The chair of the Woodland Trust has said that charities are feeling picked on by the Charity Commission and punished by the Fundraising Regulator.
Speaking at a Labour party conference fringe event yesterday, Baroness Young of Old Scone, who is a Labour peer and chair of the Woodland Trust, criticised the Charity Commission for not doing enough to promote charities at a time when the sector was under pressure.
She said: "We are being reviled in the Daily Mail, not hugely well supported by the government and the tax man is trying to get as much tax out of us as he can and the Charity Commission has kindly forgotten that as well as having a regulatory role it is also meant to be a promoter and supporter of charities.
"So we are kind of feeling picked on."
She also said the Fundraising Regulator had “got off on the wrong foot” with the sector.
"To make that even worse the new Fundraising Regulator, which we all support as charities because it is an independent Fundraising Regulator supported by the charity sector, has set off on the wrong foot seeing as it is offering punishment rather than support and improvements."
'We are funding Natural England'
She said charities were under pressure from government funding cuts, both locally and nationally, while she warned of a possibility of European funds being withdrawn in future.
Young said as a result of austerity charities were having to fund statutory bodies, while the situation was reversed 15 years ago.
“At the moment we are funding Natural England to do the ancient tree inventory, which is their statutory responsibility but they haven’t any money and we need it done so we have to pay for it.”
She said the sector was not well supported by the government overall and called on a Labour government to improve this situation.
“If they want us to support people and services, they have got to support us. We’d like a much more supporting regulatory regime. And we would like to see a change in the rules for society lotteries, lifting the annual limit and lifting the draw limit.”
Fundraising methods
Young also said that traditional fundraising methods, particularly direct fundraising, were “getting a bit worn”.
She suggested that charities could learn from Momentum, the Labour Party’s left wing pressure group in its fundraising methods.
“There are some new methods of fundraising that we can see developing. What the Labour Party and Momentum did in the run up to the referendum and the election was amazing in terms of showing what can be done in terms of digital fundraising, in terms of social media, in terms of crowdsourcing.”
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