Making Donations
Donations of money, materials, expertise and manpower from private individuals and organisations have always been a key element of how charities operate. In the modern western world, many companies or wealthy individuals have a set amount of revenue allocated to various charitable organisations each year, allowing those charities to enjoy the benefits of long term financial security, vastly increasing their effectiveness through being able to plan for the long term. This means that some charities are almost run as subsidiaries of larger private companies, and removes somewhat their requirement to apply for and collect donations.
However, there are still a large amount of charitable organisations that rely on raising all of their funding through donations. This is because they either have no permanent funding stream, or they are simply tasked with the raising of funds for a one off event or benefit each year. Some charities are set up purely to raise money for a single issue, such as money for a defence lawyer or to pay for an operation, and so in these cases their whole raison d’être would be the actual raising of funds through donations rather than the providing of a particular service.
Fortunately, the communication age has been kind to charities by the ease at which they can now get their pitch across to the general public. Never has it been easier for them to plaster high impact images and statistics of the people, animals or issues they support across the large range of media devices people use on a daily basis. The internet and mobile phone network has also made it incredibly easy for people to donate a few quid here and there without leaving their seat or even having any spare change on them.
Healthcare
As an industry, healthcare has expanded at an incredible rate in the past hundred years, though many people argue that in England healthcare reached a turning point at the invention and application of the National Health Service, or NHS. The NHS seeks to provide free healthcare for all the citizens of England, and is partly tax funded and partly government funded. As such, governments can decide to change the NHS at any time, as well as the level of healthcare that patients might receive.
Healthcare does not have to be a free institution, but this is generally the preferred method, as it stops private companies from charging what they like for treatments. It also means that you can try to standardise the healthcare that is being given, which is a positive idea, as then you can have an idea of the kind and level of treatment you will get.
Problems have arisen in the past regarding the privatisation of healthcare, and are still here to this day. In a lot of countries, people have to pay for their own healthcare, and people make sure they have healthcare savings stashed away, just in case, rather similar to making financial preparations for your son to go to university, or when you are saving up for a car. Some people say that healthcare should not be dependent on how much money you have, as often the people that need treatment most would never be able to afford it.
Volunteering
Volunteering is one of the best ways to get good quality work experience in a recession such as the one we have just pulled ourselves out of. When times are hard, employers are hesitant to employ people that do not have exactly the right type and amount of work experience behind them. As such, it can be difficult for someone who is trying to find a job to get the experience to even have a chance of getting one.
This can be especially true for students who have just left university. Often their timetables mean that they cannot work a full time job, or even a part time job at times, and so gaining experience in the workplace can be difficult if you attend or have just finished university. Volunteering fills the gap left by unavailable or unattainable jobs, and is often seen more favourably due to the levels of commitment, altruism and dedication needed for a successful volunteer program to go through.
You can volunteer at all sorts of different places. Most businesses, shops, shelters and companies will be able to offer a volunteer some worthwhile work, but you must be clear about what you want to get out of it. Gaining experience in a field that is irrelevant to what you want to do is arguably a waste of time, so it is more useful for you to take that into account when you are looking at volunteering.
Charity
For the whole of the post war period there has been a long running debate over the role of the state in society and what level of support and/or intervention it should offer. In the Soviet bloc countries you could argue that their incredibly pervasive level of state influence was dictated to the people rather than invited, but in the Western World the people have in variously voted for more or less state control, or bigger or smaller government, dependant on how shoddy a job the previous system did. This has meant that at times there has been more public money to support the vulnerable and needy than at others, which is why charities play such an important role in modern society.
Although many charities do rely on some government funding to provide their services, the vast majority of them are set up to exist without this public money and are able to absorb and adapt to any changing of financing from the public sector. Some may have to scale back services considerably, but they cannot be forced to close by the government as they are not their sole revenue stream.
This flexibility allows charities to maintain a level of continuity in their work regardless of the philanthropic wishes or abilities of the current government, something which is vital in almost all areas of community based charity work. Charities are also allowed to tout for financial, material and manpower support from the general public, something which government agencies cannot.