Cliff Prior, chief executive of UnLtd and former chief executive of Rethink, has said there is an “inexorable trend” towards charities valuing enterprise skills above fundraising skills.

Speaking at a CharityWorks Parliamentary event last week about what the charity sector workforce would look like in the future, Prior said that enterprise skills were already more valued than fundraising skills.

And in an interview with civilsociety.co.uk after the event, Prior said it was an “inexorable trend”.

“The charity sector has grown pretty steadily,” he said. “And fundraising income has not risen at the same pace. If you look at the statistics you already see that charities have more enterprise income than fundraising income. It’s a dominant theme.

“Unless there is an overwhelming uptake in donations, I cannot see this changing.”

Prior said Rethink, which he used to lead, had only about 6 per cent voluntary income and 90 per cent contract income. “At Turning Point this is even higher,” he said. “It’s about 98 to 99 per cent contract income.”

Prior said that in general the charity landscape has become more “hard-edged”. “In the old days you would have grants, now it's public service contracts. There is competition, it’s outcome-based. We’ll see that more and more.

“And more charities are developing business-to-consumer retail offerings - not just charity shops, but a range of things.”

Sharing economy

He said enterprise skills were not just about making a widget, but encompassed a range of things, such as spotting an opportunity; marketing and sales work; operations and delivery;  and designing a product or service that a customer will like and buy.

“It’s a nuanced approach,” he said.

Looking to the future, he said recent commercial success stories were about companies where the customer did the work, such as Facebook and eBay.

“Many social organisations are learning how to do this and many are relearning,” he said, “such as the Scouts and Guides, who have millions of volunteers supporting children. It’s tapping into people’s desire to do things.”

“It’s a sharing economy. Take the social organisation Freecycle. It’s fascinating to work out how it is that people by the bucketload will give stuff away for free on its platform and others take it away free. It’s the new zeitgeist.

“It’s a combination of doing your thing, in a framework of an organisation, with a structure making it easy, without taking away self-determination.”

A zero-sum game?

Prior, however, was not sure whether his perceived trend of charities moving away from fundraising to enterprise was a zero-sum game:

“While enterprise skills are on an inexorable path I don’t know whether this is an either/or between fundraising and enterprise or whether there will be a shading between the two.

“Some fundraising skills are very separate from enterprise. But managing a chain of shops is about enterprise, as is finding a shared value with a corporate partner.”