IT IS right that the Charity Commission should bring the issue of public benefit to the fore when considering the charitable status of various organisations. Independent schools, some of them funded for the poor, are most obviously in the firing line, having put themselves there in recent years by a relentless rise in fees. But religious charities are not going to be exempt from the need to prove public benefit each year. In general, it will do every charity good to consider how the public benefits from its work. The Commission’s bęte noire is the private club masquerading as a charitable organisation. No charity for the advancement of religion should resemble one of these.
The Charity Commission has made reassuring noises. The guidance states: “It is not within the Charity Commission’s remit to look into traditional, long-held religious beliefs or to seek to modernise them.” Also, it will not insist on measurable benefits: “The benefits of an appreciation of a beautiful landscape, or of viewing works of art, or . . . spiritual contemplation . . . can still be identified and experienced even though they are not touched or seen and cannot be quantified or measured.” Finally, it makes it clear that it is the charging of fees — for entry, or for membership — that will bring a charity to the Commission’s notice if those fees severely restrict public access: “Charging fees should not be confused with other forms of financial contribution to charities, such as those made to religious charities, whose core beliefs may involve a financial contribution from followers, in the form, say, of tithes.”
There are, however, a few grey areas. The first is the case of the hypothetical Methodist bridge. In a court judgment, a bridge just for the use of Methodists was suggested as an example of an unreasonable restriction on the class of people who could benefit from an amenity. It is possible that a few Methodist bridges lurk in the charitable aims of religious charities. Second, the Charity Commission will exercise the right to judge the efficacy of a charity’s work. The example given is of a cancer-research charity that fails to contribute to the hunt for a new treatment: “Whatever overall benefit there is to society from cancer research in general, that benefit would count for very little in assessing the public benefit of an organisation conducting cancer research if the methods it used were not scientifically rigorous, for example.” It is hard to see how the Commission could possibly police the 190,000 registered charities in the UK, but it remains a weapon in its armoury.
Lastly, there is no indication of how the Commission will judge something like an enclosed religious order, dedicated to the worship of God and prayer for the world. Will it have to show that its prayers are working? The example is largely hypothetical: financial considerations, if nothing else, mean that religious houses are today places of hospitality. It will be reassuring, none the less, when there are a few case studies for the Commission and the Church to look at. |
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