2022 Year in Review: the big developments for the charity sector
Grassroots responses – Warm rooms and Food Larders
The biggest development of the year came at the end. With record increases in energy prices and cost of living pressures, warm rooms opened up and down the country.
Some were independent efforts, some larger efforts. A coalition of organisation organisations – many of them faith-based – launched Warm Welcome space, and by December 3315 spaces had opened their doors.
Food banks reported huge increases in people using them and numerous new community larders opened. The Trussell Trust reported an eyewatering deficit of £16.4 million as it sent funds to its network.
Many new food banks have adopted different models from the traditional model where council departments and Citizens Advice refer people who are unable to afford food. New larder schemes are often cooperative schemes where a low cost membership fee allows access to reduced cost food.
But what happens next? This all represents a huge amount of volunteer capacity and investment of funds. Is it sustainable? Many of these schemes have been set up for winter 2023, but is the situation likely to be much different by winter 2024? There’s an end game here – a huge voluntary sector response cannot continue indefinitely without funding. Will warm spaces transition into hubs for voluntary sector activity? Or will there be pressure on existing charities to take on responsibility once the wave of goodwill from volunteers dissipates? One thing is for sure – there’s no excess cash or volunteers sloshing around the sector to keep this huge and admirable effort going long term.
Ethical investment – the Butler Sloss judgement
Again, coming at the end of the year, this judgement probably raised more issues than it settled. Trustees have long known that one of their key duties is ensuring that charity investments are made to maximise return. But how does that fit if you are an environmental charity, or, indeed a Catholic charity which wants to act on Pope Francis’s call to divest from oil? The judgement widened charity trustees’ ability to act in this area. Trustees can now consider the charitable purposes which underpin the trust when exercising their investment functions, considering if the reputation risk of investment decisions counterbalances the expected return.
It’s hard to know how this could ever be effectively regulated. But then the Charity Commission only really jumps when something has gone spectacularly wrong and it’s unlikely something will go spectacularly wrong in this area. Of far more importance to trustees is ensuring they receive excellent investment advice. There are far too many boards out there who are very dependent on advisers who have been in place for decades who have grown far too comfortable. Perhaps the best this trustees boards could do to increase returns is to ensure they are reviewing their investment advisers, along with auditors, on a regular basis.
Where have all the volunteers gone? Workforce challenges
The cost of living crisis is not just affecting the demand voluntary sector organisations are making. It’s also having a significant impact on volunteers. There’s a lot of evidence that older volunteers who stepped back from their roles during the pandemic, are not returning to organisations. Recruiting working age volunteers is challenging – many need to work longer hours because of the cost of living crisis. Covering expenses – for example petrol for volunteer drivers – will be more expensive. Lots of organisations are reporting that volunteers can only make a flexible commitment. But that is not what is required to provide the services where there is sky high demand due to the cost of living crisis. Training a debt adviser might take a voluntary sector organisation a year. If the charity is going to make that commitment, it needs a volunteer who can commit a set number of hours a week over a minimum number of years.
This is an issue which is not going to disappear quickly. We can get excited about micro-volunteering (where volunteers give small amounts of time often online), but if you work in the sector, you know the real difference is made by the experienced and reliable volunteers who turn up regularly, however unfashionable that might be.
