Dancing to the funders' tune

Big funders favour big traditional charities ahead of disabled people’s organisations, says Andy Rickell

I was asked recently if major social funders are biased towards traditional disability charities and against radical organisations led by disabled people, DPOs. The general answer is yes, with bells on.

When I was CEO at what is now the UK Disabled People’s Council (UKDPC), there were three national funders that actively supported DPOs – the Big Lottery, Comic Relief and The Platinum Trust – essentially because they understood the importance of disability as a civil rights issue. Thank God for them!

The much bigger funding prizes come from central and local government, and via other funding schemes like Futurebuilders. These distributors of government funding ought to be keen to fund DPOs because DPOs have been and are leaders in the field of advancing disability equality, a stated Government goal. But DPOs report that they struggle to win funding, even obvious funding like for direct payments support schemes in their own local authorities. Why is this?

Well it’s because of what I call the “government funding dance” that all applicants for government funding must take part in. This “dance” involves masses of paperwork, proof of financial soundness, proof of effective delivery. This “dance” therefore massively favours the larger organisations who can employ the fundraising staff, who can show financial soundness because of their large size and reserves, and who have a long history – which traditional disability charities can demonstrate more easily than their newer and smaller DPO rivals. Worse, in this “dance” equality is proven by a wonderful “equal opportunities” or “user involvement” policy rather than the obviously tangible proof of a DPO clearly led by disabled people. Some of the worst disability organisations have the best policies!

It does not have to be like this. Often there are government rules which allow funders to proactively fund DPOs without having to go through this “dance”, but it requires real courage and insight from civil servants to push these initiatives, and their bosses should encourage this more.

Furthermore, DPOs do need to ensure they have sufficient business skills so they can make sound cases for public funding – civil servants do have an obligation to show public money is well-used. It follows that government has an obligation to pro-actively support the capacity building of DPOs so they can acquire these skills – Disability LIB and the Office for Disability Issues providing capacity building initiatives to User-led Organisations is a good example.

Additionally, traditional disability charities can choose to use their funding clout to support DPOs as allies rather than working against them – and the Disability LIB case where Scope supported the alliance led by DPOs to win £4.2 million is a good example.

Finally, there needs to be strong regional and national advocates of the key role DPOs can play. In my part of the world that means the development of the regional South West Disability Equality Network of DPOs, and nationally through umbrella organisations of DPOs like UKDPC and the National Centre for Independent Living (NCIL). Such organisations can
be DPOs’ trade organisations, pushing our trade of social change via campaigning and/or service delivery.