We talk a lot about values in the social sector – purpose, justice, dignity, equality. These words shape our movements and inspire our missions. But between the ideals and the impact lies something less glamorous, and just as essential: the plumbing.
The way water runs through a city, the way a current passes unseen through walls – that’s how public interest flows, too. It needs pipes. It needs systems. It needs maintenance. And if we want our movements for justice and community transformation to last, we need to pay as much attention to the plumbing as we do to the poetry.
That’s the heart of Public Interest Plumbing; a phrase that captures the often-hidden work that makes social change possible. It’s the systems that connect people to resources, ideas to action, and policies to lived outcomes. It’s the craft of designing, maintaining, and repairing the unseen networks that allow dignity to circulate.
Beyond Ideology, Toward Methodology
Over the past few years, many of us have begun to “shift beyond” the old ways of doing good. We’ve realised that compassion alone doesn’t create justice, and that growth isn’t the same as progress.
The Shift Beyond conversation has helped name that truth – but what happens next?
Public Interest Plumbing is one possible answer. It’s the bridge between belief and behaviour, between ideology and methodology. It reminds us that what holds communities together isn’t just shared vision, but shared systems. Without functioning plumbing, even the best intentions leak. Without maintenance, even the boldest reforms clog up.
It’s an approach that says: before we build new programmes or campaigns, let’s map the flow. Let’s ask how ideas travel through people, processes, and institutions. Let’s notice where they stall, where they overflow, and where the pressure builds.
The Social Science of Plumbing
The idea has deeper roots than it might seem. In her essay The Economist as Plumber, Nobel laureate Esther Duflo urged policymakers to focus on the practicalities of implementation – the fittings, the valves, the ways systems really behave under pressure. Philosopher Mary Midgley once called her discipline “philosophical plumbing,” because every big idea sits on a hidden network of assumptions that needs repair.
Sociologists, too, have long studied the “invisible mechanics” of social life: how institutions maintain trust, how networks carry cooperation, and how bureaucracies shape access to power. Anthropologists talk about infrastructural intimacy, the ways systems quietly affect daily life.
Public Interest Plumbing draws on all of this. It invites us to study – and then redesign – the civic infrastructure that turns public interest into public good.
Plumbing in Practice
You can see it in action in places where systems quietly work better than they used to – not because someone launched a new campaign, but because someone fixed the pipes.
Take Angels Connect for example. On the surface, it’s a digital referral tool helping people in financial hardship connect with local advice and support. But underneath, it’s a re-engineering project: training “Money Angels” as local connectors, creating data pathways between community groups and advisers, and ensuring people aren’t lost between services. It’s public interest plumbing, designed for flow, not just for show.
Or consider the Trussell Trust’s move to digital referrals. For years, paper vouchers were a quiet source of friction and stigma. The switch to a national, data-secure system has transformed the experience for both volunteers and guests. The plumbing improved, and with it, dignity flowed more freely.
Public interest plumbing isn’t just about the voluntary sector. It’s at work in the Government Digital Service (GDS) and Public Digital, who help build the pipes of modern democracy: open data standards, interoperable systems, and human-centred design that keeps public value moving. Or in community energy cooperatives across Wales and Scotland, where citizens share ownership of the energy that powers their homes – a literal and metaphorical rewiring of the system.
The Craft of Keeping Systems Flowing
Public Interest Plumbing isn’t glamorous. It doesn’t produce headlines or hashtags. It’s the maintenance work; the inspection, the quiet fixes, the patient iteration.
It’s about understanding how things actually work beneath the surface: how referrals are handled, how feedback loops close, how accountability travels through an organisation. It’s about paying attention to leaks, the small places where people fall through cracks or data disappears, and knowing how to fix them.
Most importantly, it’s relational. Systems only flow when trust flows. The volunteers, advisers, and connectors who make those systems work are as vital as any piece of technology. The plumbing isn’t just digital; it’s human.
A Methodology for the Shift Beyond
If Beyond Altruism challenges us to rethink how we define success – not by growth, but by freedom – Public Interest Plumbing gives us a way to make that freedom practical.
It’s a reminder that justice doesn’t just depend on who holds power, but on how power flows. It’s an invitation to see every organisation, every network, every service as a system of pipes, and to take responsibility for how well those pipes serve the people they’re meant to reach.
Because when we get the plumbing right, everything else works better.
And when we don’t, even the most inspiring vision can’t hold water.
Closing Thought
We often celebrate the architects of social change – the visionaries, the campaigners, the funders. But the real test of a movement lies with its plumbers: the people who build the systems that make good intentions durable.
Public Interest Plumbing is about honouring that work – and about joining it.
Because the future of civil society won’t just be written in manifestos.
It will be built, pipe by pipe, by those who keep the flow of dignity moving.
