night.  So think carefully about how much time you can and will devote to finding out, and make it proportionate to your needs and levels of social media activity.  It is very easy to disappear down the Twitter rabbit hole only to emerge, several hours later, in need of a stronger prescription from your optician...

I have to make a confession here: I'm no social media expert, I'm learning about this as I go along - from trying it, and from other people who seem to know what they're doing.

The key, as I see it, is not so far from evaluating the outcome of other communications activities.
- be absolutely clear, when you set your objectives, how you're going to measure and evaluate your success.  If you can't say how you'll do it, they're the wrong objectives
- plan an integrated campaign in which social media activity plays a part
- know who your audience is, where they are, what motivates them
- know what success looks like - go beyond numbers of 'likes' 'friends' 'tweets' and so on. Is it new members, supporters, people getting involved in a forum or campaign on your website or elsewhere?
- decide which tools you'll use to measure activity
- know how you'll analyse the results
- evaluate and learn for the next time, and most importantly
- keep it up.  It takes seconds to tweet, but Rome wasn't built in a day and neither is an online network.

Now for those tools - it's not an exhaustive list, but a good place to start:

google alerts, socialmention.com - let you know when you're being talked about
twitter search: use Tweetdeck to see who's saying what
tweetreach: see how far your tweets have gone
google analytics: see traffic levels, sources, key phrases for your site
howsociable: measure the visibility of your charity on the web. Useful for comparisons with other charities too.
alexa; estimate of reach, rank, page views and visitor information for your site. Track over time.
Bit.ly: shorten and share links, then see what people do with them. I love it.
Blog comments: how many, what content, how influential.

So here are my thoughts so far. What do you think?

The power of 'Why?' three times

If you have ever spent time with a toddler, you'll have some idea of the power of the question "Why?".  Especially when it's repeated.

TODDLER "Why are you doing that?"

ME "Because I'm making lunch."

T: "Why?"

M: "Because it's lunchtime."

T: "Why?"

M: "Because it's the middle of day, sort of half way between breakfast and tea, and so we're probably getting hungry now so it's a good time to stop and eat. OK?"

A reasonable anwer; the logic stacks up; the toddler concedes. He is a bit hungry.  Doesn't necessarily explain the cheese sandwiches though - he probably fancies fish fingers. But that's detail.

The thing is, no-one questioned me about why it's lunchtime before.  I've only ever been challenged on whether it's lunchtime, what to have for lunch, or where to have it.  It's so obviously the right thing to do mid-way-ish between breakfast and tea.

But what if it weren't?  What if we only had lunch because we always had it, even if lunch made no sense?  And how many of us unthinkingly do things becase they've always been done, and always been done that way?

Hand on heart, have you ever had a meeting with a new member of staff and found yourself saying "I know that might sound a bit odd, but it's how we do things here"?

Times are changing. They always do. So we can't expect that what we always did will cut it. Sometimes "Lunch" will be the wrong course of action and you'll have wasted a lot of planning, time, resources and creativity on a lightly tossed green salad with a twist that no-one needs.

So all I'm saying is this: When you sit down to consider how to write a communications strategy, remember the power of "Why?" three times.  It could save your bacon.

What to do about HIV in a recession

As a banner at the World AIDS Conference in Vienna pointed out, AIDS is not in recession. Unfortunately, the countries funding the response to the pandemic are, and this is a worry.

The global recession threatens our reponse to HIV in two ways. Firstly, it's restricting countries' abilities to respond to their domestic epidemics in the way they might have done in wealthier times.

When deciding priorities for limited funds, government departments often swing the axe where there will be least public resistiance. This never bodes well for unpopular issues, and HIV is down there with the best of them.

So we must make sure vulnerable people with HIV in the UK don't have the services they rely on cut from under their feet as we struggle to balance the books.  Campaigners must show how investing in effective HIV services saves time and money elsewhere

Decisions about where to cut are rarely taken in the round either, so one department may cut funding which makes another's job impossible. It's one of the reasons UNAIDS asks every country to have a cross-government HIV Plan.

We don't have one in the UK, nor is there a realistic likelihood of one any time soon. We're busy tackling the deficit.

So though the UK had a strong start on HIV back in the 80s, we could so easily lose critical ground by cutting vital services or health promotion initiatives.

Canada is the salutary lesson here - they defunded needle exchanges when they wanted to save money and their epidemic rocketed. Their cost-saving cost them dear.

Secondly, the global recession means donor countries have less money for efforts to tackle the pandemic in lower and middle-income countries. This could be very bad news.

What will happen to people whose HIV drugs and services rely on fragile economies outside their borders?

We've spent recent years scaling up access to HIV treatment worldwide. Imagine living in a village or town where friends and family had just stopped dying - could we really turn off the supply? 'Sorry, this machine is temporarily out of order,' won't cut it I suspect.

So there are three things we must do to make sure we don't lose ground we've worked so hard to gain:

1.Find cheaper and easier ways of testing and treating people for HIV. This means you, wherever you live in the world. If you're stuck for ideas, ask your local community or voluntary organisation. I bet they'll tell you how.

2.Find new ways of raising global and local funds to support vital work. This is easier said than done, but I heard several good ideas discussed in Vienna.

3. Step up prevention efforts.  There's no vaccine or cure for HIV, but we have learned a lot about different ways to prevent HIV spreading. With lifetime treatment costs for each HIV infection currently £350,000 in the UK, we can't afford not to.

It isn't all doom and economic gloom. The World AIDS Conference was a dazzling exposition of how far we've come, how much we've learned, what we must do next.

Money has never been more important. It's not 'the economy, stupid', it's how we deal with it.