Are we really the voluntary sector anymore?

For as long as I can remember, charities have worried about what to call our sector. Over the years, I have seen all sorts of variants. Here are some and their flaws:

·      Charity sector – but misses out non-profits that aren’t charities

·      Third Sector – why have we relegated ourselves to third

·      Social Sector – doesn’t really include large chunks of charities

·      Civil Society – hard to add a ‘sector’ to that, without getting tongue-tied

·      Voluntary Sector – there is less and less ‘voluntary’ about charities

·      Non-profit or not-for-profit sector – suffers from defining us by a negative

·      NGO sector – never been clear how a charity differs from an NGO

·      VCSE (voluntary, community and social enterprise) – if we end up as initials, that isn’t good

·      Community sector – hard to describe many (large) charities as being anything to do with community

There are probably a bunch of other names I have forgotten. Looking at this list, all but the first description – the Charity Sector – are pretty introspective. Few members of the public are going to say they love donating to their VCSE!

As an aside, I am puzzled by the continued attachment to the use of the term ‘voluntary’. In a sector with hundreds of thousands of paid employees, for me, the term ‘voluntary’ feels like a hark back to earlier times. In many charities and non-profits, the only ‘voluntary’ people are the trustees. The unsuitability of the term voluntary is compounded by its two different but overlapping meanings: doing something without pay and doing something without compulsion. A typical volunteer is both those things, but a soldier who ‘volunteers’ for a dangerous mission is the latter meaning, not the former, as is a refugee who does volunteering to help secure citizenship.

The issue of the sector’s name matters because what we call ourselves is part of our brand. Our brand is part of the way we engage with the public. Individual charities understandably spend a lot of time, energy and money getting their brand right; we spend far less time collectively working on our sector’s brand. That is a mistake – how the outside world sees us influences what they think about us. The right sector name should do a job: this could be that people see our sector the way we want to be seen. We do what it says on the can – the Ronseal test from the 90s ad.  How many people know what a ‘civil society’ is, or does? How many really want to give to an ‘NGO’?

The other role of a brand is to help people see what our aspirations are. Cancer Research UK’s ‘Together we will beat cancer’ gives people an idea of what CRUK is trying to do. The same is true of Oxfam’s line ‘we won’t live with poverty’, though I am not sure they still use it.  What would a strapline for our sector be that inspires and motivates, that defines our work and illuminates our approach?

If I were going to pick an entirely new name for the sector, I think it would be ‘The Inspiration Sector’. It’s a name designed to give people an idea of what we hope to do for people. Inspire them to volunteer, to give, or to be part of a community, to make a difference and to change the world. I am sure there are lots of other possible names. The key point of this debate about the sector’s name is that we should see our name as a part of our way to influence the world and our overall brand, and not just an attempt to categorise those organisations included in our work.