Charity-world rag, Third Sector magazine, looked avoidably silly earlier this week, as it published two more-or-less contradictory stories slap-bang next to each other.

“More will cut out food than donations,” announced one headline. Cheering stuff for the nation’s fundraisers, then? Err, no. “[Charity] direct debit cancellations ‘skyrocketing’”, readers were informed, in the very next story.

Whoops. But this unfortunate juxtaposition demonstrates more than that TS’s legendary editor, Stephen Cook, is fallible. It also shows that, when it comes to charities and the recession, nobody really knows what’s going on.

On the one hand, a group of cheerleaders for the voluntary sector busily proclaims that, when times get tough, people think more about those in need, and how best to help them – meaning that giving goes up.

On the other hand, more depressive charity workers worry that, when we all come to think of how to cut back, that charity direct-debit is the easiest thing to live without.

Which of these views is true? The honest answer is that nobody knows. Some charities I’ve spoken to are having a near-impossible time raising funds as the economic climate turns from bad to worse. Others, though, report record-breaking fundraising receipts, and claim that the whole voluntary sector ought to be able to weather the storm.

Even after the recession is over, it’s likely that we won’t be able to tell how charities have fared. Data surrounding national giving habits is notoriously unreliable, and it’s impossible to work out how much charities receive in donations from their accounts.

How will the charity world cope with the recession? In all likelihood, we’ll never know.


 

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