Yesterday our Trustee, Mary Russell, attended the Small Charity Week Policy Day Reception entitled The Future of International Aid: Will Small International Development Charities Survive?
This was an interesting and lively debate held at House of Lords.
Small charities working in international development are operating in a challenging environment and in the current economic climate their future can be questioned. One suggestion was that the future of such charities is through social enterprise.
Small charities are very good at capacity building in the areas in which they work, so the future could be ‘letting go’ of projects once their capacity has been strengthened so that such projects sustain themselves.
It was pointed out that small charities, however, often inspire donor trust as they have deeper and richer relationships with the people who donate and they have excellent links to civil society as they have local conversations.
Questions and comments from the floor after the debate included where does the private sector fit in to this debate? Also because philanthropy is changing to become more active, and with that small charities are demonstrating increasing innovation, is the real question ‘can large charities survive?’.
We were delighted to be invited to such an interesting event as part of Small Charity Week.
