Charity leadership and existential crisis

It’s no fun to think about the apocalypse, and even less fun to think about slow-moving threats to our civilisations. Countering both is nevertheless a key task, one that cannot forever be put off until tomorrow. It may sound a grand claim, but charities are absolutely at the forefront of unearthing and delivering solutions to these macro-scale events. For this reason, their leadership really needs to be the same calibre, their governance the same quality, as other sectors boast.

Take the old age crisis. In a few decades the ballooning size of the over-70 population will have changed the landscape of the state, with Britain, America, Japan and Germany especially affected. Pensions will not go far enough to cover the elderly’s living costs, let alone inflated health bills. To hope to maintain the standard of life to which Western citizens are accustomed, there need to be structural changes in the tax, welfare, community and health sectors. Public policy gurus are flummoxed.

Charity is already at the vanguard of innovation and best practice in the different aspects of responding to this challenge. Local or national, charities are exploring innovations promoting better care, whether that be social or residential. Charities provide important services for the elderly – medical help, mobility assistance, backing to personal independence, and a supportive community. They coordinate volunteers to aid those in trouble, help fight loneliness, and just bring a bit of human warmth.

Taking a wider view, our largest charities are crucial drivers of medical research and technological advancement, whether that be treatments, live-extension innovations or palliative breakthroughs. Charity funding is behind possible solutions to protracted problems including stem cells, genome mapping and nanotechnology.

There are further existential threats that come from antibiotics losing effectiveness. Scientists hope to find new powerful antibiotics in unexplored areas of the world such as rainforests, where biodiversity is robust: third sector activism and funding protects these areas, aids exploration, and seeks to conserve nature. A linked issue is food shortage: if pollinators like bees, bats and insects suffer catastrophic population decline through climate change, or global warming affects water and soil quality, human crops would fail. Conservation efforts to protect wildlife ecosystems and vulnerable areas across the world help stave off this possibility.

Society can also be imperilled by intercommunity violence, civil strife or terror. Work to help neighbours and those of different faiths and ethnicities live happily and cooperate is a central task of many UK charities.  Some of our most active voluntary bodies strive to help refugees and migrants fit in through language assistance, cultural integration and neighbourliness. This important work forms part of the bedrock for our cohesive British landscape.

It’s clear then that charities play imperative roles in acting to counter each of these major hazards, and lobbying states to take effective action against them, and leading the way in researching best practice. This underlines the need for excellent governance across the board. Voluntary sector leaders and those responsible for charities are not minor players, but chain links in society’s armour.

 We need them to be the best they can be.