A UK Nonprofit Summer Special
Burnham, Charity Commissions troubles, and Salsa. Expect politics, news, and more rude jokes than usual.
When I was a kid in the eighties, comics and kids’ magazines used to have ‘Summer Specials’ which were bumper editions that you would pester your mum to get you at the start of the holidays. Eventually, she would either relent, or decide to sell you to the circus, with spurious tales about your propensity for acrobatics, which later turned out to be epilepsy.
Anyway, that’s what this is: a quick signing-off before I take August and part of September off to recover a bit, and to do some other writing. So it’s the last day of school and we’re bringing toys.
Questions I have been asked this week: is this blog is making money? When people ask, I always ask them if they have a paid subscription, and then it gets uncomfortable, but the question is answered.
If you can pay for a subscription or just chuck me a fiver on Ko-fi, it helps, especially as I‘m trying to expand this work. But I also know money is tight. And if you already do, thank you, you rock.
Meanwhile, I went to record a podcast in Canning Town. I was asked whether BCS had upset a lot of people. Tbh I don’t think so, except for once when I was mean to Debra Allcock-Tyler on Linkedin because my cat had really bad fleas. I felt terrible. But mostly, people either see it as part of the debate, or don’t care what I think.
Podcast time
Meanwhile, here is a podcast I appeared on (not the Canning Town one, that’s coming in October, from Social Enterprise UK). Big thanks to Anna Day for having me on this one. Still nasal.
In the News…
In case you have been hiding under a bush - not mine, get your own - Andy Burnham has been crowned.
Some were concerned that Burnham didn’t mention charities in his maiden speech. I hadn’t even noticed, and I think those expectations may be excessive. There are certainly bigger fish to fry. Meanwhile, ending homelessness, for example, is not going to happen without civil society, and I’m confident he knows that. It’s also worth pointing out that, for all the people (like me) complaining he is New Labour to the core, New Labour invested the most cash in the VCS of any Government we’ve ever had since the immediate post-War period.
Starmer, you might remember, specifically courted the VCS before Labour’s win, and even mentioned it in his winning speech on election night. But the Centre for Social Injustice’s arguments around the time for more philanthropy instead of higher taxation was the key sign: what this was really about was unlocking the cash from ‘philanthropists’ to ease his planned austerity. Starmer had literally zero experience of the VCS in terms of actually delivering. That isn’t the case for Burnham.
Meanwhile, the Office for Impact Economy, I am told, is moving to the DCMS, under Lisa Nandy, who is continuing in her role. That move will ruffle a few feathers. (‘But we had finally become important!! Darren Jones was talking to us, and he’s weirdly hot!’)
But as I’m increasingly starting to think, maybe culture is actually where charity needs to sit (I think I argued that in the above podcast). Not least, anywhere else, and it immediately becomes a fig-leaf for austerity. That was for sure where Jones wanted it to go.
I think there is considerably more hope for the VCS with Burnham in charge, much as everybody seems to want him to fail on all fronts. The negativity about him (and yes, I agree with critiques on Israel, capitalism, New Labour, I know all this…) seems to me to be more driven by news cycles than anything. Getting drawn into social media spirals demanding he fails BECAUSE SEVENTH PRIME MINISTER LARRY THE CAT NATIONAL SHAME isn’t really helping anyone. Political nihilism isn’t the same as critique, but it does sell those boring bits on news sites between the adverts.
Meanwhile, all the usual industry Acronym suspects say Burnham needs to listen to them. But what do they have to say beyond ‘we are an industry and we are important’?
Someone who knows did recently tell me that the avowed main goal of one of the acronyms is to appear in a photograph with the Prime Minister in front of Downing Street.
But the thing is, proximity is not power. And power is pointless when you have no values - as indeed, Starmer found out.
Anyway I guess the odds of that prime ministerial pic are getting better every couple of years at the moment. Eventually, there’ll be enough prime ministers for all of us to get a pic.
Tough times at the Charity Commission
Meanwhile, it is likely only a matter of time before we see a resignation at the Charity Commission, after it was found to be in contempt of Parliament.
“The Charity Commission has apologised “unreservedly” after the Committee of Privileges found that it committed a contempt of parliament by seeking to block special reports from being laid before MPs.
The regulator was referred to the committee after it sought a judicial review in September last year against the Parliamentary Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO).
While the judicial review was ultimately denied permission to proceed, the PHSO accused the commission of trying to prevent it from laying critical reports before parliament, which the charity regulator initially denied.”1
This is very serious, and I would imagine someone will need to go in the next few weeks…
Still, could be worse: you could be a trans person wondering where you can have a wee. If it’s in a charity, the Charity Commission has been clear that the EHRC guidance on trans people’s use of charity services (the Let-me-look-at-your-winkies Act 2025) needs to be adhered to immediately……
Fear not, they will publish guidance!
..Later in the year.
As Kevin Taylor McKnight points out, this is a great way to enforce ‘overcompliance’.
At the same time, it seems to point to exactly the problem with running to the regulator for help on ethical issues. The governance and the process is of little value when the Parliament to whom they are accountable is antipathetic to the rights of trans people.
I often worry that we have developed a weird blind faith in charity governance as something which enshrines justice. It doesn’t. It just reinscribes power.
But that blind faith, I’m afraid, is also the curse of the progressive centre (especially in the US) where faith in democratic process often blinds people to questions of moral legitimacy, power and privilege.
Breaking research news!
Some of you may have seen me say this on LinkedIn, but in the latest BREAKING RESEARCH NEWS, Oxford University has proven that doing something you enjoy is good for your mental health. Finally, we have the answers we have needed - but only about Salsa.
Next stop, Samba. Because it's important to separate out the Afro-Cuban 4/4 time from the Brazilian 2/4. What impact on the WEMWBS scale does the time signature have?
No, wait, I'm getting excited, because I dream of a world where, eventually, we will have HIGH QUALITY EVIDENCE on:
Every type of Latin American dance, with the potential for expansion to Morris Dancing
Every sport (boxing, fencing, water polo, cat wrestling)
Every cultural pastime from oil painting, to beat making, to macrame, to playing the kazoo with your hindquarters
Visiting galleries and museums, compared with the experience of being hit in the face repeatedly with a bin lid in the Job Centre Plus. (This is a double-blind trial, where one half of the cohort are literally blinded. By Dave at desk 3
Going out in nature to look at squirrels and flowers, as opposed to sitting under the table in the living room eating a ping meal with a half-melted plastic spoon.
ONLY THEN will we have final proof we need that making life worth living is worthwhile. Only then.
But imagine: funding will flow! The cargo will arrive! The bankers and policymakers will see us! Accept us! Love us!
Meanwhile, I am doing a study on the excretory habits of Ursus Arctos Horribilis in a local nature reserve. It is important we finally clear this one up.
Look, let me be absolutely clear. This is not a matter of ‘look at how ridiculous it is to study dancing’. My problem is that the headlines constantly suggest this is news, or new knowledge, and it isn’t. Because the one thing pretty much everyone on the planet agrees on is that life is worth living when you have fun with other people. And if you don’t, you very quickly start to get sick.
The problem is that our system, and the culture and economy imposed upon us, uses the media to persuade us this is unimportant.
This myth is profoundly ideological, and therefore impervious to evidence.
You will never persuade people in charge to change the system, invest in replacing some of what industrial capitalism has removed, or simply give people a chance to have a life outside of making profit for the wealthy, because those people in charge don’t want to.
Remember: ‘Find evidence’ is almost always a euphemism for another phrase that starts with an F.
Charity CEOs, drink gin
As for proper jobs: I have been doing a deep-dive evaluation of a project I’ve come to care about deeply over the course. It is truly amazing. I also know how tough money is. It’s pretty galling when you hear all these public services waxing lyrical about them, and yet the money does not follow. I’m always reminded of the NHS commissioner I spoke to once who said “The voluntary sector is amazing! They’re so chea… Erm, good value.”
At least they caught themselves before it came out. Another time, a head of social prescribing literally said “And the best thing about voluntary sector is, it’s all free!”
I’ve also been helping someone deal with a major partnership - and seen not just how appallingly ‘partners’ can behave, but just how well it goes when you think your grantmaker is really ‘open and trusting’ and things get tricky. As if. Knackering. And yet: their resilience.
Meanwhile, I’ve been helping someone rethink strategy to deal with funding changes and a wholesale rethink as everything around them changes. It reminds me how hard it is to keep reselling the same thing, over and over, and yet with a new tweak, a new narrative.
At the same time, the organisation, like all of us, is so good at reinventing itself based on what its community needs. It’s part of the game, and sometimes part of the fun - but I can also see it’s why people burn out.
The sheer sense of Groundhog Day Sisyphean labour. And yet, we live to fight another day. And still ace it.
Charity CEOs (and everyone else), I feel you. Remember, ambition has to sit alongside acceptance.
Look after yourselves.
And finally…
We have a new logo for the Charity Formerly Known As British Wireless for the Blind. They’re now to be known as ‘Visably’, which is fine.
But, is it me, or does their new logo look like the original 1970s cover from the Joy of Sex?
Still, it is much less of a shock than my absolute favourite, and the most obscene logo in history which must surely have been created by a disgruntled designer:
I can’t even show you a corresponding photograph of that one without requiring age verification, so you’ll just have to let your mind wander.
Anyway, I started this column today by asking if I have ever upset anyone - that’s two more customers I can write off.
Back soon…
I’ll be back in the Autumn.
STOP PRESS: I have some space for new client work from mid-September. Drop me a line if I can help. I promise not to mock your logo.
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