There has been a lot written recently about the sad closure of the Directory of Social Change – with outpouring of sympathy on Linkedin, requests for funders to do more, and now an announcement from national infrastructure bodies about a consultation.
For over 20 years I have been running an organisation (Eastside People) that is involved in providing organisational support and is therefore part of the wider infrastructure space.
I’ve got skin in the game. While it’s important for the sector, it also keeps me up at night thinking about what the future holds for Eastside People and how we can avoid Dame Julia Unwin’s warning that this is a ‘tremor ahead of a quietly destructive earthquake.’
In the last few days, the group of national bodies that made the announcement I referred to above, included a brave and honest assessment of the situation, “Infrastructure needs rethinking, not rescuing, and its leaders need to lead the change”. I applaud this but I am also concerned that a consultation with the bold ambition of reaching 170,000 charities risks muddying the water further.
Will it really provide the clarity needed for infrastructure to change?
In this blog, I share my thoughts about the challenges running infrastructure bodies – an explosion of choice at a time of sustained collapse in traditional funding – and offer ideas on how to respond.
What is charity infrastructure and why is there a problem of choice?
Let’s start with defining what charity infrastructure is. I think of it having two broad functions: The first is support including:
- Training
- Skills development
- Advice
- Research
- Coaching
- Mentoring
- Consultancy.
The second is Voice including:
- Convening
- Policy-making
- Coordination
- Collective campaigning.
A varied mix of organisations with different business models and service offers are active. National bodies such as NCVO and ACEVO provide support through membership services and sector-wide coordination. While locally, 180 Councils for Voluntary Services (CVS) provide practical advice, training and connections for charities and community groups in their area.
Specialist bodies focus either on particular sub-sectors, such as criminal justice charities (Clinks), hospices (Hospice UK) and community leisure (CLUK), or themes, such as impact measurement (New Philanthropy Capital), research (IVAR), digital skills (Charity Digital) and diverse trusteeship (Board Racial Diversity UK).
There are also many social enterprises and founder-led businesses with values aligned to the sector. Eastside People for instance provides charity and not-for-profit consultancy and recruitment, and its consultants work alongside other specialist organisations such as Fair Collective (a matchmaking service for charities and freelancers), Social Group (a group of companies united to make social businesses stronger), Impact for Good creating impactful team experiences and specialist law firms like Bates Wells and Stone King.
Individual freelancers, advisers and executive coaches are also a fast growing part of this landscape. Writing in his Barely Civil Society, Alex Evans recently notes: “Massive cuts in charities have led to the shedding of whole layers of senior management, and …. an increasingly desperate and overheated giggified economy.”
It’s a rich tapestry.
But, in truth, even what I’ve described here is just a drop in the ocean.
After all there is a much wider shift in how we learn, connect and seek help owing to digital platforms, content creators and AI. Charity leaders will therefore turn to podcasts, online networks, business communities, free training and AI tools for ideas and practical help. Take ChatGPT for instance, which can now create charity policies, find opportunities for funding, and even develop a training programme for staff.
It’s not that charitable infrastructure doesn’t have a role – it is an important part of the plumbing – but it’s naïve to think that they (or we at Eastside People) represent anything more than a small part in the rich tapestry available to charity leaders.
Infrastructure and a funding collapse
At the same time as an explosion of choice, there is enormous pressure on funding in the sector. Put simply there is not enough money to go round, and the instinct is to prioritise front-line services over the organisations supporting them.
The squeeze has been building for years. In 2023, 360Giving found that infrastructure had suffered large falls and then failed to grow in real terms over the following decade, even as the wider sector expanded.
Vic Hancock Fell recently challenged us to put the onus on funders, not grantees, but I can’t stop thinking that infrastructure bodies should make it easier to understand which part of this crowded landscape they sustain, what needs grant funding rather than fees, and what would be lost without them.
What is needed?
Three tips for my fellow infrastructure leaders as they weigh up how to tackle an explosion of choice at a time of a sustained collapse in traditional funding:
- Be forensic about what you are valued for most. With so much support available, what do charities still need from you? Where do your organisational strengths meet that need, and where can you realistically add the most value?
- Make a clear, realistic case for funding. Distinguish innovation, core costs and projects. Be explicit about what charities should pay for through membership, training and service fees, and what needs collective funding. I would prioritise asking grant funders to invest in the shared infrastructure – the plumbing that enables the system to operate including speaking out and defending the sector.
- Talk much more about consolidation and mergers. There are some exceptions that prove the rule (such as Bonnie Chu leading TSIP and Renaisi into a merger) but the uncomfortable truth is there has been too little serious exploration on mergers among infrastructure bodies. That should change, and perhaps the conversations are already starting.
Necessity is the mother of invention
I am excited by the honesty and openness which the leaders of ACEVO, NCVO, Charity Finance Group and NAVCA have shown this week – “Charities, voluntary organisations and community groups need strong infrastructure. They do not necessarily need the infrastructure that exists today.”
It is a brilliant starting point which I hope will spark a conversation in plain sight about the future business models of infrastructure. After all, if charities are going to trust charitable infrastructure to give advice about resilience and funding (a common theme), then being open about our business challenges and how we are trying to get our houses in order feels a good place to start. The times call for a spirit of disruption.
Blog written by Eastside People CEO, Richard Litchfield.
