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Participation and the Voluntary Sector: The Independent Contribution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

Andrew Rowe
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Abstract

This article is an attempt to create a general theoretical model or ‘scale’ for categorizing voluntary organizations chiefly concerned with social service provision. Consumer participation, which the author believes has positive and particular advantages in voluntary organizations, is taken as one element in the categorization. He discusses what participation may or should mean, and the reasons why it is so rarely found. Where it exists it tends to involve the participation of staff rather than ‘clients’, which may result in more discussion than action. The article also discusses how an organization's position on the ‘scale’ can change. Voluntary organizations which start out as small, highly-participating, self-help organizations tend to become more elitist and altruistic with success and growth. The author suggests that organizations with a higher degree of consumer participation may be more responsive to social change and its consequences, more flexible and even more cost-effective than more traditionally organized institutions and may also be better able to take advantage of the independence afforded only to voluntary organizations in an increasingly state-dominated society.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , January 1978 , pp. 41 - 56
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

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References

1 The Times, 11 August 1976, p. 12.Google Scholar

2 Beveridge, Lord, Voluntary Action, Allen and Unwin, London, 1949.Google Scholar

2 Established with a small independent budget in 1972 to assist voluntary organizations to approach the government and to watch over the interests of the voluntary sector as a whole. See Jones, K. and Baldwin, S. (eds), The Year Book of Social Policy in Britain 1975, Routledge and Kegan Paul, Henley, 1976.Google Scholar

4 Beveridge, op. cit. p. 55

5 Clarke, Raymond and Davies, Richard, A Chance to Share, PEP, London, 1975.Google Scholar

6 Whitaker, Ben, The Foundations, Eyre Methuen, London, 1974, p. 91.Google Scholar

7 Ibid.

8 Des Wilson, quoted in Nightingale, B., Charities, Allen Lane, London, 1973, p. 357.Google Scholar

9 Professor of Social Administration, University of Loughborough.