Consultant fails to meet the needs of the voluntary sector

Consultant says Infrastructure Organisations 'fail to meet needs of small organisations'  - Third Sector.

There's a surprise. This one goes next to the headline "Bears shit in woods", and "Pope is a catholic". It is so easy to insult infrastructure organisations as not meeting the needs of small organisations - as freelance consultant Kim Donahue has discovered, since they aren't in any position to fight back. Especially easy when you read she was referring to "National, Regional and sub-regional" organisations - which shows she hasn't got a clue - since the 'micro organisations' she refers to 99% of the time get what support they can from a local organisation. And since all these support organisations have had the shit kicked out of them by central and local government, the comments are really like- not just kicking a dog when it is down, but after someone has broken all its legs, poked its eyes out and shoved a sock down its throat. And from what position do these comments come from? From a freelance consultant with experience of working with "over 200 small organisations". Over 200 - really? If you're going to play the numbers game you are going to have to do better than that. The average borough in the UK has over 500 organisations that meet the criteria she uses to describe  "micro-organisations" and I really can't be arsed to do the full count, but I know that  there are more than 50,000 in London alone. So 200? Really? Wow. We're real impressed. And what experience does this consultant have exactly? Well her online CV says she's got a lot of experience in the US, and mentions very little  about working with small organisations - and NOTHING AT ALL about infrastructure organisations - that's right, she appears to have never worked for a CVS, or for any other local, region, sub-regional or national infrastructure organisation AT ALL, and it appears that ALL her work in the UK has been as a freelance consultant. All this appears to be is a cry :"EMPLOY ME!!!" I'm a freelancer who can't get any work!!! Give me money to write a report!!"

This reminds me of someone I knew years ago who qualified as a social worker and then went and wrote a book about social work - without ever having been a social worker.

For the record, I work some of the time as a freelance consultant. I've even written reports about infrastructure support. But you know what? That was after 25 years of working in the voluntary sector, with 15 years of that working in the part offering infrastructure support. Do you want to know how many small groups I have worked with? Do you know, I don't think I can tell you. I know that as a capacity building worker in voluntary organisations I worked with several hundred a year, I know that as a consultant I have worked with "over 200" ...

All this makes me very angry (as you can tell). This sort of guff is based on virtually no research at all and very little experience. And it does two very bad things: In the wide-world it tells people that "infrastructure organisations are crap" - which gives every council in the UK to cut more to them. In the voluntary sector it has a secondary effect - it makes everyone think all consultants are is parasitic leeches sucking the life from the sector, or in this case, vultures picking at their bones..

Anyway, if anyone wants to give me some money to research how consultants fail to meet the need of the voluntary sector, you know where I am.

A riot on my own - the failure of "New Labour"

It has been a week since the riots started in London and other UK cities. Analysis of "why" has begun, following the knee-jerk "lock-em up" and "birch 'em" responses - and that's just from the average Guardian reader. So, the consensus runs, young people riot because they feel "disconnected" from their communities. OK, I know the Tories have hacked away at public services in the last 12 months or so, and the amount of services for young people have been sadly destroyed, along with other local community services and voluntary groups - BUT this leaves another problem: for the previous 10 years the Labour government poured millions into regeneration schemes that has as a major theme running through them, engaging young people in their communities. The evidence is that these schemes all failed: Millions of pounds spent on short-termed projects that only provided a short-term solution. Voluntary sector groups spending thousands of hours chasing money attached to schemes already doomed before they started: SRBs, Neighbourhood Renewal, Children's Fund etc. etc. Meanwhile, the youth clubs that were shut in the 1980s didn't re-open, the community centres remained shut and the buildings sold off.

"New Labour" provided patchy crap that only held communities together by the precarious strings that were and are the hard-working individuals - workers and volunteers - who really work for their communities. Almost certainly the same people cleaning up the messes in Tottenham and Hackney at the end of last week. In the 1980s Thatcher destroyed a lot of local community structures by undermining local government powers and finances. Instead of reinvesting in these structures that had provided youth clubs, community centres, art centres etc. Labour threw money at consultants and regeneration schemes, and missed the opportunity to put things back where they needed to be. Instead, a pathetic structure was invented, that hasn't even managed to survive one year of Tory-ism. What a shame. And another shame is the "New new Labour" appears to be offering little else. So whilst the Tories stay in power, and no long-term investment is made in local, sustainable community structures things are unlikely to get better. Locking kids up and taking away their benefits sounds like a recipe for only one thing - more riots.

What future? Big Society is meaningless drivel.

There is no consistency in Government policy towards the voluntary sector. Or anywhere else for that matter. On one hand they talk "Big Society" and seem to envision the voluntary and community sector delivering lots of public services. On the other hand they don't seem to understand where the sector gets its money from in the first place, and that the consequence of massive cuts to local and regional government, as well as other centrally-funded schemes, will result in mass destruction for swathes of the sector. And in addition to the millions of pounds being lost through local government etc, the sector is of course getting less money through donations, less money is available from trusts as their investments tumble and the government is going to get poorer by receiving less income tax because of all the people no longer earning, and the lack of profits companies are making.

So not only is the voluntary sector suffering, but the coalition's policies don't even make sense in their own terms. They won't cut deficits in the long term if their income is so cut. Services won't be delivered by a non-existent voluntary organisation (or an organisation with less funds and bigger demands) and their are no savings left to be made through privatisation. All that can be privatised for profit has already been done by the last Tory and Labour governments. Everything that can be sold off for profit already has been. Which is why they are reduced to selling of forests, and trying to privatise public services that can only be profitable for the private sector if the Government gives them lots of money (thus not making savings). The last Labour government was beginning to realise this, and were looking daily less enthusiastic about PFI as financial chickens came home to roost, and less happy about the amount of subsidy going to the private sector to deliver public services - most notably Rail services.

So what is the future for the voluntary sector, and for the UK in general? It's very hard to predict where this downturn will end with the current policies in place. The banks need controlling (if not nationalising), and more investment is needed all over, not less. The Uk appears to be heading for bankruptcy unless things change, and the voluntary sector, particularly at a local level - where people mostly engage - is being destroyed. Bang goes the big society. Bang goes everything.

Odds on a general election in 2011 are 11/4 at Paddy Power...

RedBubble profiting from genocide

See http://matelles-art.blogspot.com/2011/01/more-redbubble-hijinks-they-are-nazi.html

for the full story.