Selling Out? Voluntary Action and the Market

Abstract

The previous chapter reviewed the ways in which the policies, programmes and initiative of successive governments presented increasing challenges to the autonomy, identity and integrity of voluntary organisations and volunteering over the past 20 years. This chapter focuses attention on another powerful influence that has shaped the way in which the theory and practice of governing and managing voluntary sector organisations has developed over a similar period. It looks at the impact on the sector of the process through which, it seems, the culture and values of the market have pervaded every facet of contemporary society. In a way that would have been unthinkable 30 years ago and unusual ten years after that, the leaders and managers of voluntary organisations refer to them as ‘businesses’ and have developed ‘business plans’ which are based on securing greater ‘market share’ as they successfully pursue ‘customers’, who tend to be those who pay for the costs of the services or ‘products’ provided by the organisations rather than those who directly benefit from their activities. They have gone well beyond the commonsense aspiration to be ‘business-like’ as they go about their work and have become increasingly difficult to distinguish from the commercial enterprises whose forms and practices they have adopted.