Enduring Conversations in an (Un)Common Language

• In Event: Narrating and Naming the Voluntary Sector in the UK and US: Stories Across Time

Abstract

Throughout the post-war era in the US and UK various gatherings -- task forces, commissions, legislative inquiries, and public hearings -- have met to explore the roles of foundations, voluntary associations, and nonprofit organizations. By our count, on some three dozen occasions, groups have met to debate the sector’s purposes, issue research findings, and propose new policies. These moments of reflection have occurred under diverse auspices, both governmental and private. These formal gatherings were times for collective reflection, identifying and addressing issues of the day as well as revealing contemporary thoughts and theories about the voluntary sector’s roles in our two societies.
We begin our narrative with Beveridge’s Voluntary Action in the UK and the Gaither committee’s review for the Ford Foundation in the US. This was a moment when the US and UK could not be further apart. Britain was close to bankrupt and adjusting to its much diminished world role; voluntary organizations were coming to terms with the introduction of the much enlarged welfare state. The US by contrast was enjoying postwar prosperity and contemplating an expanded global role; Gaither’s task was to craft a program for what was soon to become the wealthiest foundation in the world, with resources vaster than those of the fledgling UN’s specialized agencies. Despite these enormous differences, Beveridge and Gaither shared similar concerns about the sector’s role in securing democracy at home and abroad.
In the decades since, many more groups have met. They are remembered now by the names of their chairmen or the conference venues -- Peterson, Filer, and two American Assemblies, among others in the US; Nathan, Goodman, Wolfenden, and Ditchley meetings, among others in the UK. We are exploring the forces that have driven these episodes of reflection and reassessment. What triggered the debates? Who took part in them and acquired legitimacy to voice their views. Who spoke for or criticized the sector? What role did internal and external crises play? How have conversations in the UK and US converged or diverged?
In examining these gatherings over the span of eighty-odd years, we ask how perceptions of the voluntary sector have changed, how its roles have been reshaped, how the boundaries have blurred and shifted between the voluntary sector, the marketplace, and government. We want to dig beneath the commonplace observations of the differences in scale and ideological divergence in the UK and US to trace the more subtle similarities and differences in the ways in which our sectors are narrated. Time and again at these gatherings, we see the participants puzzling over the paradoxes of the space occupied by private philanthropic money and voluntary action in a democratic society. Above all, we want to keep this theme in view: what place do private charitable organizations and voluntary initiatives play in our respective democracies?

Authors

• Diana Leat, Independent social researcher

• JAMES Allen SMITH, Robert Sterling Clark Foundation