The government’s Green Paper on giving was published between Christmas and New Year with a timing designed to maximise welcome publicity for this neglected area of media interest. For those who remember the attitude of the Thatcher/Major years to giving in particular and civil society in general the seismic change in interest is very welcome. For the last Tory government the voluntary sector was not so much below the radar as just invisible. For this Tory government (even without the Lib Dems) the interest is real, genuine and palpable. On every count this change should be welcomed.

The challenge now is to turn government interest into action that creates a better sector and a better society.

Sadly the Green Paper only makes tentative steps in that direction and worse still, it reinforces the second class status of giving money in government affection. The Green Paper announces over £50 million of funding for promoting volunteering yet none for giving money. Indeed the Green Paper wants to studiously ignore the reform of tax and in particular Gift Aid. They barely get a mention. In contrast they have sought out every ‘sexy’ type of giving they can find: mobile donation platforms, rounding up credit card donations, cash point giving, give as you shop and a few more. The problem with these is two-fold.

Firstly, these types of giving have nothing to do with government. They are largely the type of innovation that is already underway and the government’s role is unclear (particularly for a government who ideology is to intervene less not more).

Secondly, gathering together sexy giving ideas and presenting it as a paper is a magpie approach to increasing giving. But gathering every shiny, pretty object in the fundraising field is not a strategy. All that glisters is not gold.

There is perhaps a more worrying trend exemplified in this paper. Fundraisers and all their expertise on giving are still being ignored. No fundraiser is quoted in the paper – but lots of non-fundraisers are quoted. Indeed the voice of fundraising is absent throughout the paper. This wasn’t helped by the lack of the Institute of Fundraising’s voice in the media coverage responding to the paper – CAF effectively took centre stage. Good for them but not good for fundraising.

This trend of ignoring fundraisers was also highlighted in the recently announced Philanthropy Review. I don’t know the origins of this review but I do know that philanthropy is the aristocrat of raising money in many people’s book compared to the peasant of fundraising. There are no fundraisers on the Philanthropy review’s board. Would a board of inquiry into law reform have no lawyers on it?

So how did fundraisers and the expertise of fundraising come to be held in such low regard by almost everybody in society except the profession itself? I wish I knew. I wish I knew.

The ways to improve the reputation and stature of fundraising are easier to establish. First of all, we need to have a louder and clearer voice in the sector and wider media. Too often we have let others steal the limelight as with the Newsnight inquiry into face to face fundraising and as with the launch of the Green Paper itself.

Fundraisers also need to decide for themselves how they would increase the size of the giving cake. We are too often the ideas bridesmaid and never the bride. We sit on other people’s commissions (if we are lucky) but what does the fundraising community itself think are the ways to increase giving to a new level. Perhaps it is time for the Institute to convene its own commission.

Another key route to improve the status of fundraising is through the choice of the appointment of the new Chair. I know the visceral call is always for a fundraising practitioner as Chair. I want a new Chair who can be the voice of fundraising, who can hold their own in sector politics and who can use the media as a tool for making people understand just how skilled and difficult the job of fundraisers can be. It’s irrelevant whether they are a current practitioner or not.

In an era of statutory funding cuts fundraising is more important than ever. The Green Paper only has a few of the answers and the response of the fundraising community should be to make sure its voice is listened to in a way that hasn’t happened to date. This isn’t just a matter of pride and self-interest on the part of fundraisers. It is the way we will raise more money for the people and causes who so desperately need them.