Money (That's What I Want)
Hello hello!
Well, I haven’t written one of these for ages.
This newsletter is a bit different from the usual as it’s not really about technology – it’s about money, progressive culture, and social change. Specifically it’s about how difficult it is to do social-purpose work in the UK right now, and how that seems like terrible timing.
SETTING THE SCENE
I’ve been watching the celebrity football documentary Welcome to Wrexham over the last few weeks. One of the things I like about it are the bits where the actor and accidental football executive Humphrey Ker explains the mysteries of British culture for a US audience. In Series 2, Episode 5, an episode called “First Losers”, Ker sums up a very particular kind gloomy British fatalism, thus:
“It’s a very British mentality at times of: everything’s bad, don’t expect better for yourself, just get on with your life until you’re dead.”
Another “British mentality” is that most people don’t like to talk about money. Not having it is seen as a failure, asking for it is unimaginably crass. You’re just, somehow, supposed to have it.
Well, I want to depart from both of those norms. This newsletter is about money and the fact that it’s not just acceptable to expect better, it’s essential. If you find either of those things embarrassing, you should probably keep reading. And if that’s just too much, keep scrolling to the end instead as I’m going to leave you with a song.
NO GOOD SOIL FOR GREEN SHOOTS
The tl;dr of this newsletter is: It’s difficult to do social purpose work at the moment because many of the larger organisations that have money don’t want to spend it.
From the outside, many funders seem to be stuck in a continuous pattern of strategic review, while lots of bigger third-sector organisations appear to have switched to pre-election “wait and see” mode. It’s like everything has glitched and we’re waiting for someone to turn the county off and back on again.
This is really bad timing because a potential new Labour government could mark a swing towards renewal for the social sector.
This year should be one of pump priming and relationship building, a time of new beginnings and opportunities. The changes many of us want to see certainly won’t happen quickly, but if we don’t collectively make an effort to share ideas, tell stories, show what’s possible - well, they won’t happen at all. This is a good time to get ready, to rebuild networks and ideas, to make things happen and create the conditions needed for change.
This is doubly important because, in 2024, the best-resourced people, organisations and media outlets are in the centre and to the right of the political spectrum. After the election, those organisations are likely to continue to be the ones that set the stage on which everything plays out, but it doesn’t have to be that way; there is plenty of space for alternatives, and a vibrant progressive culture can and should fill that space with possibility.
But that can’t happen if there’s no money.
It’s hard to imagine a better future and build alternatives when you’re worrying about the bills.
Of course, every conversation about money needs to reference the volatility of the last few years and the fact that Liz Truss spaffed the UK economy, but it’s not just that. The risk appetite of those who do have cash to spend has almost totally receded; no one seems to want to plan ahead, take a bet on what might happen next, and few are brave enough to pre-emptively shape what comes next. Everyone with money seems to be waiting.
And when funders and big organisations start to wait, smaller organisations start to close.
In fact, social change organisations are already closing on a regular basis. The irony of this seems quite bitter – that many will have survived austerity, then Covid, only to get within touching distance of the end of the Conservative era before having to call it a day. Of course, few things can last forever, but there is too much politeness around money in the social sector – a fear of annoying possible funders, or of looking like you’ve failed when perhaps a funder has let you down. From conversations I’m having, it feels like we’ve collectively reached a pretty urgent financial impasse and if we don’t break it, many more organisations will find they have to close this year.
I won’t name any other names here, as they aren’t my stories to tell, but when I tweeted about this the other day I instantly received a dozen DMs from others saying it was the same. While I was writing this just now, someone messaged me to say that sharing experiences about lack of funding reduces the stigma. I don’t necessarily want to take one for the team here, but I’m too impatient for change not to mention a failing system when I see one hoving into view.
WHY IS MAY 2024 A PARTICULARLY BAD TIME NOT TO SPEND MONEY?
Usually, organisations like mine - who take on a mix of projects from the small (£15-30k) to the medium (£50-85k) to the large (£150k+) – would get a little financial bump in March and April. We’re just small enough to benefit from the flurry of year-end underspends, and big enough to take part in the proposals and procurement rounds that usually begin with the new financial year. By the end of April, any short- and medium-term gaps in the pipeline have usually been filled.
That hasn’t happened this year. And it’s not just us, everyone I speak with is experiencing the same thing.
Not only are new opportunities in short supply, but existing partners are also changing priorities. Last week a partnership we’d developed with a funder over several years was effectively ended because the new CEO (who we haven’t met) is just apparently not interested. Of course, one can never expect funding to arrive until the ink is dry, but nothing was telegraphed to us about this in the months we were working on the bid. And several people I’ve spoken with in the last week have shared similar experiences; months spent working on bids and proposals, huge amounts of time and good will expended, only for them to go nowhere at the last minute.
Meanwhile, as founders and senior teams in the sector, we can’t move for invitations to give free talks and contribute to strategic conversations. Lots of people are interested, but vanishingly few want to pay.
And this is particularly worrying in an election year.
Of course, no one knows when the election will be, but it seems highly likely that it will now be in October or November. This means that, as well as no Spring uplift, there won’t be an Autumn one. A mid-October election will mean September is taken up with the pre-election period, effectively extending the summer by six weeks. A mid-November election will mean that the usually busy period of October and November will be delayed until December, or perhaps even the New Year. Given the quiet start to the financial year, this means that – if risk appetites continue as they are now – small social-change organisations are looking at a positively chilly outlook until Q4, at least.
A FINANCIAL ECOSYSTEM
This system of interdependency is well established. Rather than large amounts of money moving in and out, the same money tends to move between different kinds of organisations. (There is probably a fancy economic term for this but, as you can see from my previous use of the term “spaffed”, I am not an economist.) The internal economy of the sector doesn’t just rely on funders making grants (which in turn relies on the performance of their funds and investments); it also relies on bigger social purpose organisations spending their money in ways that flow to others, through commissioning and procurement. This can be fairly frustrating and precarious, but everyone sort of knows how it works and makes the best of it.
To navigate this, I run two sister organisations (Careful Industries and Promising Trouble, collectively known as Careful Trouble) that have shared systems and staffing, one that can take grant and partnership funding, one that delivers paid services. This offers some resilience, and enables us to work across multiple sectors, which is important as UK funders are relatively tentative about investing in technology and related work. (I have a whole other post to write about how digital civil society work in the UK is almost bizarrely underfunded, and how some of the bigger, better funded organisations don’t circulate their wealth, but I won’t dwell on that now.) There is a huge amount of entrepreneurial thinking across the social sector, and I don’t want to give the impression I’m asking for handouts. If I’m asking for something, it’s that bigger organisations get a bit braver and acknowledge their responsibilities; that those who are in a position to “wait and see” understand the impact that will have.
It is in no one’s interest to get to January 2025 and find that the shrinking UK social sector has become so small as to vanish from view. If you’ve got a grant pot that you’ve been sitting on, a strategic review that hasn’t been signed off, a new project you’re too nervous to commission - stop waiting. Spend at least a bit of it now.
And if you need some inspiration …