The Third Sector magazine published its shortlist of prize-winners in its annual awards. This is also a business-oriented thing because they believe that the most important thing about being a voluntary organisation (sorry ‘third sector’) is things like ‘brand development’ instead of what you’re doing. ‘Well it’s our job to help you while your husband is dying and I’m sure you appreciate that our brand development is second to none’.

And a lot of prize schemes like this cannot afford to assess the quality of the work that an organisation does, so they can only look at efficiency according to some business view. Business does not do caring, it does making money. It is not the same thing and being efficient at it is not what you should be looking for in a voluntary organisation.

But never mind, they’ve got one category of ‘at work’ with a few minor awards, and they’ve got a psychotherapist as one of the assessors for this – it looks from her organisation and the fact that she majors on being a ‘coach’ as if she psychotheraps in the city, alongside many of the other judges, most of whom are policy wonks and businessmen (and I say men advisedly), although some of them have escaped to the voluntary sector (which they probably like to call the third sector). In case you care, I can identify one social worker among the judges, the soon-to-retire Robin Currrie of PSS (you might not know this from the information, PSS stands for Personal Service Society and is a famous old Liverpool charitable institution, now expanding across the country on the back of NHS and social services contracts).

Of course, most of the shortlist are fundraising teams or ‘corporate partnership’ jobs. Organisations related to palliative care and even one hospice are competing strongly in corporate partnership (i.e. extracting money from big businesses by trying to look as much as possible like big business), you’ll be pleased to know they are: Macmillan Cancer Support; Marie Curie Cancer Care; Teenage Cancer Trust; Treetops Hospice. And Julia’s House, a children’s hospice in Dorset, is in the running for best employer.

That’s all right then, no need to worry about whether any of these organizations are actually doing a good job with people who need care because they’re partnering corporately and employing well. Not that I mind that they’re doing so well at this, but I’d like to see an award that put doing a proper caring job at the top of the list and spent time and money assessing that.

Look at the shortlist here: http://www.thirdsectorexcellenceawards.com/sites/default/files/shortlist_pdf.pdf