Some charities “have become more political in the way they campaign” and need to be clearer with donors about where their money is being spent, the Conservative Party Conference heard yesterday.
Sarah Wollaston (pictured), MP for Totnes, was speaking at a fringe event organised by the Charities Aid Foundation about what the public and MPs think of charities, following on from research it conducted earlier this year with Comres.
Wollaston said that while charities “do have a campaigning role” she had noticed that “some charities have become more political in the way they campaign – some animal charities.”
She said this could “take away from the purpose” of the charity, and that charities needed to be more transparent about how much they spend on campaigning.
“Fundamentally where charities run into difficulty is if the public can’t see what percentage is being spent on that activity,” she said.
“Where they can’t see how much money is going towards it they don’t feel they can have any influence.”
She also said that charities “are about more than volunteering” but that there was a “lack of public awareness” around charities delivering public services that the sector needs to address.
‘Tension’ between small and large charities
Wollaston said that the sector is well placed to deliver public services, and that there is “more we can do” with less than 1 per cent of the NHS budget going to charity.
She said that “local providers” are now “starting to compete with national charities” and that: “When contracts go out large bodies like Age UK even though they have no local programme only tiny amount of money trickles down.”
Wollaston called for different contracts for “community facing charities” and said this should include “simpler, much more based on grants, and multi-year funding so that we don’t see charities limping from one small grant to the next”.
Mark Hawthorne, Conservative leader of Gloucestershire County Council, who was also on the panel, said that there is a “huge amount of tension between small charities and large charities”.
He said that there was a problem with “big national charities trying to sell their brand” and praised local charities for having “better networks than local government”.
Hawthorne also said that changes to commissioning processes had led some “established charities to struggle” while some “new charities have stepped up to the mark with new models”.
He called for more focus on community charities and said it was a challenge for local authorities to work out the best ways of supporting them.
