Whoever thought that charities were perfect?
According to Baroness Stowell of Beeston, chairman of the Charities Commission, speaking at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations’ annual conference, since news of the sex scandal involving Oxfam aid workers broke, people are now more likely to trust “a stranger in the street” than they are established NGOS.
If this is true – and she says this is what early findings in research commissioned by the Commission show – then… people (and I notice I am working a seam in this column) are idiots.
But at the same time, I count this as a win for my side – the pessimists. Because do you know what we never thought? We never thought charities
were perfect. We, at some deep, never-and-doesn’t-need-to-bear-ticulated level, as part of our bred-in-the-bone world view, accepted that in a sprawling global concern comprising humans rather than drones, robots and rubber bands, you’re going to get some bad ones.
It doesn’t mean that we don’t want them punished for it (in fact, we’re probably ahead of the pack in having thought of a variety of ways beforehand to handle numerous negative scenarios). But it does mean that we don’t collapse in a weeping heap of despair.
We don’t (over) react with horror and rush towards equally extreme and misguided alternatives. “Oxfam has let me down. I shall place my trust in a random individual instead! That’ll show them!” is the logic of a mulish child. Optimists, you need to grow up. Learn that happiness lies in low expectations being occasionally exceeded, rather than high ones occasionally fulfilled.
And when you do, charities will also suffer less. Petulance does nobody any good.