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Your little, local charity that directly helps people in your community will lack the fundraising clout to make up for the shortfall in funds and will find itself struggling. In #mentalhealth this will be a disaster. People's needs won't go away even if cash does. https://twitter.com/patrickjbutler/status/1270406761841930240
There's not going to be any bugger to bail out the smaller charities (which are most charities) and then bang goes all of your lively social prescribing dreams, all of your noble 'the NHS will work with communities needs' pronouncements will be shouted across an empty carpark
Small mental heath charities have been sold a pup for last decade: become more commercial, diversify. But there still remain needs for which funds to meet them must come from somewhere. It feels like mutual aid and peer orgs are stepping up by accepting low to no funds available
It is ultimately hard to get any funds or resources to do mental heath stuff, and many of the sources leave small charities open to purer than thou accusations of taking money that erodes their independence. Meanwhile, the only holders of mental health knowledge are larger orgs
One thing that smaller charities can do, which larger orgs can't, is actually meet the needs directly of the people they care about. Not homogenise them, not pay lip service to diversity, but actually be what people need them to be. They're the lab from which larger orgs learn.
But smaller charities that focus on what people would call 'niche' also lack the large footprint for enough of the community to drop them money and for funders to help them grow. They live hand to mouth then are criticised for their lack of resilience and for meeting their aims
Wider charity discourse doesn't talk about smaller charities enough. Impact investing thinking looks at them, says 'start up dream not big enough'. Many of the industries that support charitable action are out of their reach financially. Small charities don't get a chance to grow
A lot of small charities that work in direct service delivery do it to help people that their local small 'p' political landscape doesn't think its important to help or support. People the local state won't or can't support or provide the means to have a nicer, better life.
Out in small charity land you have precarious organisations doing things that help people who are live precariously. That's a long way from the big corporate charities and very different. But because small charities are different from each other its not seen as an endemic problem
