Trust in charities almost as volatile as trust in banks, survey finds 1

Fundraising | Tania Mason | 24 Nov 2011

Public trust in charities has rebounded since January this year but still remains over 10 percentage points lower than just before the last general election, new research from nfpSynergy suggests.

In July this year, the research agency polled 1,000 people aged 16 and over who are representative of the British public. It’s a survey nfpSynergy has run throughout the last five years, since 2006, and claims to be the largest and longest dataset in existence concerning trust in charities.

Trust in charities hit a high of 70 per cent in January 2010, before the May 2010 election, before diving to a low of 53 per cent in January 2011. It rallied to 59 per cent in the most recent poll, meaning charities are currently the third most trusted public institution, behind only the armed forces and the NHS.

However, the results also suggest that trust in charities is a highly volatile asset, its level of volatility beaten only by trust in banks. Trust in charities has see-sawed from an all-time low of 42 per cent in July 2007 to the 70 per cent high of January 2010 – a high-low variance of 28 per cent – while trust in banks has recorded a variance of 29 per cent over the five-year polling period.

nfpSynergy’s driver of ideas, Joe Saxton, said the results demonstrate that the Charity Commission’s statutory duty to build public trust in the sector, imposed as part of the Charities Act 2006, is not enough on its own.

“Despite trust in charities rallying after a post-election slump that might have been fuelled by factors such as suspicions over the Big Society concept, and government funding cuts – such charitable trust is also inherently relatively volatile, and cannot be taken for granted,” Saxton said.

“The task cannot be left just to the Charity Commission. Charities need a better understanding of what influences trust and, above all, we need a sector-wide strategy to establish trust on a more stable footing.”

(See research slides below)

Images

Directory: nfpSynergy
Who's Who: Joe Saxton

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Andrew
volunteer
lowe syndrome trust
24 Nov 2011

The British public have become doubtful over the role of the charity sector mainly due to the ease of looking up the charity on the web, but also press reports on charity executives pay and pensions - often having to rival the public sector, and the public obsession with the celebrity culture, where a charity is seen to be valued by the status of the celebrity patrons at fundraising events and level of TV exposure such as BBC children in need.

The problem is that the public is cynical and suspicious of donating to charities that are government agencies, NGO's etc, public sector interest group etc, they feel are both inefficient and already paying far too high rates of taxes.

The answer is for the Charity Commission to ask charities to classify themselves, clearly state their executives' pay and pension pots, and declare how much funding is from the taxpayer and government grants, so that the public can easily judge for themselves from the Charity Commission or charity accounts.

I came across an awful website recently, libelling Cancer Research UK **content removed to to libellous material - please refer to community standards**

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