Charities against exclusion

The accompanying audio file for the "Charities against exclusion" lesson plan.

Script: The use of charity is very widespread. The Charities Aid Foundation found that nine in ten British households have used a charity at some point. An interesting point is that almost a quarter of charity users are unaware that the service they are using is provided by a charity. However, this use is declining, both from a user point of view and from a donor point of view.

Charities today face several different challenges which threaten their ability to continue functioning.

The main challenge that charities face today is trust and transparency, as donors wonder what charities are really doing with their money. They are afraid that the money they donate is disappearing into someone’s pocket, or into side projects such as advertising, rather than going directly to help those who need it. On top of that, negative media coverage has meant that the number of donors has decreased significantly in recent years, as people underestimate the importance of charities

GDPR has made people more careful of what they do with sensitive information. Because many people don’t really understand the regulations, they are afraid of them, so donors have become extremely wary of giving out their bank card details to charities as the latter are often victims of cyber-crime.

Brexit had a strong impact on EU funding to British charities and pushed many already vulnerable people into further hardship with limited supplies, rising prices and expensive medicine. Need increases in times of economic difficulty, and voluntary organisations need to remain financially robust in order to continue helping those who need it.

Income generation has been a problem for a few years now, as donor income is simply less than it used to be. Unemployment, zero-hour contracts or ordinary poverty make it hard for people to meet their own needs, never mind donate money to help others.

Finally, government support is dwindling because the UK government values charities in terms of service delivery but does not take a favourable view on the campaigning and fundraising needed to keep the charities afloat. Several charities criticise government policies and call for change, and this can lead the government to see them as a nuisance.