20 predictions for the future – how might the charity world have changed in 20 years?

shiny futuristic pattern

20 predictions for the future – how might the charity world have changed in 20 years?

What will world the world look like for charities 20 years from now? Joe Saxton shares some of his predictions for how the third sector might grow and change - for better or for worse - in the years to come.
Joe Saxton
 

With 2020 just around the corner, I’ve been thinking - what will world the world look like for charities 20 years from now? This blog is a write-up of a presentation we did for some of our clients, pulling together our work with over 150 charities in the last decade, our regular surveys of the public, politicians, donors and journalists, and my intuition. It is a summary of my predictions from a longer report which you can find here.

Fundraising

  1. Farewell to direct debits. The challenges of GDPR and new fundraising regulations on donor recruitment mean that direct debits will be a shadow of their former status as a fundraising powerhouse.
     
  2. Tin-rattling, cheques, door-to-doors, and cash collections will be a thing of the past. As cash disappears, the whole idea of giving ‘loose change’ becomes meaningless, so any fundraising based on these mechanisms becomes redundant.
     
  3. Young people’s giving will be transactional and social. We are already seeing how young people’s giving methods are much more centred around social lives and social media. Expect this trend to grow.
     
  4. Lotteries, events and major donors will be thriving; lotteries because people like the idea of getting something back from their giving, events because of their appealing social and lifestyle elements, and major donors because of a predicted rise in those who want to give their wealth away before they die (baby boomers).
     
  5. We are currently in a legacy feast with a cohort of rich and idealistic baby boomers approaching retirement and old age. 20 years from now, the baby boomer legacy feast will nearly be over… and then legacy famine looms as the following generation, who are less likely to have houses or good pensions, reach old age.
     
  6. People hardly notice how fundraising for hospices, PTAs, lifeboats and more is now part of supporting ‘public’ services. Charity fundraising to complement public service provision will be increasingly mainstream, with the need to top-up the public purse taken for granted.
     
  7. Put all these trends together and the prediction is that non-legacy donations will have dropped by at least 50%, and fundraising costs are unlikely to have decreased proportionately.

Volunteering

  1. The numbers of older people volunteering will be in decline due to rising pension age and poorer pension provision. It’s the same pattern as the legacy boom followed by a decline.
     
  2. Volunteering will be an integral part of young people’s personal development. We’ve already seen a rise in youth volunteering since the millennium, reflecting a growing need to develop skills and experience for the world of work. I expect that trend to be integrated more closely into institutions and employment. ‘Workenteering’, I call it.
     
  3. Fundraising job roles differentiated well over 30 years ago and never looked back. However, most charities still just have a ‘Volunteer Manager’. In 20 years, the differentiation of paid volunteering supervisory roles will have followed the pattern set by fundraising.
     
  4. Volunteering will be increasingly focused around community and personal benefits – ‘selfish’ volunteering. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, since it makes volunteering much easier to manage and market.

Communications, campaigns and social media

  1. Campaigning is just another strategy for delivering the mission, and typically, a cost-effective way to do it. Twenty years from now, campaigning and social change action will be mainstream aspects of most charities’ and communities’ activities.
     
  2. Social media is already a key way that charities can punch above their weight to receive attention and reach new audiences. Moreover, they can use it to bypass an indifferent/hostile mainstream media. Expect social media to be a core activity (like accounts!)
     
  3. Our one size fits all legal definition of ‘charity’ is not helpful for charities or public perceptions of them. In twenty years, new legal forms will be found to reflect the diversity of the charity sector.
     
  4. Our research shows that cancer is consistently the public’s favourite cause. The work of charities to improve the survival rate of those with cancer is one of the great success stories of our time. The downside of this relative success, though, is that it may not retain its slot in public affection in the years to come. It remains to be seen what could take its place as the public’s favourite cause.

Governance and mission delivery

  1. Today, few (if any) charities recruit their CEO through a person saying ‘I know so-and-so, they would be good for the job’. In twenty years, they won’t recruit their trustees that way either. In other words, the quality of charity governance and trusteeship will be taken as seriously as the roles of CEOs.
     
  2. For the last few decades, the government has outsourced various services to companies (e.g. British Waterways becoming the Canal & River Trust). Increasingly, the government will use charities as a more acceptable face for privatisation; this means an increasing portion of charity activity will be devoted to delivering government services.

And some things never change

  1. Newspapers and the media will still love having a go at charities, often on the flimsiest of pretexts. It’s hard to see this changing. Sad really. Some good scrutiny based on a detailed understanding by journalists would be good, but that’s not what we get.
     
  2. The sector has never found a soundbite that really makes the public ‘get’ why CEOs need to be paid a decent salary. In twenty years, I expect the pay of charity CEOs will still be an issue.
     
  3. Charities will still be on the cusp of a digital revolution. Just around the corner. Coming soon. The shiny new app that will have everybody giving digitally. Sadly I (Joe Saxton, not all of us here at nfpSynergy!) don’t think so.

Do you think I'm wrong, and/or have I missed anything out? Let us know in the comments section below! And don't forget - you can read the full report of my predictions here.

 

Submitted by Roxanne Langlois (not verified) on 20 Dec 2019

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I was surprised to see no predictions on how the growth of social entrepreneurship and increasingly more active CSR would interact with the charity sector in the next two decades. As these movements evolve, I cannot help but imagine they will create both competition and innovative opportunities for collaboration.

Submitted by Karina Flatt (not verified) on 9 Jan 2020

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Thanks, Joe - this certainly got me thinking!

A deep-dive into the segmentation of younger people could uncover some nuggets of hope for the future in volunteering and fundraising, as well as campaigning. For example, working with Youth Forums and Young Trustees gives me hope. Success seems to contain a key ingredient: Empowerment. Can that be put into more fundraising and volunteering recipes? Could variants be developed to appeal to different segments? Can it be scaled up?

Outcomes-based approaches link Arts & Culture, Inclusion and Education charities to public services such as social services, health & well-being. There is complex web of multi-agency groups locally, regionally and nationally and it feels like they are constantly evolving. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the coming years, particularly regarding health & well-being.

Submitted by Andrew Heathman (not verified) on 23 Jan 2020

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I think charities, particularly small local neighbourhood charities, are quickly understanding that providing services/bidding for contracts for Government/local councils services is not a risk worth taking, and rightly so as full cost recovery is now a thing of the past.

Submitted by Frank Bennett (not verified) on 15 Apr 2020

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Joe, a very enjoyable read. I wonder how you might edit the points you make in wake of Covid-19? As a business that is dedicated to professionalise governance in the sector with the use of digital technology we see governance growing in importance. In the wake of Covid-19, some charities will run out of money, some will near exhaust their reserves (even with the support package of government) and many new governance lessons will be learned (how many charity boards have experience of coping in a crisis?). The UK charity sector has light touch regulatory reporting compared with other countries. The Rep of Ireland mandated governance effective 1 Jan 2020. The report of the DCMS committee following the hearing with the Charity Commission Chair and CEO may reveal a new chapter in regulation? In a harsh and competitive fundraising environment post Covid-19, we believe governance will come under greater scrutiny by donors as they themself are hard-pressed financially. That won't happen immediately as it will take time to get back to BAU. Agree with your point 16 and your reference to 'quality' of governance. Today 'quality' of governance is hard for a charity to demonstrate and benchmark. Digital technology solves that and will be one of many reasons to accelerate the use of digital in the sector.

Submitted by Charles Bagnall (not verified) on 18 Jun 2020

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Thought provoking as always Joe. A couple of things I take issue with - legacies - we made exactly the same prediction 25 years ago, but it still has not come to pass and subject to what happens with IHT, I can see legacies being a key source for many years. Cash - again we said this years ago too, but the CAF report on giving methods still shows cash at the top. As for the future, listening to the debates this week on the numbers of people disenfranchised by suppliers trying to go card only, I can see cash continuing. There is virtually no cash in Iceland already, but we are much bigger more complex economy.
Where you may have a point, and it is one that could mean major changes in CRM systems, is direct debits. But then again - regular income is so vital charities will always strive for it and I can't see a better method than DD to manage it. As for the magic app ... there are doubtless great innovations to come, and they will benefit their sponsoring charities, but will they increase overall levels of giving? Let's keep hoping.

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