Never mind the width; feel the quality...

Is it just me, or is it really a bit frustrating that there is such a research emphasis on the question of how much money people give away rather than about to what they choose to give it? The latest example is some recent work by the excellent Prof. Cathy Pharoah, who must know more about patterns of giving than just about anyone else. Her recent report, Family Foundation Philanthropy, gives a league table of the 100 largest family foundations in Europe. Has the time come when there should be an absolute - self-imposed - ban on any more research about how much money wealthy people give away? How does it help us to know this? Of what relevance is it to be able to compare what happens in the UK to what happens in, say, the US, or elsewhere in Europe? What I want to know is what they are spending their money on. The term 'philanthropy' can mean so many different things depending on the context. Those of us who think that it should be about changing the circumstances which give rise to the need for it in the first place need to know who their friends are.

Good, then that the new UK Research Centre on Charitable Giving and Philanthropy, in which CP is involved, is to focus on, as co-director Prof. Jenny Harrow puts it, "furthering the effectiveness of philanthropy" (my emphasis). But the danger is that the Centre will be 'captured' by the fundraisers, whose main concern is to find new ways to bring money in, rather than with how it is used. The next question for Professor Harrow is, of course, "Effectiveness at what, exactly?"

I'm forever blogging Bubbles...

Now and again, this blog will allow itself to venture into mischievous realms because ... well, because we can. I'm intrigued by the characters involved in the FutureBuilders /Adventure Capital Fund business. Stephen Bubb, who chairs ACF and is the chief executive of ACEVO, used to work for the Community Fund, when I was on the Board. I can reveal here that he had two nicknames - Bubbles, used when people were feeling kindly, and Beelzebubb when they weren't; I was usually in the latter category. One of Bubb's colleagues at the Fund was Richard Gutch, the apparently soon-to-be-displaced director of FutureBuilders (they collaborated on a report on commissioning published last year). Another colleague was Janet Paraskeva, who chaired the panel which appointed Campbell Robb (then at NCVO) , as Director of The Office of the Third Sector - I was also on the panel. Observers see NCVO as in effect having lost out to ACEVO in the bidding process for FutureBuilders, the rules for which were set by...The Office of the Third Sector. What to make of it all? I leave the question hanging...

Of charity, tax, and social business.

A pity that - so far, at least - there's been so little debate around Frank Field's (second) Allen Lane Lecture, delivered this week, in which he proposes a 10% surcharge on incomes over £150k, which could be totally offset by charitable giving. Frank can always be trusted to come up with original ideas; you might recall the joke that Blair hired him to "Think the unthinkable, Frank" - and he did, and when Blair saw his ideas, he said "But, Frank, this is unthinkable! " and Frank felt he had to resign. Well, how unthinkable is this idea? What purpose would be served by raising an additional £3.6 billion a year in tax revenues and then allowing it to be spent on charity? What kind of charities would wealthy people be likely to support? Would their choices be better for poor people than the choices made by government? It isn't clear to me from the written version of Frank's lecture (I wasn't there on the day) whether there would be anything to prevent someone putting their contribution into, say the endowment fund for a public school of their choice, or a church... So thus far, I'm a sceptic, but maybe Frank can convince me.

Moving on, BBC Today listeners yesterday morning will have heard Muhammad Yunus, defending the social business model and contrasting it with the notion of charity. His key criticism of charity is that the charitable $/£ can only be spent once, whereas business - if successful - is self-sustaining. He's right, but only if your concept of charity is the traditional ameliorative one -'Charity as ordinarily practised, the charity of endowment, the charity of emotion, the charity which takes the place of justice...' (Joseph Rowntree , approx 160 years ago). The foundations which focus on social change can hold their own on Yunus' territory - money spent on achieving longterm change is money invested - not spent and, once spent, wasted. And Yunus should know about that kind of philanthropy, because - as he acknowledges in his new book - if it hadn't been for a couple of US foundations (Rockefeller and Macarthur, as I recall from my browse in Borders), Grameen would not have got off the ground.

Money and Power

There's a fascinating article in last week's New Yorker (read it on line here) which, while it's about a foundation funding medical research, raises some pretty fundamental and more widely applicable questions about the amount of control that funders have the right to exercise over what their grantees do. The foundation director at the centre of the work described says, unapologetically, "Money gives you power to drive people's behavior". That's certainly true; what's in contention is how, to what degree, and even whether it's right, or effective, to use that power. Especially relevant, I feel, to foundations which have stopped making grants and started to employ people to do the work instead - the ultimate form of 'behaviour control'. (For a New Yorker piece, it's quite short - and non-medical types like me can gloss over some of the detail.)

And what about the endowed grantmaking trusts?

Continuing to think about what the Charity Commission ought to be doing, I've been wondering why no-one ever questions the regime for regulating endowed grantmaking trusts. What is the justification for using rules designed principally to protect the public from the misuse of funds raised directly from them, to regulate organisations which don't raise any money from the public? This isn't an argument for a light touch approach to the foundations - after all, they benefit from the same tax privileges as fundraising charities, and ought to be accountable for how they spend their money. And that's where it gets interesting. There's a growing school of thought (see the membership of the Woburn Place Collaborative ) that institutional philanthropy, being mostly the fruits of social injustice, ought to be about social justice, rather than what is colloquially thought of as 'charity'. So the foundations should need to show the regulator that they've spent their money in pursuit of social change/social justice, rather than maintaining the status quo. Which would make a large chunk of endowed foundation grant-making ultra vires. Now, I don't expect an imminent call from Dame Suzi along the lines of "Gosh, Steven, we'd never thought of that - of course, you're absolutely right and we will immediately go after the trusts which just support social welfare without any emphasis on changing the circumstances which give rise to the need for the welfare in the first place - thankyou for pointing this out. Would you like a peerage?". But as I said at the start, unless I've missed something, noone ever seems to discuss this issue. As Mrs Merton used to say "Let's have a heated debate...".