Guest blog: The Budget… think before you leap

This is a guest post from Richard Caulfield, Chief Executive of Voluntary Sector North West (VSNW). VSNW are one of the regional voices, and a key partner in the Voluntary Sector Cuts project. In this post, Richard looks at the results so far from Voluntary Sector Cuts and their implications for the changes announced in the budget.

There is great temptation at the moment to respond quickly to Government announcements immediately: the number of people in the twittersphere and blogosphere means if you want to be noticed you often have to be quick.

There is also a tendency in the overly competitive world of VCS infrastructure to shout quickly and respond before there is full clarity – or until the bigger picture is understood.  I keep trying to resist: my experience in life let alone the sector is that few things are rarely as they first seem; the devil is always in the detail.

So I have thus far not really commented broadly on the budget, I have read a fair bit of analysis, chewed the fat with colleagues and watched a number of sector big wigs ‘welcome’ this bit, be ‘pleased’ by another bit and even state that it ‘shows the Government recognises the difficulty the sector is facing’.

Ever the cynic I thought I would just put my little theory to the test and we have done a little digging using Voluntary Sector Cuts as the basis of some simple research.  What I wonder would the groups on there from the North West make of the budget?

Most of the ‘positive’ developments linked to gift aid and aiding philanthropy so of the 52 North West groups the 18 that are not registered charities are not going to benefit very much – not a great start.

We then studied the charities and found that 8 don’t register any income under voluntary income in their accounts, but when you look closer only four claimed to have more than 1% of their income through giving/donations.  When we look at this we find a grand total of £560k is through this route: this equates to 1% of the income of charities who have registered their cuts and even less of the total of cuts hitting those in the NW who have registered.

I must be careful what I conclude: the vcs cuts website is a snapshot and only a small proportion of the huge amount of cuts the sector has had to cope with: but I feel it is representative.  The majority of the cuts in the NW seem to hit the young people’s sector and volunteering hard, the evidence suggests they will not see the budget as the government recognising their predicament, the community groups who are not registered as charities will not be ‘welcoming’ gift aid reform as some saving grace.

What the Budget offers the sector, in its broadest sense, is not a recognition of the challenges we face, rather some rather meagre crumbs that may sustain a few but will not feed the many.

Richard Caulfield