Oxfam is making few friends with its bookshop chain…
This has been on my mind a bit recently, but I haven’t had time to say anything about it. This morning, there’s a piece in The Bookseller, and as I wander around the internet poking things and muttering, I find that Susan Hill has written in The Spectator, as well.
So… what to say?
Well, first thing: Oxfam is not good just because it’s Oxfam.
Oxfam is good because it does good stuff. It has a positive effect on the world, so we applaud it. If it’s also having a negative effect, that’s something to consider. Any number of big entities, of course, have a crappy effect on the world a long way away from the UK. Mentioning no names. If Oxfam is messing with the UK’s local economies in order to feed the 3rd world, that wouldn’t make it unique, just weirdly upside down. That does not make it okay, it just makes it bleakly amusing.
So, first thought: being Oxfam does not make you irreproachable.
In fact, being a powerful charity means you have to be, if anything, more careful about where you step when you work in a commercial arena in your own back yard, especially in a recession. Why? Because you get tax breaks and low business rates and donations (more than 80% of income from Oxfam’s shops is from donations). Oxfam, like other charities, is awarded significant advantages under the law so that it can do good. The tacit presumption, it seems to me, is that it will not deploy those advantages in a fully-fledged, corporate-style commercial enterprise in which it competes directly with local shops. I think those advantages are supposed to make it possible for a charity to function on a shoestring and send as much money as possible to the battlefront. I don’t think that when they were created anyone envisaged a charity which would iterate as an aggressive chain. That transformation is genius in fundraising terms, but it also potentially indicates a shift in identity from something which is about transforming donation into cash to something which seeks to maximise profit from donation.
I think it’s incumbent upon Oxfam to consider very carefully whether what they’re doing here is really a good thing. There is sometimes a narrowness of focus in the charitable sector. It’s a necessity – or at least a huge pluse – when you’re trying to argue for your cause above a lot of others looking for the same funding. It’s a vital component of reminding people that beyond their own problems there’s a world which needs their support. It’s also a potential disadvantage in some situations, where the notion of the good which one’s own organisation can do is allowed to eclipse the other goods in the world, and even the possibility that one may do damage along the way.
Second thought: when a charity operates in a corporate style, what does that mean?
Is there a middle ground?
I can’t see how any bookshop can readily compete with an entity which enters the arena with such significant advantages. I’m a big fan of indies and I think there are some opportunities which will become available to them over the next few years which are really interesting. However, those opportunities will equally be available to Oxfam and the chains. So, would Oxfam be prepared to work with the indies? Would they wholesale to local second hand shops? After all, they’d still make money on the transactions, because their operating costs are low and they’re getting a lot of books free. They just wouldn’t make as much. And that’s where this becomes a razor issue to me. If Oxfam really is operating in the way which Susan Hill describes – if they’re moving in and driving out the indies – that is unconscionable. It’s one thing to open a charity bookshop in a thriving area. It’s another to identify a town as a target because you can undercut a local bookseller and walk away with the catchment area. The former is perfectly good practice, the latter is corporate brigandage in the interest of the financial bottom line, and a charity doing it is not better than a corporation, but worse. Corporations, after all, are profit-making machines. Charities get their status because they are good-making machines.
Third thought: it is not clear to me – yet – exactly how bad the situation is. However, if the Oxfam Books chain is endangering local shops, that is not something they can in good conscience ignore. It is not enough to say, as David Mccullough did the other day, that supermarkets are more of a problem for booksellers than Oxfam is. That may well be true, but it’s like saying that rain isn’t something to worry about when the river’s flooded. Rain may make the difference between life and death.
So here’s a hypothetical question for Oxfam: if the cost of raising the maximum amount of money for your work abroad is the demise of the small bookseller in the rural UK – and possibly more widely – is that a price you’re prepared to pay?
It’s a genuine question, not a rhetorical one. I know people, I suspect, who would say “yes” without hesitation. If Oxfam’s plan allows for this possibility and has factored it in and approved it, that’s something we should be told, because it has bearing on whether we want to shop at Oxfam Books. After all, there’s nothing to say we can’t give them money in other ways.
@SamAtRedmag asked me this morning whether I thought people should withhold donations of books from Oxfam. The answer is that I don’t know. I’m a fan of charity work and I believe that – despite tales of 4WD excesses and banquets in famine zones – Oxfam is a massive force for good. That said, I’m incredibly uncomfortable with this operation. It seems a mismatch of cultures – when Oxfam shops were little scruffy places on the corner with wonky candlesticks for a fiver, then of course they needed all the breaks they could get. When (if) those breaks have been deployed as part of a nationwide strategy to create a smooth selling machine whose side-effect is to jeopardise one of the few remaining hubs of local life and throw more fuel on the fire which is consuming small booksellers, then I have no intention of supporting that process.
There are a hundred other charities which do great work around the world. I can sell my old books by weight to a local indie who will then make enough to stay afloat on them, and send the money to Water Missions International or MSF – some of the alternatives spend a far lower percentage of income on administration, so the bookseller’s cut will not affect the amount aid I’ve given. In the end, as with any use of money, the thing you have to remember is that in our world, buying is voting.
A few more links:
[Edit: @oxfamgb have been in touch to say that Oxfam spends 11p in the £1 on administration, which is pretty good. However, I've also seen an estimate of 30p from the Unofficial Oxfam FAQ. I have to say my instinct is to trust Oxfam's own estimate. Set against that, the situation with the indies is more dire than I had realised: in 2009, 40 indies opened their doors, and 102 closed for good (link). In other words, Oxfam may be leaner than I thought, but that doesn't make what they're doing better if it really is causing problems for local booksellers. So it may come down to what you think is more important. If so, it's a lousy choice to have to make, full of incommensurables and unpredictable variables.
Oh, one last thing: when @oxfamgb picked me up on my numbers, I took the opportunity to ask about this issue. So far: answer came there none.]
[Updated edit: Very exciting. I'm apparently about to be emailed by Oxfam's trading director on this topic. One thing I can say without hesitation: Oxfam is a hell of a lot easier to talk to than Google... And isn't that completely bizarre?]