A Conversation with the U.K.’s Jason Reed (Part 2 of 2)

We’ve long had an interest in tracking international trends, perhaps particularly in the United Kingdom, that may either inform the interpretation of or even be related to helping spur similar philanthropic trends here in the U.S.—and thus noted Jason Reed‘s article in the London-based spiked earlier this month, “When did charities turn into insufferable activist groups?”

“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. During the first part of our discussion, which is here, 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.

The just more than 10-minute video below is the second part, in which we discuss where criticism of politicized charity is coming from in the U.K., why, and what could and should perhaps be done about it.

“This is, I think it’s fair to say, a center-right, conservative issue that the politicization of charities is out of control because if you’re on the left, even if you have concerns that the charities are pursuing things that you’re probably in favor of any way,” Reed tells me, “you’re probably not going to make too much of a noise about it.”

There’s a “problem with trying to solve this issue from the top down,” he says. “I think that’s why a lot of the conservative or center-right people” are

generally not calling for new legislation or for a very-aggressive government crackdown. They’re calling for more of a sort of socio-cultural moment, which is sort of happening or we’re getting pretty close to it, where people realize what’s going on, where people notice what charities are doing, and start to withhold donations or start to make a point of donating to somebody else who doesn’t do that.

The criticism and what to do with it is “about freeing up civil society to do what it does best,” according to Reed. “This blurring of lines between policymaking and doing charity work doesn’t help anybody, least of all the people who rely on aid from charities.”

Citing data from the Edelman Trust Barometer about declining levels of trust in non-governmental organizations, he says, “There is this growing perception that they say one thing and then do another, and people don’t like that, and there’s only so long that that can be sustainable.

“The vast majority of” NGOs, he concludes, “only exist because the government created them and funded them and empowered them. So,” if government just waits

for the ongoing contract or remit to expire and they just don’t renew it anymore, or you launch a significant cut where you give them five to ten percent of their current budget and say, look, here’s the really specific thing we want you to do, the rest of the contentious decisions, we can make those decisions in the government departments ourselves—then you’ll find a lot of this problem goes away by itself.