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The Forum > Article Comments > Attitudes to financing the social sector stuck in the past > Comments

Attitudes to financing the social sector stuck in the past : Comments

By Richard Meredith, published 25/9/2015

Many people's attitudes to financing the social impact sector are entrenched in the well meaning but somewhat patronising amateurism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

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"social impact sector"

That's the first I've ever heard of the social impact sector. What's it supposed to mean? Do you mean charity?

"Yet we live in a twenty-first century world where the divide between rich and poor is increasing rapidly and dangerously."

No it's not. This is factually incorrect. The gap is closing as never before.

"The social economy will be the fastest growing sector in the developed world over the next 20 years according to Deloitte."

Economy, like language or morality, is already a social thing. We don't say "social language" or "social morality". What is added to the term 'economy' by adding 'social' that is not already implicit in the concept of economy?

"While volunteer and low bono services are generous on the part of the provider, they do not offer a sustainable solution."

To what? Obviously if you don't define the problem, it's going to be hard to find a solution.

(Hint: the scarcity of resources is caused by the fact that society is using them to satisfy more urgent and more important human wants in some other sector or activity.)

"What are required are suitably skilled professionals with a cultural alignment to each organisation's mission who can provide ongoing organisational capacity and capability support."

Sounds like gobbledegook: or rather, the special pleading of vested interests on the make.

"The volunteer and low bono approach also limits the range of leaders to those with another source of income – their own (eg superannuation in the case of a retiree) or their partner's. This is a form of enforced subsidy by the leader."

If it's volunteer, then it's not enforced.

"To achieve sustainability this kind of professional service ..."

But surely if the original problem is some kind of bad thing, then you wouldn't want to sustain it? You'd want to end it?
Posted by Jardine K. Jardine, Friday, 25 September 2015 9:16:21 AM
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I might make a couple of points.
For a start it seems to me that the "Suitably skilled professionals" running the large organisations get more than their pound of flesh at the end of the day, as do most of the professionals running large corporations.

We keep hearing this mantra about the gap between the rich and the poor getting wider, but that should be a secondary consideration. We should just be concentrating on the things which will raise the standard of living of the poor to a reasonable level. Redistributing the assets of the rich will not do this. The rich are in fact responsible for providing the jobs for the poor who if we continue to follow the trend in the United States, will soon approach about eighty percent of the population.

David
Posted by VK3AUU, Friday, 25 September 2015 9:56:15 AM
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