11 MAY 2004
Richard, Chairman, friends and supporters of the voluntary and community sector, I am delighted to have been asked to be here today to give the annual CFA lecture.
Let me first pay tribute to you and your predecessors, who had the foresight to recognise the niche, into which CFA has grown. CFA plays a crucial role in meeting demands to tap into the wisdom of both professionals and volunteers and we could not get a richer or more gifted group of people than we have gathered here tonight. The sector has of course at one time or another always been there. It comes from a deep-rooted human instinct and impulse to address human needs in all their forms.
I am grateful then to have this chance to pay tribute to the work done by the voluntary and community sector and to all those who give their wisdom and wit to the sector – a sector that is evolving all the time. And I am also here to discuss the particular role that Government needs to play, as well as the role that it must not play.
Any strategic vision must of course begin by taking a serious look at both the present and the past. And I believe we are gathered here today at a significant moment for the sector – it has truly grown and expanded over the years, to become an increasingly significant social and economic force in our land.
From mentoring to Sure Start, from preventing teenage suicide to helping a new generation of old people, from rehabilitating offenders to inspiring the New Deal, from caring, recognizing and responding to the needs of vulnerable people – the sector in all its manifold and various forms seeks to build on the impulse that I have described. And as it plays an increasing role, it brings an added value – added value in a vision that is grounded in innovative approaches and flexible responses – and its independence, which should never be undermined.
Not only has the voluntary and community sector become a significant provider and purchaser of goods and services within the economy – contributing £7.2 billion to our economy – it is also a major employer. And the sector manages to engage over 16 million of our fellow citizens doing some sort of voluntary work at some time in any given year.
And importantly, as the sector changes and adapts to respond to the signs of the times, so it has undergone a significant transformation in the ways that it works. Embracing new ways of working – using IT, the internet, digital television and mobile phone technology to gather information, recruit people and to communicate with the people who need help and support the most and who also have that wisdom and wit to offer
It has also generated new forms of entrepreneurship to help achieve the aims and objectives set by founders and trustees. And it has embraced new partnerships – with the government and private sector – while continuing to cling on to the vision that inspired charity in the first place, and absolutely defending its independence.
In fact, it is these two things – vision on the one hand and independence on the other that has secured the added value that the sector delivers. And we as a society have also changed in our perception of the voluntary and community sector. Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks captures this essence most effectively when he talks about the sector representing a very British covenant – one based on shared values that inspire us in service to others.
And it is a British covenant – interesting to see the ways it has spread around the world and interesting too how it has developed and adapted to a changing world. In the US, for example, where there are certainly lessons for us to learn, and perhaps less so in some other European countries, where there is more work to do and on which I have been lucky enough to work with CSV.
For this progressive government it makes sense for us to embrace this covenant, and to seek to work in partnership with those who share our aims for a fair, open and inclusive society. A society that has a strong sense of community, and community engagement, alongside its thriving economy.
And so, our vision is also grounded on recognition that the voluntary and community sector offers us all something truly unique. Here in the UK, it is the key to balancing, from generation to generation, the rights and responsibilities of individuals, communities and state.
In the first place, at a time when the lines between public, voluntary and business sector values, practices and thinking are becoming increasingly blurred, the voluntary sector has an enormously important role to play in providing that critical and creative voice in policymaking and practice – providing a stimulus to action both in the public and private sector and the join between the two.
The value that it adds is one that many of us in this room will recognize. And this value stems from the impulse that you see in people – sometimes just a handful of people meeting in a basement – as it grows and causes them to identify where the gaps and fault lines lie and to seek to fill these gaps. And the key for the Government, as it strengthens and deepens its partnership with the sector, is to do nothing that could undermine that vision and independence.
And the challenge for voluntary organisations, whether they be large, multi-national sized organisations or local ones, is, regardless of scale, to find a place where they have a voice and can make a difference. That is what fed the impulse in the first place – it was the impulse and that capacity to innovate – that capacity to take risks that governments cannot always take. These are precious and must not be lost in the evolving relationship with central and local government. Because if you become just another contracting party, you will lose that added value and betray your roots.
And just as the sector did in the past with, for example, the settlement movement or the new campaigning organisations which sprung up in the 1960s, today you are pioneering in new directions: from the hospice movement to anti-AIDS campaigns, from environmental groups to the Playgroup movement, from advocates for disabled people to the global coalition against the debt burden of developing countries.
In essence, then, the sector can be better placed to both identify needs and to meet them. In recognising these specific and unique features of voluntary action, the Government must also recognise its own limitations.
The debate, in Government, over the sector’s role in our society has swung back and forth across the political spectrum over the years. And while some on the right saw the goodwill of a caring voluntary sector as an opportunity for the state to downsize and opt out, and for the “burden of care” to be passed on, others, on the left, went in the opposite direction and wrongly saw the voluntary sector as a threat to the work of the State.
We recognize that government has not always got it right over the years. But this Government does truly recognize the added value that the sector brings. The result, I believe, has been the emergence of a political approach that truly values the presence of a strong and effective civic society and the richness and variety of the sector with all its enthusiasms and passions. Such a sector can thrive alongside both markets and the public sector and the Government needs to recognize that we must work with the sector at every level.
That is why this Government has, since 1997, taken steps to encourage the giving of money. For example:
These are real steps forward and in the Treasury we have been assisted in this by our relationship with the US Institute of Philanthropy and their counterparts here in the City of London. Indeed we saw, just weeks after 9/11, a major gathering of voluntary and community sector board members here in London to promote ways of giving.
We keep our policies to promote giving under review and no doubt we still have a long way to go. In doing so, we must remember that the impulse to give one to be nurtured. Its strength is in its freedom, in being personal to the donor and so reflecting their passions, enthusiasms and, yes, occasionally whims. Giving is not an alternative to tax – it is unique in itself and should be valued as such.
As I begin to draw my remarks to a close, I would now like to turn candidly to the key challenges that we, together, face in taking this relationship forward.
First, there has been a real change in the relationship between central government and the voluntary and community sector. But there is work to do to embed this change in local government. The Compact has been the hallmark of our partnership. But while this is an established feature in central government – with Ministers and permanent secretaries engaged – this is not the case across local government.
Of course there are some exemplars, but we need to find a way of improving those who are lagging behind and challenging those who are treading water. In some cases, the approach does not do justice to the local citizen. The efficiency review is a vehicle with which we can spread and embed best practice and I am pleased that the sector has engaged so positively with Sir Peter Gershon. We take this work seriously and recognize the potential wins to enhancing relations at the local level.
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Secondly, we need – together – to drive up the numbers of volunteers and mentors across the country. Giving is not, after all, just about money. It is also about giving time – encouraging those who might, and recognizing and rewarding those who do.
The sector has already taken some steps in this direction. For example, through Timebank – which since its launch in 2000 has matched over 50,000 people to volunteering opportunities in their local communities. And through Millennium Volunteers - which to date has signed up 120,000 young people.
To build on the success of such initiatives, Fiona Mactaggart has, last month, announced a £5.4m grants programme which aims to help everyone to make a difference, by focusing on volunteer recruitment, by promoting the involvement of older people, and by promoting mentoring and befriending in particular.
And that is why the Chancellor has asked Ian Russell of Scottish Power to lead a commission to examine the potential for a national youth volunteering strategy.
The third are I would like to address briefly – and I cannot think of a better context to do it than here with CFA – is the need to address capacity building issues.
The VCS currently employs 2% of the UK workforce – over 550,000 – as paid employees. And this is growing all the time. Yet recruitment problems remain. Research shows that 47% of organisations with vacancies experience problems recruiting staff – compared to only 16% of businesses. A number of different reasons for this exist, but three of the four main ones are a lack of skilled, qualified or experienced applicants.
Voluntary and community sector organisations need to become more proactive about developing the skills of their existing staff – and to see this as a core part of developing and utilising their resources. A Compass survey in 2000 found that large national voluntary organisations spend only 2% of salary costs on training and that only 70% have a formal policy to encourage training. There is clearly scope for improvement. It is not something we would accept in central government, local government or the private sector, so why should we accept it with the voluntary and community sector.
And of course, it is a challenge to recruit the right skills into the sector, while at the same time maintaining what is special about it – the values, the ethos, the vision. And lets not pretend that working as a professional in a voluntary organisation is easy. It is not easy to organise volunteers – it needs specific skills and requires specific training.
That is why we in Government have now embarked upon an ambitious programme of work to support the role of the voluntary sector in service delivery – and we allocated £93 million in the 2002 Spending Review to helping them do this.
In addition, last Wednesday, the £125m futurebuilders fund was launched – run by a voluntary sector consortium, it will invest in around 250 voluntary and community organisations to enable them to delivery better public services.
And, later this summer, my colleague, Fiona Mactaggart, will be publishing the Home Office’s capacity building and infrastructure framework – a robust set of proposals, backed up by real investment, designed to develop and reconfigure VCS infrastructure. We want to see change at national, regional and local levels – particularly in the areas of governance, skills and performance.
But it is change that must be driven by the sector. And so the challenges are real, but the opportunities are enormous. There has never been a time when we as a nation has a need to tap into the innovation, wit and wisdom of the sector – faith, civic pride, activism or just wanting to have a go and make a difference. And the sector really does make a difference in building a better, brighter world.
In the words of Robert Kennedy, “Few will have the greatness to bend history itself but each of us can work to change a small portion of events and in the total of all these acts will be written the history of this generation”.
This is our opportunity in a challenging world. In at times a sad and divided world. This is our opportunity and we take it on together… so that the good and the hope that is also there may be realised.
Thank you.
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