{"id":267,"date":"2012-03-29T11:43:19","date_gmt":"2012-03-29T10:43:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/philanthropy\/?p=267"},"modified":"2012-03-29T20:57:43","modified_gmt":"2012-03-29T19:57:43","slug":"7-days-is-a-long-time-in-philanthropy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/philanthropy\/2012\/03\/29\/7-days-is-a-long-time-in-philanthropy\/","title":{"rendered":"7 days is a long time in philanthropy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just over a week ago, I was relaxing after giving one of the final lectures on my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/courses\/modulecatalogue\/modules\/SO839\">&#8216;Fundraising and Philanthropy&#8217; course<\/a>, anticipating the chance to get out and enjoy the sunny weather. Readers, I was wrong. That afternoon, George Osborne gave his Budget and dropped the bombshell of a new cap on all personal tax reliefs.<\/p>\n<p>If the sun has shone since that fateful day, I would&#8217;t know about it (though I haven&#8217;t put in nearly as many hours as the heroic Karl Wilding at NCVO who launched the <a href=\"http:\/\/giveitbackgeorge.org\/\">GiveItBackGeorge campaign<\/a> before Osborne had sat down).<\/p>\n<p>Unlike colleagues who immediately understood this was madness and all efforts had to be immediately activated to stop it, I originally thought it was just a mistake. Given the iron core of pro-philanthropy sentiment running through this government, they couldn&#8217;t possibly mean to include charity reliefs in the cap, and as soon as they realised their mistake they&#8217;d issue a clarification and we could all go back to sunbathing. Reader, I was very wrong again.<\/p>\n<p>When <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thirdsector.co.uk\/bulletin\/third_sector_daily_bulletin\/article\/1123658\/hmrc-will-meet-charities-discuss-tax-relief-caps\/?DCMP=EMC-CONThirdSectorDaily\">Third Sector magazine reported<\/a>\u00a0HMRC had confirmed they did indeed mean to include charity reliefs, my heart sank even further and I realised the extent of the battle now being faced by everyone who cares about promoting a philanthropic culture in this country.<\/p>\n<p>For now, the focus is on doing the maths and explaining the complex issue of tax reliefs in as simple a way as possible, to prove that this cap will hurt charities and their beneficiaries. Everybody&#8217;s brain is aching &#8211; mine more than most as I don&#8217;t count numeracy amongst my limited range of skills. So three cheers for Rhodri Davies of the Charities Aid Foundation, who has written this\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/giving-thought.tumblr.com\/post\/20110289856\/to-cap-it-all-some-further-thoughts-on-the-new-budget\">superb blog<\/a>\u00a0containing worked-out examples of the impact of the Budget measures on giving. I can&#8217;t recommend it highly enough.<\/p>\n<p>For those of us who are tired, innumerate and still reeling with disbelief, there is something we can do that doesn&#8217;t involve being as clever as Rhodri or as irrepressible as Karl: Click onto <a href=\"http:\/\/giveitbackgeorge.org\/back-the-campaign\/\">this page right now<\/a> and back the <a href=\"http:\/\/giveitbackgeorge.org\/\">GiveItBackGeorge campaign<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just over a week ago, I was relaxing after giving one of the final lectures on my &#8216;Fundraising and Philanthropy&#8217; course, anticipating the chance to &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/philanthropy\/2012\/03\/29\/7-days-is-a-long-time-in-philanthropy\/\">Read&nbsp;more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1193,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[79],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/philanthropy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/philanthropy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/philanthropy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/philanthropy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1193"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/philanthropy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/philanthropy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":271,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/philanthropy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions\/271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/philanthropy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/philanthropy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/philanthropy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}