All Power to the People: Paper Covenants and False Gods

Civil society must face the people again. Not as service users, but as citizens. Not as data points, but as co-authors of justice. Not as clients, but as co-creators of power.

Yet the new Civil Society Covenant points us in the opposite direction. Cloaked in warm language—affirming, partnering, reimagining—the Covenant quietly recasts civil society’s role: not to build civic power, but to serve and stabilise a system in retreat. There are no terms for government, no accountability, no consequence—just more demands on charities to prove themselves worthy, collaborative, and compliant, while the state asks less of itself than ever.

The Problem of Direction

The problem is not that the sector should never collaborate with the state. It’s about who we turn to face—and where our accountability lies. Too much of our sector is now oriented toward government, not the public. The result is a sector re-scripted to serve the machinery of the state, rather than to hold it to account.

This posture is not new. Scholars like Ruth Levitas (1998), Janet Newman (2001), and Colin Crouch (2004) have traced how successive governments—particularly since the 1980s—have recast the voluntary sector through the twin lenses of market logic and public management. Charities became subcontractors.

This continues. As NCVO’s Almanac (2024) data shows, around 26% of the sector’s income now comes from government—a slight drop from 30% in the heady days of 2020/21. If that figure edges up by 2% next year, we’ll no doubt congratulate ourselves, telling each other that government is listening. This underlines a persistent falsehood in the sector: that securing more money from the state is evidence of our influence—proof that we are “impacting government.” In truth, it can mark the opposite: an ever-deepening dependence on state priorities, not our ability to shape them.

The False Idol of Impact Measurement

David Holdsworth’s recent speeches as Charity Commission CEO add another layer. He rightly celebrates the sector’s achievements but once again calls for civil society to “crack impact reporting.” This framing misdiagnoses the real deficit.

The sector knows how to demonstrate impact to the communities it serves. It is government—and the wider ecosystem of institutional funders—that has failed to listen. The burden of proof is placed on those delivering the work, not on those failing to create the conditions for its success. The most valuable metrics are not invented in Whitehall. They emerge from those closest to people. What matters most—what people are facing, feeling, and fighting for—is best understood by organisations rooted in their communities.

This obsession with impact reporting is not harmless. As Eikenberry and Kluver (2004) warned, this replaces values with value. We optimise for what can be counted—not for what transforms lives.

Growth as a Symptom, Not a Success

The way we talk about “growth” is equally problematic. When charity incomes rise, it’s often because conditions are worsening—more poverty, more homelessness, more hunger. Yet the sector is congratulated for “scaling up” or being “resilient” as the state retreats. The Charity Commission CEO also said recently, “There is no greater charity sector in the world than here.” I’m not sure this is a good thing.

The irony is this: a truly thriving society would not need a sector of this size and shape. The proliferation of charities in the UK—especially those devoted to basic needs like food, shelter, or crisis relief—is not a testament to our virtue, but a symptom of the state’s failure to guarantee these rights for all. Every food bank, homelessness charity, and mental health helpline stands as a living monument to the gaps our democracy has chosen not to fill.
Yet the sector’s richness is about more than filling gaps. At its best, it is a source of belonging, cultural innovation, and democratic participation—roles the state can never fully absorb.

There’s a proud tradition of partnership: from founding the NHS to pioneering social housing and public health. However, the balance of power has shifted. Charities are now conscripted to deliver what was once a right, not a benevolence; pluralism and innovation are too often redirected to patch up state failure, rather than deepen democracy itself.

A vibrant civil society should expand rights, amplify voices, build solidarity, and foster social connection—not simply provide a safety net for unmet basic needs. Our aspiration must be a sector liberated to drive social imagination, co-create solutions, and hold the state and market to account—not one forced to ‘grow’ as the welfare state is trimmed ever leaner.

Collaboration as Compliance

The Covenant frames collaboration as a virtue. For the avoidance of doubt, collaboration without power-sharing is co-option. True collaboration in the sector should mean inhabiting power together, with the public we serve—not just being awarded more contracts or mirroring government priorities in our rhetoric.
Too often, charities succeed by learning the language of government. They become partners delivering against contracts, securing multi-year funding, hitting KPIs. The reward is survival, paid for almost always with agility, and far too often, autonomy. While a handful of charities may gain stability, many others are left behind.

On Covenant

The symbolism matters, too. In scripture, a covenant is handed down by God—obedience in return for blessing. Moses returns from the mountain having communed with the Divine. The people are now bound by sacred instruction.

Let’s be clear. The Government is not God, and the Charity Commission is not Moses. Yet, many of us as leaders risk seeing ourselves as a “chosen people” by embracing a narrative that falsely claims to close the power gap between state and public. We don’t need a covenant handed down from on high. We need a new civic realism, rooted in strength and inhabiting power with, not just on behalf of, the public. 
There is a narrative that is being perpetuated. It claims that charity sector must work harder to build trust. This treats mistrust as a communications problem and not a structural one. It places the burden on charities to perform credibility. Trust is framed as something the sector must win from the public, not something built together by sharing control. It fails to engage with this premise.

The real issue is this: the public hasn’t lost trust because the sector is too radical or messy. Mistrust has grown as the sector has been pulled closer to state priorities and market logics. Many charities no longer fight for people—they report on them. We mirror the bureaucracy from which people already feel alienated.

If civil society has a calling, it’s not to recite policy promises or prove our worth to authority, but to build honest, accountable relationships with the people we serve. The future we need will be shaped, as ever, by the depth of those relationships—by trust, by presence, by shared endeavour and ultimately shared hope.