Charities must demonstrate their effectiveness better to the public or face losing trust, David McCullough, chief executive of Royal Voluntary Service, said yesterday.
McCullough said that highly trusted organisations could lose support, and gave the example that attitudes had changed to the BBC in “a relatively short space of time”.
“The external environment is shifting and we need to be very careful as a sector not just to say we are good people doing good things but actually we can demonstrate why what we do is good, what the impact of it is,” he said.
He said that currently charities need to move from telling other charities and funders about their impact, to trying to communicate it directly to the public.
“We are moving from an environment where in retail terms we were a B2B business, so an organisation that was selling to other organisations, to a B2C business where we are interacting directly with consumers,” he said.
McCullough was speaking to delegates at the High Impact Conference, organised by charity publication Third Sector in partnership with think tank NPC.
Look to other sectors
He said charities should take inspiration from the consumer retail sector to devise better ways of evaluating their data.
Comparing when he worked in retail in the 1990s McCullough said: “In 2014 I’m pretty sure I know less on a weekly basis about the numbers in my organisation despite the internet and technology.
“Because we don’t think in those terms and we don’t think in those ways and I really think we have to shift as a sector.”
He said RVS has been doing a lot of doing qualitative analysis and using consumer market research techniques. “There is lots that we can learn from other sectors about the way that they evaluate data,” he said.
Shift in funding
McCullough also said that while funders are increasingly looking for evidence of impact it “flows two ways” and that it “allows us to say this fantastic impact of this but it costs money”.
He added that charities should be better at making the business case for their work because “volunteers are cost effective but they are not free”.
