Charities for change

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Two new reports issued in September propose significant changes for charities and voluntary organisations. The first,

Private Action, Public Benefit, comes from the Downing Street think-tank, the Strategy Unit, and is a long-awaited review of charity law and charitable status. The second, from the IPPR, an independent think-tank favoured by Downing Street, is called Any Volunteers for the Good Society? and focuses on schemes that can entice more people into becoming volunteers.

The report from the Strategy Unit (formerly the performance and innovation unit) heralds an overhaul of charity law, with an emphasis on modernising and freeing up the basic rules about who or what may qualify as a charity. It states that ‘The law on charitable status is outdated and unclear’ and proposes replacing the four main heads of charitable purpose (deriving from a 1601 law) with a far broader definition: ‘A charity should be redefined as an organisation providing public benefit which has one or more of the following 10 purposes: 

1. The prevention and relief of poverty. 
2. The advancement of education. 
3. The advancement of religion. 
4. The advancement of health.
5. Social and community advancement. 
6. The advancement of culture, arts and heritage.
7. The advancement of amateur sport. 
8. The promotion of human rights, conflict resolution and reconciliation. 
9. The advancement of environmental protection and improvement.
10. Other purposes beneficial to the community.’


There follows a public consultation period ending on 31 December 2002. 

The IPPR report, launched by the Home Secretary David Blunkett on 10 September, says that volunteering remains disproportionately an activity of the better-off, because of outmoded attitudes about the meaning of ‘volunteering’. It proposes, therefore, that certain types of voluntary effort, such as members of local strategic partnerships or others involved in local regeneration efforts, should attract ‘honorarium’ payments. It advocates US-style ‘work-study’ schemes, in which students gain financial assistance at college, linked to community work they undertake. And it supports the extension of ‘time-bank’ schemes, where people gain credits for services in return for their voluntary work. 

Copies of ‘Private Action, Public Benefit’ may be downloaded from www.strategy-unit.gov.uk or phone the Cabinet Office on 020 7276 1434. Send comments on the proposals to piuvolsec@cabinet-office.x.gsi/ gov.uk or to PIU/Home Office (Charities Project), Admiralty Arch, The Mall, London SW1A 2WH .

The IPPR booklet ‘Any Volunteers for the Good Society’, ed Will Paxton & V Nash, costs £8.95 from Central Books, tel: 0845 458 9911.