“From Oxfam to the British Heart Foundation, many British charities are going well beyond their core missions of saving lives and helping the needy and have branched out into political lobbying, whether it’s for sugar taxes or so-called climate justice,” the conservative policy analyst and commentator writes in the piece. “The third sector has relegated old-fashioned charity work to second place, behind lobbying the government for ‘progressive’ policies.
“Most of these ‘charities’ don’t seem to have noticed the precariousness of their position,” according to Reed, in what sure seems could be a cross-Atlantic observation. “They ought to do some long-term planning. Many rely on short-term government grants and have shifted their resources overwhelmingly towards political activism, undermining their hard-won reputations in the process.”
He was kind enough to join me for a recorded conversation last month. The just more than 12-minute video below is the first part of our discussion; the second is here. During the first part, we talk about the politicization of charities in the U.K., the role of the Charity Commission and other “quangos” there, and cross-Atlantic similarities in challenges being both presented by and facing nonprofit groups.
“I think because of the vibe shift in politics in Britain and around the world, which charities don’t seem to have noticed, they’ve still got what I would call ‘2016 brain,’” Reed tells me. “[T]hey’re still doing their virtue-signaling and they’re kind of operating in a world in which you can almost get away with anything.
“[T]he trend we’ve seen over recent decades,” he continues, “is of charities that have very-commendable histories like Christian Aid, for example, doing very commendable work,” but are
going towards the political arena and giving in to the political impulses of the people who run them these days, who I’m afraid seem to get a lot of their worldview from the middle class-dinner parties that they go to and have lost sight of the core mission of their charities.
Reed says he believes “we’re now approaching that turning point where the level of scrutiny is going to become such that the charities have to change their ways and ultimately, I think, return to their core missions and leave the politics behind, which I think will be beneficial for everyone.”
The Charity Commission for England and Wales is supposed to register and regulate charitable organizations in its jurisdiction, Reed describes. “[T]here’s a fair bit of weight behind … allegations of bias” on the part of the Commission, he says. “Ultimately, the problem with the Charity Commission, in my view, is that the way it’s structured doesn’t really work. It’s a little bit toothless. It very rarely gives out the most-serious penalties that it has available to it, things like ultimately stripping charity status or things close to it.”
More largely, what are called “quangos” in the U.K.—quasi-autonomous non-governmental organizations—“straddle this line between charity and government” and “this is having real, significant impacts on policymaking,” according to Reed.
It’s ironic. I think that people spend their whole careers fighting tooth and nail to acquire political power, and then when they get to the top of the political tree, the first thing they seem to want to do is sign away their power to unelected unaccountable bodies—which seem to swell in number, even though we have a government.
The Charity Commission is itself a quango, he notes, “and suffers from a lot of the same problems, which are that the people there—although I’m sure they’re very honorable people doing their best—ultimately, their incentives are not aligned because they are not elected. They are not really accountable.”
Sound familiar, American readers? “There are certainly some similarities” between the situations in the U.K. and the U.S., Reed acknowledges. “I think there is a deeper cultural issue that goes even beyond charity,” however. “In Britain and in Europe more generally,” groups are “a little more reluctant to be seen as nakedly partisan. But that doesn’t stop charities pursuing their policy goals.”
Having said that, he adds,
there are some certain aspects of what we’re seeing today that were indeed pioneered on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. I think that the environmental-charity lobbying in particular … has really been the fertile breeding ground for this huge amount of environmental NGOs, which effectively just campaign for a bigger state under the guise of wanting to fight climate change.
In the conversation’s second part, Reed discusses where criticism of politicized charity is coming from in the U.K., why, and what could and should perhaps be done about it.
