Last week I went to a round table on stereotypes and the sector organised by Charity Leaders’ Exchange. One of the main issues that arose was the reputation of the sector.
I’d started to wonder about this already, after a couple of encounters with friends and friends of friends, who, on finding out I wrote about charities, shared some less than complimentary views about the sector.
Here are some stereotypes that people have said to me personally, over the last two or three weeks:
– Charity workers should never get big salaries
– Charities lie to you about what they’ll spend your money on
– Charities waste most of their money on wages and administration, rather than “the cause”
– Charities spend all their time schmoozing politicians rather than getting things done
– Charities shouldn’t take government cash, and should be run by volunteers
– Charity fundraisers are too aggressive, get paid too much, and are habitual liars
In short, there’s a lot of distrust out there – much of it from intelligent, well-educated people who might be seen as natural allies of the sector. Much of it from donors, some of whom are becoming ex-donors.
Even a former charity chief executive, Craig Dearden-Phillips, wrote last week that he’s given up on giving to big charities, and went on to suggest that much of what charities tell the public is deliberately misleading, disingenuous, or just plain lies. (I suspect he’s at least partly right, too – I’ve some evidence of charities who skimmed over the whole truth because a half-truth was more likely to get the donor’s chequebook out.)
These reputational concerns, I think, need to be answered. A lot of public concerns are not justified – particularly worries about how charities spend their cash – but the public aren’t going to spontaneously figure out that they’re barking up the wrong tree. Someone has to tell them.
Some of the misconceptions are going to be hard to root out, too. They’ve been going on for years.
So I’d like charities to engage with the public more – not about their causes, but about charity itself.
There is waste in the charity sector. There are people who are paid too much, and aimless do-gooders wasting donors’ cash. There’s fraud and mismanagement. But there’s less than there is elsewhere. Inefficient trustees sitting on piles of cash are vastly outnumbered by those achieving huge amounts on a shoestring. I think the sector needs to explain itself, not change itself, to make the stereotypes begin to disappear.
The question is, how do you do it?
There are some things I wish charities would do, but I suspect they won’t.
I like the idea that charities should stop misleading donors to get their cash, and trust them with the truth. I also like the idea that they should cut out fundraising techniques that donors find annoying, intimidating and offensive.
But let’s look at what’s achievable.
I quite like the idea of getting together a few experts in changing people’s perceptions – the sector has some of the world’s experts, after all – and asking them to discuss this problem. How do you convince people that charity itself – not a particular cause, but the whole of charity – is an efficient, hardworking, caring machine that generates huge amounts of benefit for the cash you put in.
It should be easy, because it’s true.