Opinion: Are the big guns having all the fun?

By Nick Seddon, Third Sector, 30 April 2008

All the way back in 2005, back when Gordon Brown was still considered competent - more Stalin, less Mr Bean - and the Vicar of Albion was blithely flying around in Blair Force One, saving the entire world, there was a debate in the House of Lords about the bill that later became the Charities Act 2006. One of the speakers was the legendary Baron Dahrendorf, sometime director of the London School of Economics, who declared that "we are witnessing a split in the charity and voluntary sector".

That was then. This is now. Now we are witnessing an accelerating split - or splits: a split between charities that are involved in public service delivery and those that aren't; and between the big and the small. Most attempts to chart the dimensions of the sector arrive at a...