The charity sector must “build a better understanding” among the public, the incoming chair of NCVO said yesterday.

Peter Kellner, a political journalist and pollster, was speaking at a drinks reception in honour of Sir Martyn Lewis, outgoing chair of NCVO.

He spoke about the yawning gap between the reality of the voluntary sector and the public perceptions of it.

“People still seem to think that if you are a charity nobody is employed, nobody charges for anything, and everything is done voluntarily,” he said. “One of the things we need to do is to build a better public understanding of our sector.”

Kellner said the referendum vote had shown the level of dissatisfaction in communities where charities were working to improve life.

“The referendum vote held up a mirror to British society and showed us some of the strains, tensions and disappointments felt around the country, especially in some of those communities where you are working hard to make life better for people,” he said.

He quoted from a poem called The Deserted Village by Oliver Goldsmith, which includes the line:  “Where wealth accumulates and men decay”.

“I think the lesson from the referendum is that in recent decades, we have indeed become a country where wealth accumulates but men decay,” he said.

Kellner also paid tribute to Lewis.

He said that both men were “recovering journalists” in a profession “famed for being full of cynics”.  Yet Martyn “is by far the most uncynical journalist I have ever known”, Kellner said. 

“When people say they are a realist, they usually mean pessimist.  But Martyn has shown that you can be a realist and an optimist – a combination which is far too rare in our lives.”

Kellner went on to praise NCVO’s “magnificently professional team” and voice his relief at discovering that the organisation he is about to chair is “well run and solvent”.