Last week, at a hearing of the Public Administration Select Committee, the chair of the Charity Commission, William Shawcross, among other things, suggested the threshold for registering with the commission should remain as it is, at £5,000.
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The sector has got to face up to the unpopularity of chugging
The other day, I wrote a story about Charlie Elphicke, Conservative MP for Dover & Deal, who advocated a ban on face-to-face fundraising.
Elphicke’s remarks were made in passing, as part of a larger debate which focused on other things, but they were made memorable by the level of hatred he displayed for chugging. Chugging, he said, was “one of the great infestations of modern life that lashes out at people in the street”; it was “toxic to the charity brand”. And it was an “abuse and invasion of our personal space”.
How Barnardo’s juggles with the figures
Recently, I had occasion to log onto Barnardo’s website, and I noticed that just about the most prominent thing on it is an announcement that 95 pence of every £1 the charity spends goes directly on front line services.
But earlier this week, Barnardo’s published its annual accounts. These showed a total income of £245m, but direct charitable expenditure of only £194m. The charity spent £46m on fundraising and trading.
So this didn’t seem to add up. The charity clearly wasn’t able to spend 95 per cent of its income on children and young people and their families.
The thorny question of lobbying by charities
Should a charity be allowed to use charitable donations (and charitable tax reliefs) to try and change people’s minds? And should an organisation that dedicates itself mostly to campaigning be allowed to call itself a charity?
These are the questions that came up recently in a Parliamentary select committee that dealt partly but not entirely with the controversial question of the Plymouth Brethren and their charitable status.
In truth, it’s a very thorny question, and wherever you position yourself, there seems to be a different answer.
Getting to know the Brethren
Last week, I met up with two members of the Plymouth Brethren, who came to talk to me about their religion. They are currently involved in a struggle with the Charity Commission to prove that their charities and meeting halls provide a public benefit, and were keen to show their usefulness to the community at large.
I don’t propose to repeat all their rules, which I wrote about here but I will say I found them absolutely fascinating.
Here’s some route one, Dorothy Donor fundraising
I recently spent some time in a part of East Anglia where a lot of elderly people live, and through the letterbox popped a piece of cold, unaddressed direct mail from the British Red Cross, a charity I admire a lot and have donated to at times of disaster. I was there at about the same time last year, when a similar envelope arrived, so this mail shot may be a hardy annual for that postcode.
Last year, the envelope contained a letter about the Red Cross’s work, a donation form, a couple of greetings cards with envelopes, a bookmark and a pen. The cards and bookmark were adorned with a picture of a red rose – the Humanity Rose, specially bred to mark the 125th birthday of the British Red Cross and named to honour its life-saving work.
Are young trustees really such a good idea?
Trustee Week gets under way today, and there have been plenty of calls that we should sign up more young people as trustees.
As a former young trustee, I’m not convinced this is the best idea.
In my teenage years and early twenties I was a board member at my student union, and remained involved as a volunteer until about the age of 25.
Fundraising around the world
When SOS Children’s Villages said it wanted to trial face-to-face fundraising in Nicaragua, one of the poorest countries in the Americas, the idea was dismissed as crazy.
Juan Cruz Mones Cazon, development and communications director for the charity in Latin America and the Caribbean, says his colleagues in the region’s vibrant not-for-profit sector told him it would not work.
But he pressed ahead, aiming to sign up 250 regular givers in the first four months.
Ethical investment is more than beating one bastard while funding three others
As part of ethical investment week, now drawing to a close, the Charity Finance Group published a survey of its members that found that just over half had any sort of ethical investment policy, and that of those who did, most only used “negative screening”, where they avoid companies which have activities that go against the charity’s aims.
There is little, in short, to suggest that charities are displaying higher ethical standards in their investment than the average man on the street.
This is a bit of a worry. If charities don’t have any sort of ethical investment policy, it makes it almost certain that they’re investing money in someone, somewhere, who is doing something harmful to their beneficiaries.
Charities are supposed to act ethically, after all. Charities are supposed to be the ones leading the crusade against companies that pollute the environment, make banned munitions, and run sweatshops in the developing world, aren’t they?
It’s also perhaps disappointing that most that have ethical policies are worried only about their own beneficiaries. Those who protect the environment are often happy to invest in sweatshop-owners. Those who fight to prevent poverty are often happy to invest in arms manufacturers. And so on. Many charities have developed investment policies to beat the bastards they’re personally battling, while funding three other types of bastard.
Charities’ attitudes also seems to be at odds with what the wider public want from them.
A survey by Uksif, the ethical investment organisation, found that 59 per cent of investors want to see charities take a lead in investing more ethically. Whereas, if anything, charities are being dragged into the field by their investment managers.
There are reasons why charities have been slow to invest ethically. One is a lack of resource – it takes time and effort to develop an ethical policy, and the trustees who should be in charge of doing so are often part-time, with limited investment experience.
Another is the separation of those who manage money from those who spend it – a CFG seminar on this subject found that there was often a lack of connection between finance teams and their campaigns and policy counterparts.
A third is a belief that you should focus first on maximising your returns – or perhaps more serious, that trustees are required to maximise returns, because of their fiduciary responsibility to their charity.
Charities have argued previously to me that it’s their duty only to be concerned with their own beneficiaries – or, to put it another way, that if the best way to help dogs is to invest in people who make cluster bombs, then dog charities have a duty to do so.
I’m not sure this is really true, but if it is, it seems silly. And it argues that perhaps the duties of charities should be widened to include something that looks a little like the Hippocratic oath – not just to do good for your beneficiaries, but to do no harm to everyone else while you’re at it.
Of course, in reality, the question is probably moot, because there is no evidence that being ethical in your investment costs money. If anything, there’s some evidence that companies which have good environmental, social and governance records provide a better return for the long-term investor.
In addition, Charity Commission guidance also indicates that charity trustees have reasonably broad powers to make investments in line with their ethical judgements.
The evidence suggests that the number of charities who are developing an ethical investment policy is growing. But it appears that it will be a while before the 59 per cent of investors who want to see charities take a lead are likely to get their wish.
Ed Miliband – isn’t he our man?
Until recently commentators such as Tim Montgomerie of Conservative Home have been fond of saying that the Tories’ best asset at the next election will be Ed Miliband: geeky, awkward-looking, poor communicator and a bit Old Labour.
After yesterday, they might need to change their tune on the first three points at least. Even his opponents have conceded that his conference speech could mark a watershed in his career as Labour leader – a transition from a certain inexperience and uncertainty to a new confidence and assurance. Few opposition leaders who haven’t been in office before look like future prime ministers – even Tony Blair looked a bit implausible before he was elected. And Ed Miliband no longer looks an impossibility, as has sometimes been suggested.