martine wrote:
Can you tell me more about the money Brake gets from the MoJ - is this 'victim support' grants?
Not really. All that's in the public domain as far as I am aware, is a brief mention of the existence of grants in a press release - the accounts do not separate out public sector grants.
One would presume given the source that it is indeed related to victim support, but I guess the question is if it is ring fenced, and even if it is, does that just mean that funds they raise elsewhere are as a result freed up for other purposes.
The latter issue that ring fenced funds can sometimes displace finding from other sources, and thus potentially increase the lobbying budget will make it rather difficult to be certain that government funding does not indirectly support lobbying other than an outright refusal to provide funding to organisations that lobby.
I guess the only way would be to insist that part of an organisation that gets government funding is only funded by donations that are also specifically earmarked for that purpose. That might be no band thing, I cannot be the only person to refuse to contribute to certain good causes due to their lobbying activities.
akirk wrote:while at a slight tangent, this is an interesting area of debate...
the large charities would argue that it is about % spend, not absolute spend - so, they might spend 1% on overheads (v. 5% - 15% in a smaller charity), yet the actual overheads spend could be in the millions - the charity feels they are managing really well, yet the critics focus on the large number and criticise them - a difficult one, but in general charities in the UK are run really efficiently... while it is valid to ask about spend on political lobbying, I think that where a charity is sound (unlike some recent high profile news!) then the overhead spend is usually not too bad...
To be honest I'm less concerned about the salaries than the approach to fundraising that has resulted. Businesses have a tendency to, as organisations, to behave in a manner that reasonable individuals would consider immoral. I often see companies justify such conduct on the basis that it's legal.
When armies of students can be paid to harrass shoppers, or sharp suitied salesmen on commision to do the same on peoples doorsteps, just to get people to sign up direct debits, I would argue something has gone badly wrong. The former has largely stopped and the latter is dying away, but only because it's getting harder to get annoyed people to respond to such high pressure techniques. The cost of such conduct is to have done terrible damage to the charity sector, donations generally in the UK have been falling over recent years as more and more people, sick of such conduct, decide just to to donate at all, something that the more sensible heads in the charity sector have been warning would happen for years as they spoke our about such conduct.
Having seen a big name charity (not BRAKE I hasten to add) parrot the "it's legal innit" on national TV in an excuse to justify hounding elderly people with cold calls and selling their details to other charities who they know will behave in the same reprehensible fashion has pretty much been the final nail in the coffin, as far as I am concerned.
Fundamentally businesses lack empathy and sadly when one sees the same lack of empathy in a charity one has to question to what extent the charity now exists to further it's original aims, as opposed to the aggrandisement and enrichment of its senior executives.