An amusing little tale from the third sector as we're supposed to call these things these days:

The charity she founded, which specialises in therapeutic support for severely abused and traumatised children, is likely to halve in size, making £14m of cuts and sacking hundreds of staff in an attempt to survive a serious financial crisis. On Thursday night, she said: “Some ugly games are being played. The facts are that the vulnerable children of this country remain largely unprotected. There’s no point in shooting the messenger if the message is uncomfortable. I am being silenced.” Kids Company predicted that the proposed restructuring, which it said was triggered after the government signalled that it was to end £5m annual funding, will leave thousands of vulnerable youngsters without support.

That's umm, interesting, isn't it? A £5 million grant cut leads to a £14 million crisis? We can't help but feel that there's a little more, possibly even £9 million more, going on here that just the grant cut.

However, where the plot really seems to get lost is here:

Batmanghelidjh warned that without a regular source of state funding, Kids Company would be reliant on fundraising: “We are doing the most serious work [funded] by cupcake sales and cocktail parties, and I don’t think that is right or sustainable.” As a result, the charity

Err, yes, that's what charity means. Over here we have a series of things that both must be done and can only be done by government. It is righteous and just that the populace of the country chip in, perhaps in some portion related to their means, to pay for these things through taxation.

Then there's another group of things over here. Which some to many of said populace would like to see done. Which require perhaps coordinated and collective action. But which do not require the power of government to achieve. And there's many ways of organising those things. Corporations do some of them, mutuals others, charities yet another set. But the defining point about these forms of organisation is that they do not have the power of the State to demand, at gunpoint or threat of prison, the money to find them. They must be run in a manner able to persuade people to voluntarily cough up the cash. This is as true of Sainsbury's trying to sell us a banana or two as it is of Ms. Batmanghelidjh suggesting that we might wish to aid deprived children.

This is one of the defining points of a charity, one of the things that differentiates it from said State. And if you're running a charity and you've not quite grasped this point as yet then perhaps you should be doing something else?