Charities must be “less afraid of speaking up for themselves”, and trustees in particular must speak out more, new Acevo chief executive Vicky Browning said yesterday.
Browning was speaking at a seminar on charity policy in London, in her first public appearance since taking over at Acevo.
She told the seminar, organised by the Westminster Social Policy Forum, that charities need to address the issue of public trust.
“I want to hear trustees speak out on why their charities are important,” she said. “As a sector we need to be less scared and more willing to speak up. We need to be less afraid as individual charities of standing up for ourselves.”
Browning also said that public scrutiny is the “new normal” for charities.
“We should explain how we work and why we do what we do,” she said. “We aren’t used to it, but we need to get used to it. We need to be more proactive and more efficient. We need to show the collective impact of what we do.”
Browning stressed that charities need to communicate more proactively, and at greater length.
“You have to go on and on and on,” she said. “No one ever hears things the first time. They have to be told at least four times. You just have to keep doing it.“
Baroness Barker, joint chair of the event and a member of the House of Lords Select Committee on Charities, also spoke about the need for charities to be transparent, and to proactively explain themselves.
She said that if charities want to hold government to account on behalf of their beneficiaries, then they must expect to be held to a higher level of accountability themselves.
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