ABSTRACT
Charities are set up by highly motivated citizens or groups of citizens, and they spring up organically. The regulation of charities in the UK has signalled an attempt to harness the power of citizens’ urge to philanthropy by nudging this gently towards generating genuine ‘public good.’ UK charities do everything from digging artesian wells in Afghanistan to providing food banks in Bolton. As charities have haemorrhaged cash, their response has been to cut back and buckle down, preserving essential existing services but delivering them online. Often charities seem to suffer from inertia, perhaps due to the lack of these ‘market pressures’, and to a combination of governance issues and funding challenges. A peculiar aspect of charity funding, and one which holds back a charity’s responsiveness, is what President Emerita of the Heron Foundation Clara Miller describes as “the looking glass world of nonprofit money”: the fact that there is a direct relationship between the funder and the person receiving support.
