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Whose side is the Charity Commission on?

Finance | Tania Mason | 14 Sep 2011

Tania Mason says the regulator is sending mixed messages about who it is there for.

Anyone listening to Sam Younger at yesterday’s ICAEW Charity and Voluntary Sector Group conference could be forgiven for leaving somewhat confused.

Early on in his address, the Commission’s chief executive said that the regulator began its recent strategic review by asking the most basic of questions: Who is the Commission there for?  Initially the general response, especially amongst the regulator’s own staff, was: “Charities, of course.”  But as the conversation went on, he said, people began to turn that around and eventually concluded: “Actually, no, we’re not there for charities, we’re there to protect the public interest in the integrity of charities. And that’s different.” This fresh proposition, Younger said, underpins the Commission’s new strategic direction.

So far, so good.  The Commission’s raison d’etre is to preserve public confidence in the sector, and it has various methods by which it will do this: operating a rigorous registration system, issuing guidance to charities, giving advice and permissions as required by law, and sending out its compliance teams when things go wrong.

At the Commission’s recent public meeting, the Commission’s chair Dame Suzi Leather appeared to be positively running with this new ball, announcing that the Commission planned to devise a kind of index that would enable donors to compare charities by the proportion of their income that is spent on ‘the cause’ and how much on ‘administration costs’.  The rationale, she explained, was the huge amounts of evidence the Commission had gathered that this is the number one concern amongst charity supporters.

But yesterday, when asked about its progress, Sam Younger admitted the admin cost index has been shelved, at least temporarily, following “concerns” from the sector about how it would work.

Hmmm.  So the primary purpose is to preserve public confidence, yet the Commission's first attempt to stick its neck out and address the biggest public concern has fallen at the first hurdle when the sector didn’t like it.  

Most charities will be heaving a big sigh of relief that the idea has been kicked into touch – and there’s no denying there are huge challenges to overcome if any such index is to be meaningful. Indeed, a better approach would be to try to educate the public about why ‘admin costs’ are a necessary part of running a charity, and don’t usually add up to a ‘waste of money’.

But the Commission’s decision to bow down so readily to the sector’s resistance does beg the question: Who is the Commission there for, again?  Maybe old habits die hard.

Read the news story about Younger's announcement here.

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Directory: Charity Commission
Who's Who: Sam Younger | Suzi Leather