Redundant Charities: Escaping the cycle of dependence

By Weh Yeoh

"It's a good cause...or is it?" Is a charity worth supporting if it continues to exist perpetually? When does a charity ever end? How does it know that the job is done? 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Koan Press
• Release date: Sep 27, 2023
• ISBN: 9780645728019

Weh Yeoh

Weh Yeoh has worked internationally and in Australia, his home country, in the social impact space for close to two decades. He is the founder of OIC Cambodia, an initiative that aims to establish speech therapy as a profession in Cambodia. He has a BA in Physiotherapy from the University of Sydney and an MA in Development Studies from the University of NSW. He has volunteered with people with disabilities in Vietnam, interned in India, studied Mandarin in Beijing, and milked yaks in Mongolia. He started OIC in 2013, and handed over leadership to a local Cambodian team in 2017. He has since co-founded Umbo, a social enterprise bridging the gap for rural Australians to access allied health services.

Book preview

Part 1

The Old Model is Broken

The growth obsession

Private sector infiltration of charities

Jane works a 60-hour week at a large accounting firm. Since the onset of a global pandemic, she starts to wonder why she works so hard for her private sector clients. She has three children and, with her partner recently being made redundant from his job, she’s concerned that they may not have enough money to continue to send their children to private school.

Her circumstances don’t allow for a career change. At the same time, she decides she wants to give back and starts volunteering on the board of a local not-for-profit helping recently settled asylum seekers. With barely enough time as it is to maintain work and life balance, she finds herself increasingly stretched. And yet, she’s worked for a top tier firm, and her non-profit colleagues respect what she says. After three years on the board, a former asylum seeker who volunteers with the charity starts to ask questions about the board and how they were selected. It seems that the board is predominantly made up of white, middle-class volunteers who are friends of the founder. Prompted by this conversation, Jane starts to realise that she has not yet met one single asylum seeker.

How many of us know of someone like Jane?

The private sector infiltration of charities has been insidious, and yet, the consequences are significant.

When people like Jane give back, they take their private sector mindset and apply it to the non-profit sector. One good example is the UK’s MSI Reproductive Choices’ (formerly Marie Stopes) CEO Simon Cooke, who, in 2019, received a significant bonus, thus boosting his annual salary to £434,000. What was it that prompted the Marie Stopes’ board to approve this salary