The government should reinstate the Giving Campaign or create a similar new organisation to boost public giving in the UK, according to Professor Adrian Sargeant.

Sargeant, who won this year’s Outstanding Contribution award from Civil Society Fundraising, made the call in an article he wrote called Why trust matters for the website and magazine this month about the importance of boosting public trust in charities, and particularly in fundraising.

He said the sector was already “awash” with confidence-building measures with legislation, regulation and more recently self-regulation all serving their purpose.  But the few efforts at building public trust in the sector, such as the ImpACT Coalition and www.charityfacts.org, have been so woefully underfunded that they have been unable to reach out to anything more than a handful of charities.

Sargent, who is the Robert F Hartsook professor of fundraising at Indiana University, said: “Our incoming government, if it is serious about building giving in the UK, would do well to reinstate the Giving Campaign or create a similar body whose remit would be to influence all the key drivers of giving in the UK with the specific goal of increasing giving as a percentage of GDP.

“Building the public trust should then be an immediate priority. This isn’t a task that organisations can tackle in isolation so some degree of co-ordination will prove necessary and this is therefore one of the rare occasions where I see the creation of a new body as essential.”

Regarding building confidence, Sargeant favoured bolstering the impact of the Fundraising Standards Board by levying a small charge on gift aid to properly fund it, like the Advertising Standards Authority is funded from a small levy on advertising.

This would bring all UK charities into the scheme, Sargeant said. “The current scenario where charities can pick and choose whether to participate will not succeed in building confidence in the sector. It is charities not presently members of the scheme who are doing the most damage.”

The government has stated as one of its Big Society objectives: “Work with HM Treasury and other departments, to review options to incentivise more philanthropy”, with a deadline of January 2010.