Yesterday, we heard that William Shawcross will appear before the Public Accounts Committee on 7 March to address the issue of the Cup Trust, the £176m tax avoidance scheme that it was unable to shut down. I suspect the committee will want some explanation of what went wrong. This will be interesting, because the commission,… Read more »
Posts By: David Ainsworth
Why I oppose Peter Bone’s bill on religious charities
This weekend I was invited onto the TV show The Big Questions, to talk about whether all religious institutions should be charities. The debate came about because of a Ten Minute Rule Motion, proposed by Peter Bone MP, which proposes that all religions should be presumed to have charitable status.
The answer is more sector surveys, not less
Research in the third sector. Is it up to the job we need it to do? This week’s magazine features an interview with Richard Harrison, director of research at the Charities Aid Foundation, who among other things has launched a strong rebuttal to critics who claim that his organisation and the NCVO have published inaccurate… Read more »
Don’t thank me for my donation – spend it on the cause
The other day, the subject of thanking donors came up again on our website. This time, it was a link to a blog about how to say thank you but it’s the latest in a string of pieces from opinion-formers, on our website and elsewhere, talking about the importance of thanking donors. The thing is,… Read more »
Does the sector have an image problem?
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… Read more »
Could sex for the disabled be a charitable activity?
Sex as a charitable activity? That’s an easy one, surely? The answer must be no. Yet in the past couple of weeks, there have been two stories about organisations that have backed the idea that sector bodies could provide or support the provision of sex to disabled people.
Could less popular causes score by comparing themselves with better-funded cousins?
The other day I read something fascinating in a book called Thinking Fast and Slow, the bestseller by a Nobel Prize-winning psychologist called Daniel Kahneman – probably the single most interesting book I’ve ever read about how people think. Here’s what his research has found. If you ask people on the street whether they’ll donate… Read more »
Shawcross has the right idea on charity registration
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.
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,… Read more »
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,… Read more »