Suchergebnisse

Funding for England and Wales' Charity Commission has been cut by 48% between 2007 and 2016, affecting its ability to deliver its core regulatory functions. Conversations around what charity regulation should look like and how it should be funded have, therefore, gained momentum. These debates, however, are not limited to England and Wales, and in this article, we contribute to them by exploring public attitudes to these questions, presenting the findings of four focus groups. We find that although public knowledge of charity regulation is low, people are, nonetheless, clear that charities should be regulated. There is no clear preferred method of funding a charity regulator and a significant amount of complexity and nuance in public attitudes. People trust charities, but this can be eroded if they do not have confidence in how they operate. A visibly effective regulator supporting and supported by charities is central to maintaining trust.

In recent years there has been an increased recognition that philanthropic engagement needs to be understood longitudinally, rather than as a snapshot in time. Much of this work is quantitative, utilising panel data to track groups of individuals over a number of years. In contrast, this article takes a qualitative approach to the study of volunteering over the course of individuals' and their families' lives. In doing so, it explores how engagement changes over the lifecourse, and how this impacts volunteer engagement in older age. Understanding this is crucial: volunteering is not an activity that takes place in isolation but rather one that must be situated over time and within a range of other activities. This article uses data from 26 life history interviews conducted in England to develop a heuristic put forward by Davis Smith and Gay (2005), which proposes three categories of older volunteer: constant, serial and trigger volunteers.

In this article we explore the extent and distribution of collective co-production across the single policy area of primary education in England. While much attention has been paid to the virtue of co-production, often drawing on particular, single, case studies, there is less literature exploring the wider impacts. However, ongoing marketisation, fiscal pressures and increased competition in education have led school leaders to turn to co-production as one mechanism for survival, while recognition of some of the potential benefits has led to a surge in efforts to implement co-productive activities. Focusing on collective co-production efforts, this article explores voluntary income data from more than 300 primary schools and their respective Parent Teacher Associations, supported by 70 questionnaires looking at volunteer contributions, which were completed by headteachers, and ten in-depth interviews with headteachers. Our data reveal three significant findings: the extent of collective co-production in primary education is increasing; this activity is driven by fiscal challenges, resulting in schools feeling coerced into co-production, which has wider implications; and this is resulting in increasing inequalities. We conclude with a discussion about what this means for the wider policy agenda.

Many Western states have sought in recent years to harness the energies of voluntary agencies and charitable bodies in the provision of welfare (Brandsen and Pestoff, 2006; Milligan and Conradson, 2006; Haugh and Kitson, 2007). More than ever is expected of the Voluntary and Community Sector (VCS) in supporting people and communities, entering into partnerships with governments, and delivering public services (Lewis, 2005; Macmillan, 2010). The mainstreaming of the VCS has been associated with a push towards market reform and reducing state obligations for welfare provision (Amin, 2009). In some European states – for example, Germany and the Netherlands – a three-way mix of state, market and voluntary sector dates back to the nineteenth century (Brandsen and Pestoff, 2006). In the UK too, on which this review article focuses, the delivery of public services by voluntary organisations and charities is far from new, but over the past decade local government and health services, especially in England, have been required to step up their engagement with VCS organisations (VCSOs) (Alcock, 2009; Di Domencioet al., 2009; Macmillan, 2010). Commitment to this sector by the government under New Labour was signalled by the creation for England of the Office of the Third Sector within the Cabinet Office in 2006 and the associated appointment of the first dedicated Minister of the Third Sector, initially Ed Miliband MP. Working with charities, social enterprises and community and faith-based organisations appeals to politicians across the mainstream British political spectrum (Di Domencioet al., 2009; Alcock, 2010); the 'Big Society' agenda of the Coalition government elected in 2010 promises a continuation in this direction of travel, albeit in a new regime of reduced budgets, service cuts and demands of more for less.

Voluntary action has long played a role in state education, with parent–teacher associations being one of the most common forms of charitable organisation in England. However, education policy, driven by a growing free-market discourse and policy initiatives such as localism, is increasingly pushing for greater voluntary action. This article explores the distribution of voluntary action in primary schools in one local authority area in England. Drawing on primary data from 114 questionnaires completed by head teachers and secondary data from the financial records (2013/14) of 380 primary schools, we find evidence of considerable uneven dispersal of voluntary action between schools. These disparities are related to factors including school size, location, leadership ideology and the socioeconomic profile of the school. The consequence of this uneven distribution is that schools catering for more affluent communities are more likely to have additional resources than those with poorer profiles.

AbstractIn the absence of a statutory instrument to enforce payment of a regulatory fee, regulators must rely on a combination of "carrots" and "sticks" to encourage financial contributions by the organizations they oversee. In contrast to studies of public funding of nonprofits, this article empirically evaluates the effectiveness of a government policy to rely on nonprofit funding of statutory regulation. The authors exploit a sharp discontinuity in the eligibility threshold for charities contributing to the new Fundraising Regulator in England and Wales to estimate a causal effect of the levy on participation. The article shows that the regulator's threat to "name and shame" was effective at incentivizing regulatory participation and generating income, but it raises some concerns about the long‐term viability of this approach. The results are significant at a time when many jurisdictions are considering how best to fund the regulation of nonprofits.

This article considers the balance between promoting volunteering in sport by emphasising the personal rewards to prospective volunteers themselves – the dominant management approach – and promoting it by the long-term development of the values of volunteering. We review the motivations and rewards of sports volunteers and how these can be used to promote volunteering as being a transaction between the volunteer and the organisation. This is contrasted with a lifecourse approach to understanding volunteering, and evidence that an understanding of the value of volunteering can be inculcated that underpins continued volunteering. The two approaches regard potential volunteers respectively as 'consumers' and as 'citizens'. We suggest that a shift to treating volunteers as consumers can lead to volunteering being regarded as transactional. The discussion has implications for volunteering in general – in particular, how it can be promoted in a society where narratives of 'the consumer' increasingly dominate over those of 'the citizen'.