Chair of Volunteering England Sukhvinder Kaur-Stubbs said yesterday that charities can both improve integrity and raise the standard of services in the private sector.

The comments were made at a conference from NCVO and Consumer Focus, titled Civil Society and the marketplace, which offered a morning of debate about how civil society can, and is, penetrating the consumer marketplace.

Kaur-Stubbs, who chaired the majority of the event and is a member of the board at watchdog group Consumer Focus, insisted that civil society can be good for both ethics and business.

“This isn’t just about shaping markets or being a disruptive influence in them – there’s actually the potential to make the demand side more demanding,” she said, echoing the thoughts of a number of the panellists.

“So it’s about raising expectations, and actually expecting more, transforming and empowering citizens as consumers to demand and expect better services and products.”

The conference’s sessions focused on how voluntary groups can cross the divide into the consumer market; whether a challenge can be made from the sector to the big six energy providers; and what alternative models of business there are out there which are concerned with social good.

Kaur-Stubbs also stressed that it was important for organisations to remember their charitable nature and not drift too far away from their mission when crossing the border into the private sector.

“The purpose of the intervention is vital,” she said. “Maintaining integrity with the mission is crucial to the role of trusted intermediaries and to avoid eroding the public’s trust.”

She continued: “For effective action you need a compassionate heart but also the commercial head – in order to sit along side the big players you need to be able to talk about and understand the financial commercial and drivers that are so intrinsic to market behaviour and activity.”

She also said that the notion that ethics “somehow get in the way of profits” still exists, despite the public's confidence in big business being low, and that the sector needs to work with regulators to annul this notion.