Blogs

McDonald's at the Olympics? Preposterous!

Dame Hilary Blume did not mince her words last week when she tweeted about McDonald's being the volunteer coordinator for London Olympic games: "How are those responsible not embarrassed? Ashamed of my country”.

I’m lovin’ it not much either. Every time I saunter past a Maccy D's, I mutter, whinge and have an internal boo at the ridiculousness of it. If my perambulation is accompanied, my companion hears a slightly unhinged anti-McDonald's tirade that continues until we have walked to the next one (which is not hard because there are sometimes two branches in the same street).

According to London 2012, Maccy D's are “game-makers”. The organising committee's chairman Lord Coe said, "Volunteers are vital to the success of the games, and there are few organisations with the scale and experience required to help us prepare such a large team in a relatively short space of time".

Steve Easterbrook, McDonald's UK chief executive, said, "While nothing quite compares to the bustle and excitement of an action-packed 2012 games, our employees know a fair bit about working in a fast-paced, busy environment – providing quick and consistent customer service to over two million people each day."

Perhaps I am missing something, but I don’t quite understand what point Messrs Coe and Easterbrook are making. Are they saying that the ability to bustle and be generally excitable is critical to recruiting, encouraging and managing 70,000 volunteers? Perhaps it’s all about being able to work in a speedy and professional manner, or better still, perhaps it's about inspiring thousands to work hard in an action-packed environment?

If that's the case, then, outing myself as someone who actually ventures into Maccy D's on the odd occasion (usually in disguise, of course), I fear for the volunteer element of 2012. Because, being honest, it would be a real stretch to describe Maccy D's Penge (or Pee-Yon-Jay as we like to call it) as bustling, fast-paced, consistent, or dare I say it, quick. It is, however, action-packed - especially at 11.30pm at night.

I am with you, Dame Hilary. London 2012’s decision to award the lion’s share of the volunteer contract to McDonald's is shameful, preposterous and just plain counter-intuitive.

Our Olympic volunteers need a work environment and training that speaks to quality, accessibility, values, development, civic responsibility and volunteerism. I doubt that will be best found at McDonald's - unless, of course, we would like fries with it, madam.

Am I naive to think a Compact for civil society could work?

It seems the notion of creating a Compact for Civil Society has gone down pretty well - other than the name, which people hate.

Since my blog last week the itwillnotbecalledacompact@beatbullying.org inbox and the phone has been positively bustling. Most people have been really perky about the initiative, which would involve establishing some kind of light-touch code underwriting the terms and conditions of collaboration between charities.

People want to get involved and have taken the time to outline extraordinarily detailed 'collaboration' or 'ethical business' frameworks. How brilliant is that? 

Others, however, have got in touch with tales of absolute woe, many of which are just astonishing; unbelievable levels of unprincipled, unscrupulous and just plain rude behaviour have been reported. 

Here are some of the best/worst (delete as appropriate) and just in case you were wondering, I have sought permission from every whistleblower to blog about them and have sworn Brownies’ honour never to breathe a word about who they are. Right - brace yourself!

One chief executive spoke of the trials and tribulations of a six-month, highly complex bid process. Both sides invested considerable time and resources to try and capture a multi-million pound contract. It was a tough negotiation, but they got there.

The bid was looking gorgeous, full of pretty graphs and lofty ambition and ready to be biked over. However, the night before, she received a text to say the other charity was not going forward with the bid. Yes, a text; I said a text!

Worse still, that was the last word she ever heard from the other chief executive. The other organisation never took her calls, ever, and from that moment it directed everything through its lawyers.  Trying to make amends perhaps, a few months later, they received a Christmas card from said charity. Can you believe it?

Others described 'rival' charities stealing straplines, programme names, practice models, logos, even staff and volunteers to an unseemly point, and undercutting on bids and contracts in such a way as to make it impossible to deliver quality services, undermining the very notion of competition and some think even the sector itself.

Leaving the best until last, this one is just breathtaking in its villainy. A truly miffed boss of a small charity detailed how he worked up a programme with another charity ready for a joint sell-in to trusts and foundations.

Properly business-planned, outcome and output heavy, evaluation methodology agreed... it even had its own logo. He thought it was outstanding stuff, until he was confronted with a deafening silence and the other charity withdrew, citing changing priorities.

You guessed it, six months later the (only slightly) tweaked programme was being funded to the tune of £300,000 as a standalone project for the other charity.  Needless to say, the lawyers did well out of that one.

Not for a moment do I believe that such horror stories are the norm in our sector - impossible, surely? Such aberrations may of course just add grist to the mill of those among us who believe this sector could do with a framework which outlines how we best collaborate.

It seems to me that the more hopeful, honourable or secure amongst us, those sure they are doing their very best to run their organisations ethically, will want to sign up to this framework. Moreover they will, I hope, in time, only want to collaborate and partner with those organisations that do the same.  Or am I being naїve in the extreme?   

We need a 'compact for civil society'. Can you help?

Three months or so ago, Beatbullying had a little local difficulty with one of the heritage charities. A partnership project was reduced to dust, to nothingness, to confusion. For four months we had 30 of their local projects involved in a new and pretty innovative programme then, mostly out of nowhere, we didn’t.

I wanted to be outraged, to take complete umbrage, claim the moral and ethical high ground and whip my board of trustees into a froth of indignant letter writing. In a fit of irate pique, I got just two minutes away from posting a blog bemoaning the way us poor old medium-sized organisations are so badly treated by the big guys.

In the event, I didn’t - not least because the post would probably have been libellous, but more importantly, despite wanting to vent my spleen, I knew I had to acknowledge and reconcile my contribution to this shambles.

The entire collaboration (and I use the word loosely) was based on a series of chats, un-minuted discussions over coffee, email outlines and a handshake. How absurd! Taking this as an example, I obviously couldn’t run a bath.

Worse, it’s the antithesis of how BB works up Compact-obsessed contracts with government and how we regularly include our lawyers when negotiating social marketing and corporate social responsibility with coprorates. Have I learned nothing?

To atone for my howler, and ensure this never happens to BB again, I reflected on what I could have done differently, better and what could support subsequent partnership work and collaboration.

It’s not rocket science. Any partnership work (paid or unpaid) we enter into with other charities needs a memorandum of understanding. Perhaps just as importantly, however, I wish we had been able to sign an ethical business framework or Compact, which outlined the collaboration, accountability, ethics, business practice, fair play and transparency of the partnership.

If we had signed a voluntary pledge, a light-touch code, a “compact for civil society”, which underwrote the terms and conditions upon which we had agreed to collaborate, the project may not have collapsed, the fallout would have been less undermining or, better still, we would have picked up their lack of capacity and commitment much earlier. Easy to say in retrospect, and perhaps stretching my penance a little far, I have recently and shamelessly been flogging the notion of a compact for civil society [a working title, already causing much consternation) around the sector.

It would seem the concept is beginning to marshal some support. A gaggle of the great and the good, including the DSC, Acevo, NCVO, Small Charities Coalition, New Philanthropy Capital, Navca and the Charity Commission are interested in contributing to a working group, which is just about to be convened.

In a glass-half-full sort of way, I am really hopeful that our great leaders will collaborate to collaborate. With a fair wind, a significant consultation on developing this compact (which will not be called ‘a compact’) will hit thousands of inboxes in the next couple of months. This, of course, may be a great or a crap idea.

So if there is absolutely anyone out there who wants to get involved and thinks the sector could do with a framework that speaks up for ethical collaboration, could you please email itwillnotbecalledacompact@beatbullying.org. Because this doesn’t half need critical mass if it is to get off the ground!

'Tis the season to be ultra-competitive about charity awards

The glitz and the glamour of the awards season is once again upon us.

The anticipation, the adventure, the barely concealed pathological competitiveness, the dry cleaning bills – in truth, can you think of a more thrilling night out?

At these shindigs Beatbullying always seem to be in the cheap seats at the back (mostly with Martin and Mark from P3). One time, we were so far away from the great and the good, that the kitchen door was actually clipping the back of my chair, as it swung open heralding a column of irritable, over-worked and underpaid waiters.

At the NMA Effectiveness Awards last week, we were so far back it felt like we were Portsmouth FC. Then at the Business Charity Awards,  on Wednesday, the Maitre D’ actually tried to set a table in reception for us. Of course we were with News of the World journalists. That may have had a little something to do with it.

We don’t take it personally though; the further away from the VIPs we are the louder, generally errant and badly behaved we can be and of course we can moan when we don’t win and no one will hear us.

These two “sector-defining ceremonies” couldn’t, however, have been more different. The BCAs were a discreet, incredibly civilised, pretty good night out. Only the vaguest ripple of disquiet could be heard upon the announcements of certain gongs.

Overseen by the handsome, self-effacingly camp and extremely Welsh Huw Edwards, we all joshed and japed on cue, and what fun we had.  Mr Edwards was so the Master of his own Ceremonies; his lecture on hearty and sincere clapping of the winners actually worked! We did do ourselves proud.

Whereas the NMAs were a seething, uncontrolled mass of testosterone-filled, professionally craven bumptiousness, teeming with screeching media geeks, many of them appeared to share a best friend called Charlie. They were all booing, whingeing and brashly chatting several decibels over a fragrant but clearly horrified Claudia Winkleman. It was Dante’s Inferno with flame-resistant suits.
 
I blame the toilets. The BCAs’ lavatories were a sedate oasis of sector gossip, giggling, polite uneasiness about the vegetarian option and gracious but sincere congratulations. Whereas the air in the NMA conveniences was so thick with CKFree, D&G’s Light Blue and cheap vodka as to be antiseptic and so ridden with the obligatory white smog I could barely see my own hand in front of my face (and when I did I wasn’t sure if it was my own).
 
Without prejudice of course, I think a series of new awards needs to the introduced for next year. For the BCAs, perhaps Best Use of Restrained Clapping or Lifetime Contribution to Slight Tipsiness, or better still, the “Let’s-Pretend-It’s-The-Taking-Part-That-Counts-And-Not-The-Winning”   award.  For the NMAs – what about Bad Loser of the Year or Lifetime Contribution to Offensiveness, perhaps even Most Innovative Use of Charlie?

With all that in mind, congrats to all those who won awards and see you next year at the NMAs, obviously?

Inept trustees are the sector's elephant in the room

It would seem that some really interesting stuff is floating out of Bubb Towers at the moment, not least its Taskforce on Better Regulation, which calls for radical change to charity rules.

Nevertheless, it’s yet another taskforce. What is it about our umbrellas? Everything is a “taskforce”, a “commission” or a “summit”. Does this sort of rhetoric really make the sector look influential and the question imperative? Perhaps it actually makes us look a little self-important, if not insecure, and not terribly comfortable in our civil-society skin?

His Bubbness’s taskforce is being a tad impertinent to the Charity Commission by posing rather insolent questions, such as why is our sector not regulated in a more pluralistic, coherent and proportionate manner? Why is everything so turgidly top-down? And, perhaps critically, why is evidence of social good not included in our regulatory framework?

Well, I say! On the face of it this may all seem rather benign, but depending on the outcome of the task force, Acevo may just have put its rather brazen dukes up. The ink's barely dry on the Charities Act, (relative to the hundred years it took to legislate since the last time); the new administration has only just moved in and the Bubblettes are agitating for 21st Century, grown-up regulation.

Enjoying a good agitation as I do, may I add something to the disturbance, please? Boards of trustees, and just who should govern charities?

There are thousands of skilled, inspiring and talented trustees volunteering their time, including the bosses at Beatbullying. They are the backbone of governance, no doubt. But out there lurk some bewilderingly maladroit, inept, amateurish folk, way out of their depth, who are collectively holding back their charities, their senior management teams and this sector. We all whisper about it, you know we do! Inept trustees are the sector’s elephant in the room, and this surely needs to be addressed.

More importantly perhaps, trustees, in my opinion, have all the rights but none of the responsibilities, leaving their leadership teams with all the responsibilities and none of the rights.

Maybe I'm suffering from “founder syndrome" because I can hear the chorus from the pro-trustee brigade arguing that trustees are, in the end, liable. Yes, absolutely, but trustees by their very nature are not present. The complex planning, challenges and judgements that must be met to keep an organisation functioning, solvent and meeting its mission need a solid and expert knowledge base, and directors who are present, informed and accountable.

Trustees do not immerse themselves in the operational or strategic culture of a charity. They can’t - they are volunteers, and they have day jobs. On that basis, asking how trustees can lead and take ultimate responsibility for any charity is surely a fair question.

This sector, in my opinion, needs unitary boards, weighted between the operational and strategic knowledge offered by the leadership team, and the objective checks and balances critical to good governance that is brought to the table by trustees. Our governance structures need to be modernised radically. Boards populated with executives and non-executives are surely the way forward. A unitary - and hopefully unified – board that makes joint decisions needs to be the norm and not an exception, only granted if you go cap-in-hand to the Charity Commission.

Its cleaner, fairer, and it combines all talents, rights and responsibilities. It spreads the liability, the risk and responsibility. In my opinion, it will make for better management and governance.

However, I realise the possibility of something as radical as collective legal, strategic and operational responsibility carried by all of those who are seeking to lead a charity is, alas, probably an ambitious pipe dream. It does not make it any less important.

Positive discrimination is in favour of the boys. It's the only rational explanation

OK, you are home from the daily grunt and graft of the good society pit. Sun radiating, the garden - verdant and blooming - invites determined relaxation. Glass of something in hand, you reach for a read. Glorious!

So what will it be? A sneaky Hello? An ever-so-slightly pretentious Julia Child with which to plan dinner? Or even - in order to look extra clever (after all, the neighbours may be lurking behind their net curtains) - a scorched but well-read copy of Alastair Campbell’s diaries? No! Instead I willingly and with some considerable relish opened NCVO’s UK Civil Society Almanac 2010. My life as I know it is obviously over.

It's elevating stuff, skilfully researched and with an abundance of idiot-proof charts and graphs that ensure it makes for smart and accessible reading. Abridged databanks elaborate on civil society’s finance, assets, income, expenditure and work landscapes, quickening any self-respecting charity geek’s heart.

Upon preliminary reading, the section called Work proves our sector is robust, emergent, diverse and, it would seem, we girls are the engine of civil society. The sector’s workforce is well qualified: six out of 10 of us are on full-time contracts; 19 per cent of our staff are disabled and one in five is a member of a trade union. A mighty 68 per cent of our colleagues are female, and women between the age of 35 and 49 are most likely to volunteer.

How magnificent! My charity geek and feminist heart swept up in a unified expression of professional girl power. So feeling thus girly and empowered, I continue my rummage through the Work section in pursuit of yet more evidence that two in three of us civil society ladies are leading the equality insurrection.
 
Surely we are conquering the rocky summits of power? Giving the boys a run for their money and bravely taking command of the engine and its machinery? We must be, we are the majority, we are educated and we are represented. We are girls, for goodness' sake.

You would think my garden read would assemble the case. Amid such an abundance of information, the authors would provide us with an insight into exactly who is leading this sector. Not a whisper, not even a hint. So, if I may, let me tell you, because I have conducted a little light research of my own.

When it comes to bossing this sector, we are ordinary, hackneyed, clichéd, pedestrian, disappointing, unfair and unequal – perhaps not unexpectedly. Only 30 per cent of the top 100 charities are lead by a woman and a woeful 10 per cent of chairs are female.

How samey we are, settling happily with the four women in the cabinet, the 22 per cent of female MPs and the 29 per cent of women leading FTSE 100 companies.
 
We do positively discriminate, though it’s just in favour of the boys. Any other conclusion is irrational: it just cannot be that two-thirds of a workforce cannot muster the skills, expertise and courage to lead.
 
All the evidence suggests we at senior levels don’t hire in our own image, we don’t hire the best people for the job, we neglect our missions, dissemble when it comes to our own rhetoric on equality and fairness, misrepresent our values to our users and, much worse, bloody well spoil a perfectly gorgeous evening in the garden.

Now where’s my Hello?
 

Steady, Mr Bubb...I've only met you twice

I am, I think, beginning to develop an unhealthy fixation with the big society.  To that end, last week, genuinely interested, I happily trotted along to listen to Stephen Bubb’s speech The Big Society: Moving from romanticism to reality in central London.

Although I have been a little critical of Bubbisms in this blog, it was the first time I had actually heard Stephen speak. Indeed I have only met His Bubbness once. We were in a lift together. Knowing he had absolutely no idea who I was (and why should he?), much to my own amusement I opened the conversation by telling him he had “no idea who I was”.

Trapped in a 4X4 steel box, he was uncharacteristically silenced. I saw “Oh God, it’s a member” flash before his eyes. Even so, six floors later we had agreed his coat was beautifully tailored, we both loved New York and Brooks Brothers shirts were the very, very best in town. So holding fast my belief that Stephen spends too much time lobbying for, reassuring and even indulging the supercharities, but enlightened by our recent “moment”, I was comfortably seated with overpriced fizzy water in hand when he began.

Ever steely, with pinkie ring twinkling, Mr Bubb's speech was optimistic and provoking; at times a ripple of controlled anger and exasperation threaded through what was a contained, significant and thoughtful speech.

He absolutely nailed the innate contradiction of the new government seeking to rearrange civil society in its own image by engineering the shift from state action to social action. He argued powerfully that social action needs no framework or introduction as it’s called the third sector. Moreover, it’s the relationship with the third sector that the state must urgently recast and renegotiate if the PM’s vision of a ‘big society’ is to be met.

It is also not, as Red Tory Phillip Blond would have us believe, civil society that has disappeared or been defeated, but the political system which has been “flattened” and “broken” by bureaucracy and intervention by over-burdensome state institutions.

Social action isn’t new and shiny, but the lifeblood of this country. Our sector, not government, turns out, empowers and inspires millions to take social action on behalf of themselves, their families and communities.

This is a powerful position, so I would go further. If a vision of a ‘big society’ is to be met, it is so utterly dependent upon the third sector’s experience and commitment to community development, to mass engagement and to voluntary action as to make any pretensions to success without the accumulated talent, knowledge  and compassion of a generation of activists moribund before it has even begun.

It’s step-up time. If Stephen’s analysis of the sector’s tried and tested definition of a ‘big society’ is to rival, partner or indeed dominate that of the emerging Conservative doctrine, it needs cash, charismatic leadership, absolute belief that civil society is the keeper of social action and an immediate, unified ‘big statement’ of intent, direction and ownership from our leaders.  Now - not in nine months' time, after a BS commission, moratorium and summit: now.
 
So thank you Stephen. Because of you I really did spend a pleasant and challenging few hours last week ensuring my fixation is intact and growing. And here’s the news: you kissed me goodbye. Steady, Mr Bubb, steady… I have only met you twice!

Sector leaders were nowhere to be seen at the big society powwow

How the big society wagon train is rolling.

The irony. Suddenly the big society brought in by the new sherriff is the very thing. Initially ignored, then ridiculed and now embraced - as if we knew all along that the idea of devolving power to citizens, giving local people the tools and skills to take control of their own lives thereby promoting safe, fair and prosperous communities, was our idea of a new frontier all this time.  

All bright and shiny and new. So new that a saloon-full of supportive statements is now being sent by smoke signal across to Number 10.  Dog-eared “WANTED” posters seeking sector leaders for a big society powwow are now being nailed to trees across town.

Lofty and ambitious rhetoric now exudes belated delight from our leaders that the Lib-Con coalition has put the big society at the forefront of the political agenda. All are at pains to remind the coalition that civil society has a new Big Offer to tender to the keepers of this new pilgrim spirit. Everything so new-found, so brave, so frontier.

Trouble is, the PM’s idea of a big society isn’t new. It wasn’t rustled into the Tory manifesto as an adjunct or as ideological clear-blue water. For five years, the Conservatives have been (with intelligence, rigour and patience) framing the contours and terrain of what they believe a big society to be.

David Cameron has, without reservation and with considerable tenacity, championed his vision of a big society through social action since he rode into town. I would wager the PM and his policy chaps know exactly what the vision, principle and practice of attempting to create a big society through social action will look like.

The Tories have, after all, done the spadework and mapped out the territory. Baroness Warsi’s Social Action unit has painstakingly reviewed and hothoused social action programmes across the UK by analysing, testing and learning from groups that place the devolution of power to citizens and neighbourhoods at the heart of the work they do.  

Iain Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice has been mining for gold between state provision, commissioning, accountability and social action with sharp-shooting precision. The PM and his deputies have visited hundreds of social action projects in the last five years; learning, assembling an evidence base, framing the proposition and pragmatically testing the practice.   

Less rigorous but just as powerful, significant and pretty large-scale social action hoedowns have been held at Tory conferences. Conservative associations have run social action campaigns and projects in their own communities with all outcomes fed back to central office. They have actually hothoused the Conservative Party doing social action. Can you believe it? Tory activists are big society gunslingers.

It seems the big society wagon train has already rolled, just maybe carrying enough provisions to sustain the journey and enough materials to build a settlement once they arrive.

The new sheriff gathered his posse at Number 10 last week. The Big Society Gang was born, with not a traditional sector leader among them.

Back to the smoke signals, eh, boys?

A thoroughly modern Shakespearean tale

Well it has all been positively Shakespearean, has it not? Gordon was Macbeth-like, wily to the end, aspirant, statesmanlike, but apparently subject to the ambitions of his protégé Ed Balls, and the craft of the virtuoso Mandy. Made me weep though; the man has changed this country irrevocably.

Nevertheless, we are the voluntary sector. So it’s 'The King is dead. Long live the King!' Or should that be kings? The machinations, politics and principles of the subsequent court as it unfolds will, I imagine, keep us mesmerised. Is it Henry VI parts I, II or III? That is the question.

What destinies await our Henrys, I wonder? Is it Part I, where our dignified, righteous and decent kings reign with honour, pride and with justice in mind?  Will they bravely wrestle with a country anxious, split and concerned about its future; ride into battle, (on the same horse, perchance) slaying the evils of economic decline, poverty and war?

Will it be Part II, ending in conflict and with our brave and honourable kings lost to the endless self-interest and scheming ambition of their nobles? Will those same confidants and guardians plot and plunder, but never quite rise?

Or shall we be treated to Part III, where our political class is torn apart by conflict, partisan warring and petty jealousies and our kings sacrificed, their honour besmirched and their reputations left tattered on the standard?

Oh! The history of it all! So, “Cry ‘Gods, for Harry, England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and all saints!’” for a thoroughly modern Shakespearean tale.

Lastly, will I ever stop mixing my metaphors and Henry’s?  No I won’t, I can’t, I’m not allowed to be political - the Charity Commission says so.

Civil society has spoken: we want coalition and consensus

Today, just for a moment, civil society and democracy is the new rock and roll. Who will swing their snake hips up to grab the mike? Who’s on keyboards in dark glasses hidden behind the amp? Indeed the headline act and the line-up are yet to be announced.

But this is a big stadium gig with queues around the block and voters in Hackney sitting in, waiting for their right to a ticket. Some very upset fans in Manchester couldn’t even get into the gig. Depending, of course, on whether the Stones or the Who are your thing, it may just make you want to throw a TV out the window.

Judging by the size of last night’s audience and the excitable buzz, the very notions that we Brits don’t do democracy, that we are paralysed by lethargy and don’t prize our civil society, are faintly ridiculous. In our millions, we have told the chattering classes, the Westminster village and intransigent returning officers that we do. As it stands, civil society (we, the great unwashed) has said we prefer progressive politics, coalition, grown-up government; we are heckling, booing and throwing cans at the stage.

Now the theatre of horse-trading begins. Our potential leaders will talk dishonestly about a constitution that was never written, and their right to govern. The City will herald imminent financial collapse, the media will warn of civil unrest. Twitter will “expleet”.
 
What nonsense. Civil society has spoken, we have chosen our mood music, even if it is a wee bit middle-of-the-road. Dare I say, more Take That than Kasabian.

Let’s hope that the men who believe that the hand of history is on their shoulder behave with integrity, remember that we are their masters and they are our servants and deliver us a government in the image of its citizens. Sorry, I mean subjects.

Politics is my drug of choice

This general election malarkey is all too much, do you not think? Being a politics junkie, it is a bit like being on political crack, and what a fix this is. The polls are hypnotic, the leader’s debates dazzling, the spin theatrical and predicting the outcome Byzantine in its complexity.

I have found myself talking to anyone who will listen: friends, colleagues and people at bus stops, and how they notice that demented twinkle in my eye before running for cover. I consume ravenously every morsel and oh, how I chortle every time I hear a hilarious political joke, the best one being John Sopel’s “The Tories are setting a political honeytrap for Nick Clegg.” Have you ever heard anything so droll?

So rehab, of course, is entirely out of the question. My addiction is unyielding. My drugs of choice: democracy, debate, reform and scrutiny, that feeling of pride and fortune you get when you steal into a polling booth and scribble a cross in honour of all the campaigners, reformists and abolitionists who sacrificed so much for suffrage and social justice.  

In honour of the Levellers, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, Bentham, Mill and Pankhurst, all of whom in times of acute political, social and economic turmoil were implacable in their insistence that rights, justice and civil society were essential to the strength of our democracy, however fledgling.

Even in times of war, economic decline and scandal they, in there own ways, kept on keeping on, believing that liberty and justice for us all was a right, not a privilege.

Trouble is, hustings 2010 seems to have totally forgotten social justice in favour of the very same economic decline, war and scandal. No mention of liberty and justice for the old, the young, the ill, the poor, the homeless and the disenfranchised. The reformist, the campaigners and abolitionists amongst us seem paralysed by an agenda already drawn. An agenda that, it seems to me, has excised and conveniently ignores those most in need.  

Kind of takes the edge off things, don’t you think? In fact, the come-down is mighty harsh.

No worries, though. Perhaps that vision of a just and more civil society will make a guest appearance next time.

Our quest to comply with data protection laws led to a slow simmering by the Information Commissioner's Office

Eight interminably long months ago Beatbullying gambolled like a spring lamb across lush meadows towards the sunlight of the Information Commissioner’s Office to discuss our CyberMentors project. Within minutes we were mutton and about to be shorn!

Let me, if I may, give you a little background. CyberMentors is a social networking site that provides young people who are being bullied or are dealing with a variety of well-being issues with real-time online mentoring from their peers and counselling from accredited counsellors.  Beatbullying designed, built and launched CyberMentors about a year ago. Since launch we have trained 4,000 CyberMentors, 400,000 unique users have visited the site and I have gone quietly round the bend.

The reason is the data we hold. The best way I can describe it is to imagine holding the taped conversations of 300,000 of your service users and as a matter of integrity, law and best practice be bound to protect them. If you are to obtain, process and analyse the content of these conversations, they must be quarantined, privileged, safeguarded and, if you care about privacy and civil rights, be subject to informed consent,

Now imagine being foolhardy or spirited enough to engage with the ICO because, as a charity, you absolutely believe you can and should protect data, privacy and children. I feel queasy just thinking about it.

CyberMentors has been subjected, and rightly so, to forensic and exhaustive scrutiny.  Every aspect of the service has been pored over by the ICO. We wrangled over consent and conditions for processing and we disagreed about the average 13-year-old’s ability to make an informed choice. Under duress at times, we re-wrote terms of use, privacy, confidentiality, child protection and disclosure policies.

We have gone as far as building bespoke animations for each page, which explain the basics of complex ideas, laws and protocols.  We have now encrypted all of our data, undertaken exhaustive internal and external penetration testing and re-worked safeguarding & identifiability, despite Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre sign off.   

In the end the ICO released us from our purgatory and signed us off. A colleague was close to tears upon the news of sign off - that is how stressful this has been.

Let me be absolutely crystal clear here: I am not saying that the ICO is a wolf in sheep’s clothing – I wouldn’t dare.  I am saying that in the hot-house kitchen of data protection, security and confidentiality, life has been more akin to a slow simmering of our lamb shanks rather than a swift flash fry of our tender lamb chops.  

At one point, with my head in my hands, I truly wondered what would become of CyberMentors, but it has categorically been worth the pain.  Critically, it has also given us an insight into the technological challenges our sectors faces as we enter the brave new world of digital service provision, a world which is already upon us and in my opinion we need to embrace with ambition, daring and courage.

A word to the wise; if you are responsible for protecting digital data and want to deliver digital provision, go back to the drawing board now.  The ICO has to wrestle with the myriad websites out there that do not sufficiently protect data, privacy, processing and - crucially - identifiability. Best be ready, or start seasoning your shanks!

Angela Smith should worry more about humanity and less about zoos

When I started blogging for Third Sector, I admitted I thought it likely I’d get into hot water; that my uppityness might just get the better of me.
It may be (although I sincerely hope not) that this blog proves my prediction correct, because I am going to enter - with a little trepidation - the hallowed territory of our fluffy, feathered and furry friends.
Firstly, let’s get one thing absolutely straight.  I like animals. Indeed, I love my dog - he is the most handsome Cocker Spaniel in the world and called Jarvis, (yeah OK...Jarvis Cocker, not very original, but he likes it). Animal welfare is important to me and it should, I believe, be important to us all.
But I do eat them, wear them, and struggle uncomfortably with the liberal in me when it comes to hunting, circus animals and zoos, all three of which, in my world, should be banned.
If that was not bad enough, here comes the unspeakable; I have a real problem with the millions of pounds given to animal charities in this country, because when push comes to shove I care so much more about the welfare of people than I do animals.
So all the above considered, I felt Angela Smith’s intervention on zoos earlier this month was, as a General Election approaches, well timed - but not what the Minister for the Third Sector should be claiming the front page for.
The Minister called zoos ‘a cruel relic of a Victorian era’; maybe, maybe not. But Angela is ministering to the voluntary sector and therefore understands absolutely what a cruel relic is. The remnants of brutality, injustice and grievance are explained to her in minute detail every day of every week by campaigners, zealots, policy people, the sad or the furious.
Our Victorian values? Dirt poverty, a life broken by violence, sitting begging as the fortunate walk past, dying alone at 80 from hypothermia, child prostitution, being brutalised because you are not British enough, illiteracy as a family tradition, ten as the age of criminal responsibility and a generation not invited to gaze upon the magnificence of an Anish Kapoor.
It is these ‘relics of a Victorian era’, ever-present today, that should have claimed that all-important election front page and not, in my opinion, zoos. Let's call it like it is - there are millions of animals in this great country of ours who have a more comfortable, safe and nurtured existence than millions of her people and many of them live in zoos.

David Cameron's Little Platoons

In theory, I was joining the little platoon of interested observers at Coin Street last week as the Tories launched their vision for a Big Society.

Unfortunately it was obviously not meant to be; I was stuck for 53 minutes just outside Clapham Junction and contemplating with fellow passengers a special sort of activism, which would have meant us disembarking en masse and trekking up the railway tracks to freedom. It was raining and we had one umbrella between us; obviously we decided against it.

So I missed all the excitement and have had to rely on podcasts, transcripts, tweets and blogs to understand what Dave’s Big Society actually means. Superficially anyway, elements of the oratory are radical... no, really they are.

If civil society for the Conservatives is really about galvanising, catalysing, prompting, encouraging and agitating for community engagement and social renewal, and about devolving power to communities and localities, then even if they are blue, where are my pompoms? I am a convinced cheerleader! (Dear God, my grandmother would turn in her grave).

OK, so elements are somewhat received. Social enterprise rocks...obviously. Not unexpectedly, it’s curtains for Futurebuilders with its budget going to help fund a social bank; yet in the brittle white heat of post-public spending round cuts, if Nick Hurd hands over up to £400 million of unclaimed assets and/or Futurebuilders' turnover to a Big Society Bank to strengthen neighbourhoods, then it would be a pleasant but colossal surprise.  

NCVO’s Big Society Day gets to perambulate, and the respectability of the state is bestowed. Brilliant if you believe promoting civil society is the work of government. Finally, for the most part, supercharities will get to deliver public services, further cementing their monopoly.

Beyond the received, what is making me all giddy is the potential, if truly devolved, of Cameron’s Little Platoons and more interestingly, but less reported, the fact that the Tories chose to launch their version of a Big Society at the public launch of the independent Big Society Network.

Cameron’s Little Platoon is 5,000 community organisers, tooled up, funded and trained to redistribute power back to localities by activating citizens to engage with their communities. These platoon leaders will work to establish neighbourhood groups, which will take control of decision-making, buy up community assets, hold local officials to account and attempt to tackle some of the most difficult social challenges our country is yet to meet.

Superficially, this could be Phillip Blond’s new third way. Perhaps it could glue us together, re-invent participation, re-engage the disenfranchised, ignored or just plain bored?  The devil of course will be in the detail. Can Cameron really compel Tory councils or superstar mayors to transfer power? As importantly, will the vested interests of the voluntary sector devolve power to their service users?  Or will this form of localism merely encourage the usual suspects to seize more cash, power and access?

Or could it be like the romantic vision of the Big Society Network, which has been set up by frustrated citizens for frustrated citizens? Its mission is a devolved coalition between citizens, government, the voluntary sector and business – so much more importantly, can a Big Society reconnect us with each other, our rights and our responsibilities?  

Can the power of collective action, of united citizen groups, wrestle the right to make decisions for themselves, their families, their neighbourhoods and their country from vested interest?  Is it that the age of “for the people, by the people” is upon us? If Dave’s vision of a Big Society is any of the above and he says it is, then it is indeed radical.

Finally it’s just struck me, I have just described a variant of socialism... That’s maybe something to contemplate.

New York's charitable spirit is the essence of localism

I am writing this whilst being buffeted by nauseating, bone-rattling, yet strangely exciting turbulence after only just escaping the British Airways strike, as I fly back from NYC...dahling!

To add to the adrenalin, I have just been surreptitiously passed four mini bottles of champagne by a BA captain, who is spending his day as a trolley dolly to help break the strike.  Cap’n David looks about 12, which initially was a little disconcerting, but after I've grilled him on the perils of in-flight emergencies, whether he feels like a “scab”, Alicia Keys’s Empire State of Mind and our mutual love of all things stateside, I’m feeling in sensible and confident hands, even if he is only serving me the most putrid-tasting Caeser salad.

Cap’n David especially loves New Yorkers, just as I do. In our experience, they are generous, witty, partisan, clever and of course ever so slightly brash. They love to talk, to gossip, disagree and deliberate. You can't walk down any street without overhearing a loud debate.

For New Yorkers, it’s all about connecting with each other, their sense of being part of an individual and proud community, and how they are different from other Americans. They still provide the world’s dreamers with a gateway to opportunity, a refuge from hate and the chance of a better life. It’s a city whose rhetoric, however trite, is built on identity, commune, inspiration and hope.

New York’s civil society, like its people, depends upon the belief that connections underpin giving, philanthropy, activism and volunteering. It promotes this view loudly. Everywhere you go - and on TV, in cinemas, in the press, online, even on giant hand-painted murals on street corners - civic responsibility is endorsed by relating it to an association between citizens. The emphasis is on building a relationship with those in need, protecting services from cuts and the idea of neighbourhood as extended family.

It's in stark contrast to how British charities seek to influence donors or activists. Our rhetoric focuses on crisis, emergency, impending tragedy or criticism of Government policy - or all of these together (and I include Beatbullying's rhetoric, and acknowledge this is broad brush). Our message, you could argue, is often static, even paternalistic.

Yet across the pond, New Yorkers' idea of charity is firmly - and of course brashly - about glueing citizens and activists together to make a difference through the power of like-minded people connected together.

For Alisha Keys’s New Yorkers, the private seems to be seamlessly related to the public, and civic connections the new frontier of the not-for-profit sector.  The big idea and the culture of charity is about individual and collective doing. It's not about being done to.

For a charity wonk like me, this Empire State of Mind is fascinating, and the quintessence of localism. Above all, its transferable and a reason, of course, why I must return to NYC as a matter of urgency, as further research is vital.

More importantly, I know this turbulence is now heart stopping, but why is Cap’n David leaping across his trolley to put his safety belt on? Excuse me...