The Guardian view on charities and poverty: running on empty
People with progressive views sometimes harbour some ambivalence towards charities, particularly those engaged in social welfare work. They believe that governments should guarantee an acceptable standard of living, and make special provision for those who are unable to provide for themselves. Viewed in this light, philanthropic efforts to help people meet basic needs such as energy costs can seem like a grim throwback to the 1930s, or Victorian times. But while such reservations are understandable, the crisis now confronting charities has grave implications and requires urgent attention from policymakers and wider society.
Boris Johnson’s government, and particularly Rishi Sunak’s Treasury, deserve to be judged harshly for decisions including cruel cuts to benefits. Meanwhile, sympathy is rightly directed at the people whom these policymakers seem determined to punish. But the vital role played by the voluntary sector, both in frontline services such as food banks and in policymaking, must not be ignored. The stark reality is that the organisations we collectively rely on as a backup safety net, to make up for the deficiencies of our depleted welfare state, are under huge pressure at a time when their resources are already stretched to breaking point.
A recent analysis by academics showed that a typical charity’s income dropped by 15% in the first months of the pandemic – a steeper fall than took place after the 2008-09 banking crash and recession. The Association of Medical Research Charities calculates that its members collectively lost £292m in income between 2020 and 2021.
The most recent survey of individual giving carried out by the Charities Aid Foundation offered a more mixed message. It found that the total amount
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