TRUST in charities has increased in recent years, but this trust remains unevenly distributed across the public, a new report from the Charity Commission of England and Wales has concluded.
The Charity Commission is the independent regulator for the sector responsible for holding charities to account. Its report, published this week, says that public trust in charities is centred on where and how donations are spent; the impact of charity work, and how consistent this work is with the ethos of the charity; and the upholding of the reputation of all charities.
Levels of trust in charities have declined since 2005, before plateauing in 2016 amid high-profile scandals — until very recently, the Charity Commission reports.
Its conclusions are based on two stages of research: 12 focus groups of 62 participants, of which 62 went on to take part in a two-day online session.
“As a concept, charity was widely received positively, and participants were in favour of the idea,” the report says. “However, issues and challenges with how charity is delivered in practice were raised across the sample and there were mixed levels of trust in charities.”
A sense of “knowing” a charity and the transparency with which the organisation operated were also key factors in determining the trustworthiness of the organisation, specifically financial accounts, activities, staffing, and salaries, and inclusion and diversity data. Participants suggested that this information should be presented in a “simple but visual” way and communicated proactively.
Higher levels of trust were reported in smaller and local charities and those with which “participants felt a sense of personal, emotional, or values-based closeness too — and therefore had higher levels of trust that their own donations were reaching beneficiaries and impacting the cause they cared about.
“Subsequently, three key drivers of trust were identified: charity size, geographic scope, and closeness to the charity. Taken together, an overarching theme driving trust was that of connection and a sense of ‘knowing’ a charity.”
Public knowledge of the part played by the Charity Commission in this was limited, but participants agreed that independent regulation “could help to drive public confidence in the legitimacy of this data and subsequently levels of trust in individual charities”.
In general, the research found that people were more like to support specific causes rather than the charity as an organisation.
The report concludes with three recommendations to the sector: to promote greater public awareness of charity data and proactively communicate this information more widely; to highlight how this data can help grow trust in charities through understanding; and to raise the profile of the Charity Commission as an independent body and any work being done to validate charity-transparency data, and around investigations and their outcomes.