The community, voluntary, and social enterprise (CVSE) sector supports and advocates for communities, delivering essential services across Ireland.  With the Government set to develop a successor to its current strategy for the sector – Sustainable, Inclusive and Empowered Communities – it’s timely to identify a few core objectives for inclusion.

Thousands of non-profit organisations play a crucial role in delivering health, social, community, family, therapeutic, educational, independent-living, and countless other supports.  Many receive no funding at all from the state, but those that do are generally funded by agencies like the HSE, Tusla, ETBs, and Pobal, amongst others. Most CVSE organisations are insecure and under-funded for their work.  They cannot recruit and retain adequate staff numbers because they cannot offer the same pay, terms and conditions as the statutory counterparts they work with. Crucially, it is the people who need their services that suffer from the resulting lack of services. It is time to end the era of core health and social services being delivered on a shoestring.  If we aspire to be the best place to live in Europe at all stages of the lifecycle, then we must put our health, social, education, and community services on a sustainable footing.

We need to identify the CVSE organisations that provide essential services and fund them at a rate that enables them to recruit and retain skilled staff. If we fund them adequately, we will have world-class services located close to the people and communities that need them. The best of both worlds – securely funded and locally responsive. But adequate amounts of funding are only one part of what’s needed.  How the money is allocated and delivered is also key.  Currently, a paltry 15% of public-funded community and voluntary organisations know whether they will receive public funding next year.  That makes planning ahead almost impossible for the remaining 85% of publicly-funded organisations.  The CVSE sector needs multi-annual funding (3-years) to deliver resilient and sustainable programs.

I understand, from my years working in the sector, that the Department of Finance avoids the principle of multi-annual funding, because it reduces government discretion about future arising funding priorities. But essential services should not be regarded as discretionary. This policy cascades downwards to all departments and agencies and results in a general avoidance of multi-annual funding, leading to the hand-to-mouth existence experienced by most CVSEs. It is time for the Department of Finance to revise its approach to multi-annual funding, making three-year arrangements with regular reviews the standard across all departments and agencies. Then CVSE organisations will be able to plan ahead – and begin to play a fully integrated part in our national health, social and community infrastructure, collaborating as respected partners with the statutory agencies and departments that fund them, and with which they lead in developing relevant policy and practice.

To support the vital advocacy and policy development work carried out by CVSEs, the Government must ensure that the sector is adequately resourced to participate meaningfully in policymaking. It is equally important to embed CVSE involvement at all stages of both local and national policy processes. Existing initiatives such as the Department of Health’s Health Dialogue Forum and the Department of Rural and Community Development’s Cross-Sectoral and Philanthropy Forums offer strong models for how this engagement can be structured.

Governance is in the Public and the Sector’s Best Interests

Despite Governance being a well-covered media hot topic, only about 75% of registered charities are making the required annual return to the Charities Regulator.  This is a serious and unacceptable situation, which the sector and the regulator will have to solve together.  Failing to do so runs the risk of the regulatory regime falling into disrepute.

That said, we cannot have a heavy-handed, draconian response that shuts down 25% of our charities.   Rather, we need to help charities to comply and find out the reasons for the low compliance rates, especially amongst smaller charities. A likely solution is the combination of streamlining and simplifying compliance processes for smaller charities, providing more practical support and awareness-raising for small charity trustees.  Getting tough on habitual non-compliers should also be considered.

There are many more important objectives that should be set in the new strategy for the sector.  We need to see commitments to lower the costs of insurance premiums, commitments to ensure that all the supports that are available to commercial enterprises are also available to social enterprises, and commitments to deepen support and resourcing for developing the community and voluntary sector labour force. Sector representative bodies like The Wheel, CII, and SERI should work to ensure that the strategy is comprehensive and ambitious, and implemented. Viewing the comprehensive policy recommendations on their websites is highly recommended.

If you have any thoughts on the above, would like to discuss the stakeholder consultation, or explore making a submission, please don’t hesitate to contact me at ivan.cooper@2into3.ie