No, we ain’t in crisis!

The Chair of the Charity Commission said in a speech this week that the sector is in ‘crisis’. 

This is very disappointing. I would expect the charity regulator to rise above the noise of the tabloids, and make the public case for charities’ work. Their speeches should extol the importance of charities and the vital contribution we make. They should be telling people what they are doing to help us with the work we do.

Firm regulation is a part of the Charity Commission’s and its chair’s job. But just as important is their job to speak out for and support the organisations they regulate. At the very least, they should be leading the public debate, not following the lead set by lurid coverage in the press.

I certainly don’t think it is the Chair of the Charity Commission’s job to court national controversy for the sector he is mandated to support.

Yes, charities should be reviewing our fundraising practices. We are doing so right now, as is the Fundraising Standards Board. Yes, we should highlight the importance of charities’ work being done professionally. But to call the recent news reports “a crisis for the charity sector which is testing the strength and capacity of self-regulation”? That is not true. And it merely makes another lurid headline.

In another part of the speech, the Chair Mr Shawcross talked about the possibility of the Charity Commission charging charities to be regulated. I am not certain that a compulsory charge is really in the best interests of a free and fair society, especially when there are questions about the quality of that regulator’s contribution to the national debate. Even beyond this, I remain sceptical. In a recent ACEVO survey, 75% of our membership were against charging for regulation.

His speech also talked about the Commission’s continued provision of support and advice to charities, arguing that this function is continuing to be provided despite budget cuts and the Commission focusing more and more of its resources purely on ‘hard’ enforcement. Still, this isn’t enough to win the argument on paying to be regulated, if charities do not get many services in return.

The Charity Commission does have a huge task. Staff are obviously overburdened. The Chair is right to be concerned about the Commission's total reliance on government funding. But then why make work for yourself? The Commission appear determined to do a wasteful and unnecessary review of CC9, the guidance on charity campaigning, simply for declarative purposes it seems. By far the most likely outcome of such a review would be to curtail our duties to campaign on behalf of our beneficiaries. They claim this is about regulating social media, but given the difficulty of ‘regulating’ that it seems to me better to approach it through separate, short guidance that outlines good practice used by leading charities.

Charities depend on the public’s trust. I'm afraid I don't trust the current leadership not to want to undermine campaigning. Specially if they continue to be led by political and media fashions. I hope they will prove me wrong. But interventions like the those of the Chair in this now-infamous speech will certainly not help.

The Dilemma of Fundraising

The tragic story of Olivia Cooke has reopened the debate on charity fundraising. Many members of our sector have been talking about their own fundraising practice in response.

What we should do now is not apportion blame, but recognise this as the moment to take a hard look at our work, and particularly our fundraising.

Libby Purves made a good point in her Times column today:  "the nation's decent and reasonable rage at the case of Olive Cooke should be a shot across the bows of all fundraisers". Of course, charities need to raise funds. But the way we do this must be in line with our mission and purpose to do good.

ACEVO made this case in our recent report Good with Money. We argued that Chief Executives should be conscious of their organisation’s investment policy, and this policy should be embedded in the charity’s identity. Charities – and their CEOs – should be proactively transparent about these policies.

We can extend that approach to fundraising. We as CEOs need to be clear that where we have fundraising activities they are done to the highest standards.

With significant further cuts in public spending to come and a real strain on charity resources against rising demand charities do need to rely increasingly on the generosity of the public. We need to be sure that we do not damage our reputations through fundraising. And that any fundraising organisations who work on our behalf also adhere to best practice.

I was chatting to the manager of my favourite Helen and Douglas Hospice shop in Chipping Norton on Saturday and we were discussing this dilemma. Balancing the need to raise funds to support brilliant work but not hassling people to the point where they are turned off by the pressure of the fundraising effort.

Fundraising is important. Indeed it’s vital to the work we do: we need our fundraising community. But we need to make sure we’re doing it well – with the right purpose and methods. We need strong leadership in this area.  

Dogs, Philanthropists, Independence and all

Settling down to catch up on Coronation St I was disturbed by someone at the door. It turned out to be a fundraiser from the Battersea Dogs Home. My faithful hound having also appeared at the door I felt I could hardly resist taking up the offer to give them a DD donation.

In fact I'm rather prone to signing up to fundraisers. I've done that for people who popped round from the British Heart Foundation and VSO. And I also can't resist the charms of street fundraisers, or ‘chuggers’ as some term them. So I have an eclectic list of charities I support; but then as the CEO of ACEVO I can hardly turn them down. And it’s a bit like market research for me as I get their literature through the post or the emails. Shelter are particularly assiduous in their search for funds. But then they need to be. Getting support for the homeless sector is difficult. Hedge fund managers and their ilk like something more cuddly, and we have such a long way to go before such people match the level of giving that their counterparts do in the States. Of course there are exceptions, but it is still a dismal fact that poorer people give a higher proportion of their wealth to charity than rich people do.

This is a point that people like Thomas Hughes-Hallett have been labouring for some time. I had lunch with him recently and he was outlining his plans for an Institute of Philanthropy. A much-needed innovation and one to be strongly supported. And he has managed to secure the support of a good philanthropist who is putting a substantial endowment behind this project so it can really motor in a big way, making an impact where it is needed. Thomas is one of the sector greats (I got to know him well from the infamous government ‘listening exercise’ where we laboured together on choice and competition), and it was a rather enjoyable lunch – we discovered we both have a love for the English choral tradition. He supports ‘The Sixteen’ and the choir of Westminster Abbey.

Yesterday I was speaking at the launch of the Independence Panel’s final report on ‘An Independent Mission: The Voluntary Sector in 2015’. You can read it here.

It raises some fundamental issues and concerns. It raises he concerns many of my CEO members have been raising about the politicisation of the Charity Commission. It agrees with ACEVO that the Lobbying Act must be repealed as soon as the next government takes office.  And it challenges sector leaders to continue to speak out. We will. Well, I certainly will.