States needs to open the doors to charity

There has been talk for some time about the need for government to be commissioning projects rather than attempting to deliver everything itself.

But that talk needs to very quickly become a reality.

This week a joint response to Revive and Thrive by the Guernsey Community Foundation and Lloyds Bank Foundation Channel Islands exposed the fact that there is still a long way to go.

There are organisations in the Bailiwick looking on and wanting to help but not able to even make a pitch.

They could be delivering more-effective services for less, but have no way of breaking through the barriers in place to do so.

The foundations were also damning of the outsourcing processes in place, saying that efforts to outsource are ‘infrequent, inconsistent and opaque’. That should ring alarm bells, because it paints a very different picture to what the States would want the public to believe.

The impression given is that the States does not trust others to do work it has traditionally done itself, or to deliver fresh and innovative projects.

Whether that is because of protectionism or professional jealously, it needs to be overcome.

Both the foundations are willing to provide initial funding for projects if the States is willing to pick the funding up if they prove successful. That is an offer that should be explored because it would save the waste of public money in the early riskier stages.

The third sector needs to certainty of longer term financial support, too, to be able to work effectively.

The Social Investment Fund has been established by this States, but it is very early days and the financing is still very much in its infancy.

Guernsey has a strong charitable sector, it is full of opportunity and the pandemic response should be the springboard to a collaborative approach that goes much further than the kind words and photo opportunities we have seen in the past.