Helen Macneil: this is definitely the toughest operating environment we’ve faced in 30 years

A key challenge facing all of us who support the third sector is how to support organisations to survive, let alone thrive. I’ve worked in leadership in the Scottish third sector for nearly 30 years, and this is definitely the toughest operating environment we’ve ever faced.

I find it very puzzling how little conversation and analysis there is about this issue, given how many organisations seem to be hanging on by their fingertips. Is it exhaustion or resignation, or amazing tenacity that leads staff and boards to suffer in silence, coping from month to month and year to year as best they can in the hope of surviving?

It’s not just an urban problem; when I compare notes with my Third Sector Interface (TSI) colleagues, I hear the same story across the country. Staff, boards and volunteers are under increasing pressure to achieve more with less – faced with standstill or reducing budgets, rising operating costs and increasing demand for their services as austerity continues to bite and public services in local communities reduce or disappear altogether.

TSIs like mine are noting increasing numbers of staff living in in-work poverty. We know many organisations – and this includes TSIs – have been unable to pay their staff cost-of-living rises for many years. Add to that the job insecurity that comes from perennial year to year funding awards, and mounting concerns about lack of access to funds to pay for training to maintain and develop the skills of staff. With such uncertainty, it’s little wonder it is becoming increasingly difficult to attract volunteers to serve on boards.

We are noting increasing numbers of staff living in in-work poverty. We know many organisations - including TSIs - have been unable to pay cost of living rises for many years.

Helen Macneil

There’s some irony in the fact that after years of campaigning, TSIs have had real success in improving understanding about the vital role community and voluntary organisations play in creating a more successful, fairer Scotland. Most local and national strategies published today at least identify the importance of supporting local community action, and acknowledge how vital our sector’s skills and knowledge are.

Unfortunately, little or no new funding seems to trickle down to the third sector to delivery these strategies, to allow local organisations and local TSIs to expand their services. Instead, many are growing weaker, and are losing capacity.

So, we have a real and in some cases existential problem, which we need to address upfront with urgency. It’s important that we neither sensationalise nor understate how difficult, potentially critical, the situation could become in some communities if we continue to lose grassroots local community and voluntary organisations.

Of course it’s not all doom and gloom; there are always new voluntary and community organisations forming to meet need. There is still a reservoir of skills and talent, commitment and ingenuity, energy and passion lying untapped within our communities.

But no-one knows better than TSI support service providers how much sadness and disillusionment there can be when lack of funding causes valuable services to cease and forces good-quality, effective organisation to close down altogether. We know how much harder and more costly it is to grow new organisations than it is to invest in properly resourcing already established, effective ones.

At last week’s TSI conference, TSIs formally requested that the Scottish Government and Cosla take the first steps in creating an important dialogue with TSIs to acknowledge the impact which funding insecurity and cuts is having, particularly on small local organisations, and to seek practical co-produced solutions which will quickly improve the situation.

We hope other infrastructure organisations will now join their voices to ours, and the whole of the third sector can work together collaboratively, in a wider campaign focused on early intervention and prevention. We need to direct much-needed investment over the longer term into hard-pressed communities to grow a whole new generation of community-based services, supported and co-ordinated through TSIs and other specialist third sector support agencies.

How much easier then would it be to answer a question about supporting the third sector to thrive…

Helen Macneil is chief executive of Glasgow Council for the Voluntary Sector.