Developing Charity: Building understanding between the Social Policy and International Development sectors

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Charities play a key role in society: they provide basic services, advocate for needs, provide access to the arts, and often engage in high-level policy debate. Questions around charity and philanthropic activity, however, abound. Should charities play a role in the provision of basic services? What does this mean for concerns around equality? How can we balance a wish for pluralism with the need to ensure equitable access to services? Many of these questions are particularly pressing, and particularly complex, for international development charities. Therefore, a substantial body of literature has been written within International Development Studies that considers the role of international development charities. A similar body of knowledge has been developed within Social Policy considering the work, place, and function, of the broader range of voluntary sector organisations. My PhD research drew on the theoretical and practical literature from both these disciplines to consider the role - the functions, activities, character, and identities - of English and Welsh international development charities. This PhD also highlighted the substantial potential for increasing understanding of voluntary sector organisations by integrating theoretical and empirical learning from both Social Policy and Development Studies. As yet, however, these disciplines are often somewhat siloed. INGOs themselves are often conceptualised - within academia, policy, and practitioner circles - as separate to charities within the broader UK voluntary sector. This limits our understanding of both INGOs and the wider group of voluntary sector organisations. The aim of this 12-month fellowship is to develop my academic research profile, through the implementation of a high-impact project designed to build understanding between the Social Policy and International Development sectors. The planned programme of activities includes the publication of three journal articles and three practitioner-focused blog-type posts, as well as presenting at at least two academic conferences and engagement with charity organisations and networks. Additional research will enable me to document the crossover and gaps between the Social Policy and International Development literatures, while a final project event - with a wide audience of 40-50 attendees - aims to bring academics and practitioners from both sectors together to discuss cross-learning, initiate potential research collaborations, and develop new research networks.