Jane Tully, head of policy and public affairs at CFG, has criticised the government’s recent announcement on releasing data on charities’ spend in an open data format, as "opportunistic and inappropriate" in tone.
Speaking at an event yesterday to mark the launch of a report by the Impact Coalition on accountability and transparency, Tully said the announcement from government was pushing the view that the public do not trust charities.
She also criticised the announcement for implying that the data was new, when it is already available on the Charity Commission website. “It upset some of the sector,” she said.
The announcement from the Cabinet Office was entitled ‘New data release opens the lid on charity finances’ and included research that said a lack of knowledge about how charities spent their money was a barrier to giving.
Speaking to civilsociety.co.uk after the event, Katherine Smithson, public and policy affairs officer at CFG, said it was unfortunate that the focus of the press release was on providing public data on how charities spend and that it quoted a survey which found almost half of people with low trust in charities feel they "spend too much of their funds on salaries/administration".
“It’s positive the data will be available,” she said. “There are huge benefits and it can lead to greater sector research and analysis.
“But, the government announcement focused on the public believing charities’ spend too much on admin. Also, this data is already freely available, the government are just releasing it in a new format. This was not clear in the announcement.”
Educate public on charities' spending
Elsewhere at yesterday’s event, Adrian Sargeant, professor of marketing and fundraising at the University of Plymouth, said there needed to be a public education initiative about how charities work and how they spend their money.
"Openness and transparency is only part of the equation," he said. "Throwing out random numbers about how much we spend on fundraising and administration without simultaneously making an effort to educate people on what they mean can led to people making erroneous conclusions.”
He continued that there was a space for the sector to inform people about the behaviour of administration costs and a sense of what drives them.
“If one organisation does it, it’s quite difficult as it looks like self-justification. Far better for a charity to say 'this is our performance, now go to this site to see how well we are doing relative to others in the sector'.
“There is an educational dimension alongside accountability and transparency.”
The new report by the Impact Coalition is called Through a Glass Darkly: the case for accelerating the drive for accountability, clarity and transparency in the charity sector.
