FAITH, HOPE AND CHARITY By Rev’d Duncan Dormor, General Secretary, USPG
During the UK lockdown, patterns of giving to charities have changed radically. NHS- related charities have received a 2000% increase. There has been good news for food banks during this difficult time with a 3000% increase in donations. Other charities have suffered badly and estimates from the National Council of Voluntary Organisations suggest the sector will have lost £4.3 Billion in the first 12 weeks since lockdown began. The charity sector in the UK is vast and covers an extraordinary range of causes. Even in the early Victorian period, a commission identified 28,000 charities and the establishment of the Charity Commission in 1853 came from the need for oversight. Today’s charity sector is roughly twice the size of the agricultural sector. It is difficult to find a definition which comes close to capturing all that happens under the umbrella of ‘charity’. Its origins lie clearly with the Church and Christian ideas of mercy and almsgiving, but today, people simply think of charities as ‘doing good’. The oldest charity in the UK, is a school - The King’s School, Canterbury - founded in 597AD by the Archbishop, St Augustine. Education and health have been the focus of significant charitable activity down the centuries and context matters: Whilst both are schools, the King’s School of Anglo-Saxon Britain and (say) modern-day Eton are quite different propositions as charitable enterprises.
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