Reports Reloaded: Civil Society in the Age of Coronavirus – A+B+C=D?

Published in 2019, following a spate of strategies and think pieces on the future of civil society (including the government’s Civil Society Strategy, and More, Better, Together by Centre of London), our ‘Review of Reviews’ explored the extent to which these shared a common narrative and challenged the nature of future funding. After the “triple whammy” of Austerity, Brexit and now Covid, John Griffiths, the author of ‘Review of Reviews,’ re-examines six of their original prescriptions for building a healthy civil society and considers how the prospect of greater Devolution is an opportunity to bind them together. The Reviews of 2019 may have failed to foresee the impact of a global pandemic, but much of their analyses has stood the test of time. 

This juxtaposition, referring to the perceived indeterminate impact of the Civil Rights Movement, seems apposite in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.  On the one hand, covid-19’s effect as an arch disruptor presented commentators with opportunities to rethink “the new normal.”[1]  On the other hand, historians who tend to take the long view, argue that the virus’s all-consuming nature distracts attention from pre-existing societal changes and injustices, of which inequality is the greatest, and which covid-19 has only exacerbated.

1. Appreciating the value of civil society  

Whilst it is notoriously difficult to measure, civil society’s contribution to the national economy based on its “gross value added” has been estimated at around £17bn (1 per cent of GDP).  A recent assessment by the former Chief Economist at the Bank of England, Andy Haldene, however, suggests the figure could be as much as £200 billion when you factor in volunteering, the fiscal benefits associated with charitable activity and the wider economic spill overs from the sector’s work.[2] On a per capita basis, this is equivalent to around £25 billion a year for London. The Government’s Civil Society Strategy (2018) called on the Office for National Statistics to agree a means of accurately measuring civil society activity and its value.  As Haldene and one of the Strategy’s principal authors are now at the heart of government, there is a chance that civil society’s contribution to national life may finally be recognised.[3] 

2. Sustaining funder collaboration  

The sudden onset and relentless pace of the pandemic have required agility and flexibility on the part of funders of civil society. London Funders was instrumental in shaping the London Community Response (LCR) which distributed over 3,400 grants with a value of £57.4m to civil society organisations responding to the covid crisis.  The LCR developed an appetite for greater funder collaboration which was already emerging pre covid.  The LCR is also a prime example of the shared aspirations of Civil Society Futures’ PACT principles, of Power, Accountability, Connection and Trust, in action. Maintaining such collaboration and lasting changes to funder practices, however, will not be straightforward. The proposed collaborative funding vehicle for the capital will need to balance tackling the immediate, critical needs of different communities, with the longer-term objective of funding civil society so that it has the capacity and resilience to sustain London’s Missions-based recovery. 

3. Investing in infrastructure (and civic strengths)

Civil society’s responses to the pandemic have also highlighted the value of local (and specialist) infrastructure in supporting front-line organisations. There is compelling anecdotal evidence that the London boroughs which had continued to invest in civil society infrastructure, despite a decade of austerity measures, were able to mobilise local responses to the pandemic more quickly and effectively.  Councils as different as Hounslow, Southwark and Kensington and Chelsea now share a goal of putting communities at the heart of plans to “build back better.”  A recently published Civic Strength Index for London which provides essential data to encourage an asset-based approach to “Building Strong Communities” rightly attaches considerable weighting to the value of “Public and Social Infrastructure.”[4]   

4. The importance of grants

Grants are back in fashion, both as an instrument of public policy and as the lifeblood of a healthy civil society. Even before the pandemic demonstrated how grant funding enabled London’s communities to respond to the crisis, The Civil Society Strategy of 2018 was referring to “Grants 2.0” as a tool for "building a future that works for everyone." Following two decades of contracting public services from civil society organisations and promoting different models of social investment, the Strategy acknowledged the need to "broaden the range of funding options for community initiatives . . . to reflect the fact that grants can combine flexibility with the accountability and performance rigour of a contract, and also bring ‘additionality’, such as philanthropic or in-kind investment."  The challenge to London’s funders and civil society organisations is how to maximise the impact and effectiveness of the hundreds of millions of grants which are made and received each year.[4]

5. The potential (and paradoxes) of a place-based approach   

The ongoing interest in place as a focus of policy making continues to bring both opportunities and threats to London’s civil society. A recent essay for London Funders on place-based funding cautioned how “London can feel less relevant to place-based discourse, and the concept of place can feel harder to use in the capital.”[5] Place-based giving certainly plays to the capital’s history and development as a unique collection of towns and villages, each with its own identity and different set of community assets. The latest data from London’s sixteen Place-based Giving Schemes shows how the pandemic boosted individual giving and corporate philanthropy, suggesting that people’s affinity with places was enhanced during lockdown.  At the same time, London is continuing to experience increasing privatisation of its public space which is anathema to the place-based policy drivers of inclusive growth, social regeneration and creating commonwealth. The Review of Reviews’ warning that “London’s phenomenal riches which underpin its predominance as a place . . . are also increasingly setting it apart from the rest of the UK” also seems prescient given that a corollary of the government’s flagship policy of “Levelling Up” could now be at the capital’s expense [6].

6. A role for responsible business 
 

The Review of Reviews highlighted the prominence given to business; the Civil Society Strategy contending that business is one of the five foundations of a modern civil society.  So what should we expect business to contribute to communities’ long-term recovery?  The pandemic is an opportunity to redefine local collaborations with employers, using levers of government, such as the revamped Social Value Act and the Good Work Standard, to reframe society’s ask of business. These could include opportunity guarantees, or community pay-back schemes in the form of place-based giving of time or resources. Just prior to the onset of the pandemic, Rocket Science worked with one of the capital’s leading Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) on its next 5-year strategy; its vision for London Bridge to be the capital’s most responsible business district, based on a programme of investment in the local community. This has only become more essential and timely given the effects locally of the last 2 years; it also offers a blueprint for the other 70-plus BIDs now criss-crossing the capital [8].

A+B+C = D for Devolution - an opportunity to put local communities at the heart of the recovery

Linking these six prescriptions for "building a future that works for everyone" is the prospect of further devolution – giving power to local communities as we recover from the pandemic. Covid has already delayed the long-awaited Recovery and Devolution White Paper, which has now been rolled into the Levelling Up White Paper due out in early 2022. That the architect of the 2018 Civil Society Strategy, Danny Kruger MP, is an adviser at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities offers hope that ideas originally set out in the Strategy, and which he explored further in his 2020 report Levelling up our Communities, will materialise.  Answering a wide-ranging brief from the Prime Minister, Kruger’s ideas can be summarised by one overarching recommendation that “government should do a deal with communities.”  He calls for a new “social covenant”; less transactional than a “social contract”, a covenant is defined as “the mutual commitment by citizens, civil society and the state, each to fulfil their discrete responsibilities and to work together for the common good.”  If this is indeed a feature of the Levelling Up White Paper, we may have covid-19 to thank for finally realising the notion that “people best placed to drive forward local and sustainable economies are those who live, work and do business there.”

 John Griffiths is a Founder and Director of Rocket Science UK Ltd and a Trustee of London Funders

[1] See Amol Rajan, Rethink: How we can make a better world, 2021; NESTA “There will be no back to normal” July 2020

[2] Undervalued and overlooked? The need for better understanding civil society’s contribution to the UK economy, Pro Bono Economics, May 2020;

[3] Andy Haldene, the new CEO of the RSA is currently on secondment as a senior adviser to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities.  See his Local Trust Community Power Lecture July 2021.  Haldene

has been joined at DLUHC by Danny Kruger MP whom the Prime Minister commissioned to rethink the role of civil society in enabling the country’s recovery from the pandemic. Levelling up our communities: proposals for a new social covenant (2020)

[4] Funded by the GLA, the Young Foundation produced A Civic Strength Index for London in October 2021 mapping civic strengths at a ward level according to a raft of different indicators under three primary domains: Relationships and Social Capital; Democratic Engagement, as well as Public and Social Infrastructure.

[5] Rocket Science’s recent review for the Greater London Authority estimates that grants to London’s civil society organisations from these “big six” funders alone (The GLA; National Lottery Community Foundation; City Bridge Trust; Trust for London; London Councils and London Community Foundation) amounted to £500m between 2018-21.

[6] What next for “place” in the capital’s funding landscape? An essay commissioned by London Funders, John Hitchin, Renaisi, September 2021

[7] https://www.onlondon.co.uk/london-the-levelling-down-monitor/

[8] See: Strange Bedfellows? BIDs and Civil Society on the potential of BIDs becoming part of London’s civil society infrastructure