Free to Serve

[This blog has been bit silent recently. Lots of reasons: pressure of other stuff; not being able to see the philanthropic wood for the trees; some self-doubt – does anybody actually read this? Am I talking to myself? And, finally, I can’t decide how much latitude to give myself by way of subject matter. Any guidance on any/all of this will be welcomed]. Enough angst; to business.

It’s time for a public inquiry into the role and purpose of endowed grant making trusts. There – I’ve said it, and feel better for having done so.

While everybody's been going on about the importance of charities and public benefit, the focus has been on organisations which appear to serve the interests of the privileged and yet receive the tax benefits of charitable status (the obvious example being the laughingly named ‘public’ schools). As I’ve written here before, the absence of any specific regulatory regime which focuses on the trusts means that they are regulated just like any other charity. Despite the fact that they don't raise money from the public, the law treats them as if they did – and its main concern is that the public aren't ripped off. The main purpose of the foundations is to give money away, but in practice, the only interest the law has in how this is done is that the money is spent on things which are legally charitable. We need at the very least a public debate about the role of foundations. In these cash-strapped times we need to decide why exactly we give them tax privileges -- why we agree, as a body politic, that you and I should play a little more tax in order that they should pay none, on their income at least.

Let's have a heated debate. Why hasn't there been one already? The reason for that, I think, is clear. Almost any non-statutory organisation with a capacity to initiate such a debate is likely to be in part dependent on income from trust grants. It takes courage to start something which might look as if you are biting the hand which fees you, or might feed you in the future. The organisation which could initiate such a debate and could announce that is going to look at endowed grant-making foundations as a special category, is of course the Charity Commission. While it would be nice to think that the foundations themselves might initiate such a debate, perhaps through the Association of Charitable Foundations, I am sceptical about whether this would ever happen, however, not because ACF isn't an excellent body (it is, albeit with a small percentage of the 8000-odd UK foundations in membership), but because - with notable exceptions - foundations have demonstrated a lamentable inability to work together on anything. That's one of the issues that such a public debate might explore -- to what extent it is still appropriate for the intentions of founders long dead to be used as an excuse for determinately ploughing one's own furrow despite the changing scale and nature of social problems?

How might the debate start? I think it needs a focus -- a commission of inquiry would be a good start, made up of people of independent mind, some with knowledge of the foundation sector and perhaps some without it but with the capability of gaining it quickly. And, yes, I would be free to serve, even if it means yet fewer posts to this blog.