Burne calls for more anger and protest at Lottery 'theft'
Howard Lake | 1 April 2007 | News
The charity sector has not protested loudly enough about the recent double whammy that will see hundreds of millions of pounds lost, according to Simon Burne of THINK Consulting Solutions.
In his latest UK Fundraising blog, Simon Burne describes the future loss of Gift Aid (as a result of the reduction in basic rate income tax announced in the Budget) and the diversion of Lottery funds to underwite the 2012 Olympics as a “theft on the charitable sector of hundreds of millions of pounds”.
But he asks why there has been so little protest. “Where’s the anger; where’s the fury? Who in our sector is beating down the doors of government and the media demanding justice?” Burne asks.
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He says what little media coverage there has been has amounted to “no more than a whimper”.
Burne told UK Fundraising that as a sector, “we seem to be outraged by affronts to our causes – be that animal abuse or human rights – and quite rightly so.”
But he added that chief executives were “not geared up to the same extent to be outraged by a threat to their own life-blood. And yet, without growing fundraising income, most charities will struggle to be heard effectively when delivering their cause.
We fundraisers are at fault for not spending the time to educate our CEOs and trustees about the importance of fundraising and its vulnerability to threats.
“And as a sector, we need to target CEOs and trustees more than we do to get their anger juices flowing more freely when needed.”
www.thinkcs.org
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.