Charities and funders need to “get each other better” the chair of Big Lottery Fund England has said.
Nat Sloane, who is also co-founder of venture philanthropy charity Impetus PEF, was speaking about the future of the voluntary sector at New Philanthropy Capital’s summer event.
He said funders need to “work with organisations in a way that is fit for purpose and sustainable”.
He said he was disappointed that the sector’s resilience had not led to funders working better with charities and said that the two groups need to “get each other better than they do”.
The challenge is “not new” he said, “but it’s persistent.
“We all need to figure out ways to address those issues whether we are a funder or an organisation seeking funding.”
Sloane also suggested that funders and organisations seeking funding should look at things differently.
He said that charities need to recognise that they “have assets to bring” and that funders should look at applicants “from the perspective of the assets that they offer rather than the deficiencies, needs and the deprivation” the charity is seeking to address.
Charities should be a ‘bloody nuisance’
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Independent columnist and co-founder of the charity British Muslims for Secular Democracy, was also speaking at last night’s event.
She urged the sector to “be prepared to face up to the fact that it will be seen as a bloody nuisance and live up to that reputation rather than be scared of it”.
She said: “At the end of it all you get a lot of respect and you get a lot further than if there is a lot of timidity.”
Alibhai-Brown also warned that the sector is in “grave danger”.
“When the independence of the sector comes under rapid fire attack everyone needs to worry,” she said. And added that: “If governments decide which charities are kosher we should worry very much,” but that “the sector shouldn’t feel it is on its own because the judiciary has felt the same pressure”.
She described the different elements of British society, such as Parliament, the judiciary and the voluntary sector, as a mobile that is “getting tangled”.
Warning that the sector would be expected to step in as the welfare state shrinks, she said the sector needs to do this in a way that does not “absolve the government of responsibility.
