 Research conducted for the Law Family Commission on Civil Society by Pro Bono Economics in January 2023 has identified the changes and initiatives needed to increase productivity and unlock the full potential of the UK's charity sector.
While the report found that the sector was highly innovative and creative, the research shows that there is room for significant improvements within the use and adoption of technological improvements, with 39% of charities actively using or planning to use artificial intelligence compared to 69% across the economy. The report found that 60% of charities have implemented and actively track key performance indicators (KPIs), with this number dropping to 51% for smaller organisations. This finding, coupled with the finding that 19% of small charities should have invested in the training of staff and volunteers in the year reviewed, led the commission to identify persistent skill gaps and issues with consistent leadership and underinvestment as obstacles to progress.
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 In March of 2023, the Institute for Voluntary Action Research (IVAR) released a review of the importance of providing support through unrestricted funding. With their work focused on strengthening communities across the UK through action research, Evidence Review: Why Restrict Grants? investigates the hard-to-ignore benefits of removing the rigid restrictions on the use of funds for charities, foundations and public agencies. Through the exploration of common obstacles facing the twelve organisations included in the review, IVAR has highlighted the hard-to-ignore benefits of unrestricted funding and has drawn the following conclusions.
 At Common Call, we understand that Black-led organisations work twice as hard to receive funding. We understand that in the United Kingdom more often than not the funding received is markedly less than their white-led counterparts, but is this truth universal? We take a look at the state of funding for Black-led organisations in the United States and ask whether we can learn from our differences and similarities.
A 2020 study run by Funding Green and the Bridgespan group, looked at 140 non-profit organisations run in the United States and found that white-led organisations had budgets that were 24% larger than those led by Black people. When looking at donations made to be used for any purpose the organisations saw fit, these unrestricted donations were 76% smaller when offered to Black-led organisations than those offered to their white-led counterparts. Through the research conducted in the study, the answer to why these disparities were occurring was largely due to the difference in donations based on connections between Black-led and white-led organisations, stating that Black-led organisations traditionally have fewer relationships with influential organisations and people, making it more difficult to break into the community as new leaders often lack the ability and experience to forge relationships with potential funders.  Centre for London's 2022 report In London and For London: Impact investing for the capital highlighted the ways in which this form of intentional investing can do more to address key challenges facing London and its people. The report highlights the potential that impact investing has to help tackle poverty and inequality in the UK, particularly for the Black community which often faces exclusion from mainstream finance.
Impact investing is defined as the process of directing investments into companies, organisations, and funds with the intention of generating a financial return alongside positive, measurable social impact. This form of investment creates a mutually beneficial financial ecosystem for both investors and the communities themselves. Based on the report findings, impact investing is a step towards providing opportunities to invest in solutions to social and environmental challenges by closing the gap between what traditional finance is able to provide and the resources, skills and tools needed to tackle inequality.  ThinkHER Ambition received £5,000 from Common Call Fund which they will use as part of the development of the mobile app: Bloss.m which will serve the community of young women who engage in their employment and education programmes. Below they outline the need for their application from the perspective of one of the girls in their community: Sabrina.
Sabrina is a 17-year old young woman who lives in Ilford with both her parents and is an only child. As such, her primary outlet for expression is focused on her after school activities, such as running club, basketball and photography club. According to her friends, the opportunity for Sabrina to hang out with her friends outside was the panacea to her troubles.  According to the most recent Pay and Equalities report released by ACEVO, Black African, Black Caribbean, and Black British people make up 0.3% of the CEOs leading the Charity sector. Though the charity sector is improving in its representation of the "hardest to reach communities", people of Global Majority backgrounds still make up only 7% of the CEOs compared to our 13% representation in the population. The lack of representation is starker in the Black community, where we are not half represented but a 10th, dwindling from 3% to 0.3%.
In 2020, Big Society Capital, the UK's most prominent social investor, released figures that express the six-fold growth of the social investment sector, from £830 million to £5.1 billion in 8 years. Has that growth been reflected in disbursement to communities most in need of direct support? Or is it growth that exclusively benefits the 0.4% of the sector with the connections, awareness, resources and opportunity to build a £1M+ organisation? Why do we say we champion lived experience in leadership but as a sector systemically gatekeeper resources from the people most likely to identify as such? |
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