In what is going to be a pretty massive release, we have today uploaded the first two of sixteen reports from our Inquiry into the Future of Voluntary Services. The general background to our Inquiry is provided by Dexter Whitfield’s ‘The Ideological Context’, which sketches out how neo-liberal ideas have damaged public services and the welfare state, and the impact of these forces on the voluntary services sector. In the second paper ‘Ordinary Glory – Big Surprise not Big Society’, Mike Aiken shows that these influences reach right down into smaller charities and volunteer-based community groups. Both reports can be downloaded as PDFs:
The remainder of the reports will follow over the next few weeks and will examine, amongst other things, outsourcing to the voluntary sector, the impact of commissioning approaches, the rise of social enterprise and investment, how large and small voluntary groups are faring in the current environment and the failure of leadership amongst local and national groups purporting to represent the voluntary sector.