My Top Charity: Shelter

It all started with an attractive bearded man with a clipboard on London’s Regent Street one cold, dark November afternoon about five years ago. I normally make my excuses when I’m approached by charity fund-raisers on the street, but unlike a lot of  ‘chuggers’, he made a compelling case as to why I should give away my bank details there and then; among the heaving mass of shopping tourists. I hope he now works somewhere important in Shelter or another charity because my direct debit has been going out ever since. And quite unlike many other causes I’ve flirted with in the past, I have never wavered in my support.

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Eminently quotable...

...according to Third Sector magazine. This was picked up from my Guardian piece last week.

Does 'big society' spell the end of charity as we know it?

With charities providing more public services, some feel like small government departments.

When is a charity not a charity? We are seeing the end of the clear dividing line between what government does and what the voluntary sector does. The government at all levels has made it clear that it is uninterested in directly providing public services, leaving it to charities, social enterprises and ethical companies to battle it out. The Victorian notion of a charity – giving money, goods or time to others – is becoming unfamiliar to the British public in the age of the big society. Are we, therefore, seeing the end of charities as we've known them?

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