Charities are reliant on donations, but gifts come with obligations to the gift-giver, says Kathy Evans, chief executive of Children England.

This summer has turned out to be a challenging time for charities – and a time for challenging charities. Between the intense attention fundraising methods and the aftermath of Kids Company closure I’ve been asked a steady stream of questions about the state of charities today. They have fallen broadly into three categories.

The first have been questions born out of genuine surprise – people shocked at the discovery of so many thousands of charities; nonplussed at how any single charity like Kids Company could grow so big, get so much government money, be relied on by so many vulnerable children and yet go out of business so suddenly. Is this normal? What’s it like for all those other charities?  A second category of questions have felt more loaded, born of an assumption that all charities are suspect, more likely than not to be inadequate, failing or corrupt in some respect. In general these lines of inquiry (and all my attempts to answer them) have tended only to reveal the underlying distrust and rather incoherent ideas of those who ultimately want better administered and financially professional charities at zero administrative cost, done by volunteers only. Some questioners will, in my experience, never be satisfied with our answers.

The third category of questions have been among the most profound. I believe we must all, as a sector, find robust and positive answers to them.

“Isn’t charity an archaic, Victorian thing to still be doing in the 21st century?”

“Shouldn’t we be ashamed and take it as a sign that Britain is a broken society, that we have so many people in need of charity?”

“Aren’t charities that run public services just part of the state anyway?”

My own search for answers has taken me back a lot further than I’d expected, to my brief studies in social anthropology over 25 years ago! One of the very few universal social behaviours, common to all known human tribes, civilisations and cultures, is gift giving. All human societies understand that a gift is a special and important thing, a behaviour that can be accompanied by many traditions, etiquettes and expectations. To give a gift is a unilateral and voluntary action, to give of oneself without expectation of return. Gift is a human instinct and a powerful form of expression. It can express love, sorrow, grief, welcome, compassion, solidarity, regret, the hope of strengthening bonds, a desire to share.

The speed and ubiquity of public giving whenever we witness human suffering anywhere in the world is a testament to the strength of this human instinct. Gift giving at times of births, deaths and marriages is as instinctive as the tears and hugs that accompany them. So it is no coincidence that so many people choose to dedicate that gift giving at such momentous times in their lives to causes and people in greater need than themselves.

The voluntary sector is the gift economy. Without thousands of people giving their time, for free, we would have no trustees, no volunteer youth workers, mentors and carers. Without people giving donations, use of premises, raffle prizes, used books, legacies in wills or giving that little bit of money in their pocket to the schoolchild on their doorstep who hopes to complete a fun-run, we simply wouldn’t be here. Our organisations – however big or small they are now – originate and sustain themselves in gift. It can’t be wrong or worrying or outdated to know that gift giving remains such a prevalent and enthusiastic habit in modern Britain. Rather, surely, the persistence of the gift economy is a healthy sign that we retain our humanity and express it in a million important ways every day.

But a far more potent and political challenge also emerges within that last set of questions. A Brazillian tribal leader could tell us, without knowing anything about our own society or charity sector, that to disrespect a gift or its giver is a grave social offence. To take a gift given to you and to sell it on in trade would be wrong. To presume, depend upon or demand that gifts be given is as brutal an affront as being thankless in receiving a gift. If the voluntary sector is the very manifestation of gift then we must be vigilant in the respect, defence and protection of the gifts we are given.

If we treat or promote donation as if it is just another form of sales or trading we demean the very nature of gift. If we sell our volunteers’ time at a discount rate in a market pitch for a service contract, we exploit, rather than respect, that gift. If we collude with a programme that would coerce people to ‘volunteer’ for us, under threat of destitution, we desecrate the very idea that volunteers give us a gift. And if we allow vital services that all citizens have a right to expect, and that taxpayers believe they have paid taxes for, to become reliant on charity assets and donations to stay open, then our donors are effectively held hostage – give more, or the service closes and all your previous giving will count for nothing!

Now is the time that we really have to examine and challenge ourselves, and draw for ourselves the right balance between state and charity in the support of people in need. Our government’s expectation that as their spending cuts savage public and community services, charities and their donors should step into the breach, is both financially unsustainable and highly politically contentious. We should also, as a sector, be clear that it is a graceless and abusive way to treat the millions of people who give their time and money so generously to charities, year in year out.

Kathy Evans is chief executive of Children England.