Big Society: what does it all add up to?

By Simon Bottery, Director of Fundraising, Policy and Communications

I only narrowly passed my Maths GCSE but for some reason I think the Cameron concept of 'Big Society' is best framed as an equation:

Volunteers +Carers x (Third Sector + state - (inefficiency+bureaucracy)) = Big Society.

For the non-mathematicians (including me) this translates as:

Big Society is the combined activities of unpaid volunteers and carers, multiplied by the actions of government and the third sector, minus their inefficiencies and bureaucracy.

I think Cameron would definitely have the equation this way around, with the actions of volunteers and carers coming first and the role of the state and the formal third sector coming second. And I think he would see the main role of the formal third sector (the bit that gets paid to be here) as a multiplier (perhaps magnifier or even facilitator would be a better word) of volunteer and carer activities, rather than as a provider of fully paid-for, contracted services like the corporate sector.

I think he shares the view of much of middle England that there is a lot of inefficiency and bureaucracy in the state sector (and perhaps in the charity sector too. We wouldn’t seriously argue with this, would we? Would we?).

A critical issue might be whether he sees the government 'x' as a big multiplier or a small one. How much positive effect does government really have on the activities of volunteers and carers? Doubling their output? Trebling it? Increasing it by only a small percentage? Is it in fact more of a brake than a boost, detracting from their effort (volunteers + carers x third sector - state = big society).

We hope to do some work on what the Big Society might mean for older people in particular in the coming months and are looking for partners. If you’re interested, let me know.