Doesn't everyone love charities?

Third Force News

18 March 2008

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Lots of people don’t trust government, or the health service, or the police, or social services; they see them as interfering in their lives. It is common to hear people denigrate these institutions, but doesn’t everyone love charities? Not according to the latest research from charity think-tank nfpSynergy. Less than half the population trust charities now, which is a worrying trend that is bound to have an affect on public giving at least. It would be hard to pinpoint the reason for this – perhaps that should be nfp’s next piece of research. Most likely it is a mix of factors such as chuggers, poor press caused by aid agency turf wars abroad and a greater overlap between the public and third sector service delivery. Obviously fundraising scandals must also play a part, yet fear that people rattling tins are not giving the money to charity is a separate to worry that the charity itself is not well run.

The creation of the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR) on one hand and the Fundraising Standards Board on the other, will hopefully go some way to reassure people on both these fronts. OSCR has been recently running high-profile newspaper advertisements to alert the public to fact that they are now able to check up on their favourite charities. However, it could be argued that the very existence of these organisations give the impression to the public that charities cannot be trusted. Generally, the public are a fairly sceptical bunch and as the access to information has improved, so have the weaknesses that exist in every organisation, public, private or voluntary.

NfpSynergy’s founder Joe Saxton believes the answer is a joined-up communications strategy across the voluntary sector. He is probably right, yet in Scotland this would take a level of joined-up working that until now hasn’t existed between the various bodies concerned. There is little doubt that in Scotland public understanding of charities, and as a result their trust in them, would improve if it did exist.

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