Cold feet?

The Campaigning Research Programme (CRP) – funded by the OTS and given to Capacity Builders to deliver – promised a joined-up kind of support the sector had never seen from this level of government.  Funding for small groups...  Ongoing development and advice opportunities... Embedded learning and evaluation of the process...  All in a discipline that government (and parts of the sector) took far too long to recognise the importance of: campaigning and social change.

Embedded in the programme was recognition that social change requires innovation – that groups working to achieve change, tend to be most successful when they can find a new way of doing things.

Capacity Builders’ seemed to recognise this.  The Minister for the Third Sector however, seemed to get cold feet.

There has always been some discomfort within the sector around government actually encouraging the sector to – as Phil Hope put it as Minister for the Third Sector – ‘bite the hand that feeds it’.  But the recent move by the new Minister, Angela Smith, to cut the CRP (after offering grants to 32 recipients, breaching the Compact) raises serious questions about the government’s commitment to a truly empowered and vocal civil society.

So why would the government do this?  Is this really the only way to top up the Hardship Fund?  And does it really make sense to do so by pulling the plug on a programme, which, by all accounts, seemed to be supporting frontline groups in a largely uncharted area of work, and developing clear learning about how other groups can grow from their experiences in the longer term?

It just doesn’t seem to add up.  Over a relatively tiny sum of money, the Minister has struck a significant blow against the positive steps taken by government in the past decade to legitimise the roles of voice and campaigning within the sector.

Supporting sector campaigning was – no doubt – a bold move on government’s part – but the decision to back-out of a programme that could take that support to the next level has left the Minister looking foolish, non-committal and publicly unsure that she really does like the idea of a civil society which speaks loudly and clearly for itself…

So what are we going to do about it? Comment here. Tweet #OTScampaign. Sign the Louder.org.uk petition. Tell us how we can make sure the OTS announcement is not the final word on this critical question.

Related links:

NAVCA letter to the Minister

Third Sector Charities fight for reinstatement of campaigning fund