Posted on January 6th, 2011 by Veronique Jochum in Archived related news
Tagged as: Big Society, civic engagement, giving, volunteering
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ShareThisThe Government has released its Green Paper on giving time and money “to start a national debate on our society’s attitudes to giving”.
Major policy proposals in the paper include:
- A £50million Community First Fund to invest in local savings schemes that pay out small grants well into the future in the most deprived areas. It will match contributions from local donors to encourage more giving.
- A £10million Volunteer Match Fund to double the benefit of private donations to voluntary projects.
- Harnessing new technology. Including working with mobile phone companies to encourage charitable phone applications. Also talking to banks about donations through ATMs and widening access for people to make small charitable donations when paying for goods by cards.
- Encouraging a new focus reciprocal giving with ideas like setting up an ebay style online community where people can trade time.
- A government review of the relationship between financial incentives and giving.
- Support to encourage charitable giving in schools.
The paper is available to download on the Cabinet Office website along with a number of think-pieces from external contributors covering a wide range of topics as the role of venture philanthropy and how to make better use of technology. Contributors include Stephen Howard (Business in the Community), David Halpern (Institute for Government) and Alan Hatton-Yeo (Beth Johnson Foundation).
Interestingly, the paper highlights that “people frequently cite lack of time, information and bureaucracy as obstacles to giving their time”, but recognises that “while removing these barriers to participation is necessary, it is not sufficient to bring about a step-change in the culture of giving time. Many people give time because they want to help, but there are also specific motivations which differ from person to person, and recognising this diversity is important”. This really resonates with some of the key messages in our literature review ‘Understanding participation’ and more recently in our short report ‘Strengthening participation: Learning from participants’.
On the subject of removing barriers, decentralisation minister Greg Clark launched, just before Christmas, a ‘barrier busting’ service “to help volunteers, community groups and social enterprises overcome bureaucracy and get things done in their neighbourhood”. Definitely one to watch…
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