Benevolent charities must look to collaboration as a solution to combatting funding cuts and increased competition for grants, according to a new report looking at the challenges facing the benevolent sector.
The report Understanding the Benevolent Sector, was commissioned by the Elizabeth Finn Care at the beginning of the year and carried out by nfpSynergy. It highlights the challenges faced by the benevolent sector at a time when, both statutory and voluntary income had decreased and demand had increased, from 2005 to 2009.
Organisations were most concerned about the impact of welfare and benefit cuts – with 50 per cent saying that they were quite concerned or very concerned. The next biggest concern was the increase in the number of applicants for grants (40 per cent) followed by the prospect of running into a deficit (25 per cent).
Need to collaborate
The report found that relatively few organisations collaborate in the sector with under 10 per cent saying that they work in partnership on policy and campaigning, branding and marketing, quality checking and impact measurement.
To help address this issue Elizabeth Finn Care, the Association of Charitable Organisations and the Directory of Social Change organised a conference for benevolent charities which took place yesterday.
The event was chaired by Dame Diana Brittan, chairman of Independent Age, who said: “The benevolent sector is quite a disparate group of charities so coming together is important to flag up the economic and political challenges facing the sector.”
She added that: “It has probably raised more questions than it answers.”
Catherine Walker, head of sector trends, evidence, analysis and metrics (STEAM), at the Directory of Social Change emphasised that: “The world is very different now and we are moving into different times.”
Michele Madden, managing director at nfpSynergy, said she hoped that as a result of the conference there might be the opportunity for some benevolent charities to work together on “simple measures” for impact assessment.
She also said that they were looking at how they might follow up the research to monitor the progress of the sector.
The full report will be released by the end of next week and will be available on the Elizabeth Finn Care website.
