How charities spend their money and what they do are more of a concern for the public than fundraising methods, according to a poll carried out by Ipsos Mori for the think tank NPC.
However, the majority of respondents to the survey could not think of anything they thought charities ‘did wrong’.
Earlier this year a 1,000-strong representative sample of the public was asked the question ‘What, if anything are the main things that charities are doing wrong?’ without being given any suggested answers. The findings have been published today in Having their say: what the public likes and dislikes about charities.
Around 600 responses were then categorised into three areas: how charities use money, what they do and how charities raise money. Some 43 per cent of those polled did not answer, said there was nothing wrong, or did not know.
Issues about how charities use money attracted the most criticism, with 31 per cent. Concerns about running costs, staff salaries, executive pay and lack of transparency fell into this category.
Some 28 per cent of respondents were concerned about what charities do. This includes not making a difference, being too much like a business and being too political.
Concerns relating to fundraising made up 15 per cent, with face-to-face fundraising accounting for just 6 per cent.
Those who did not trust charities made more complaints about how charities use or spend money than those who have a high level of trust, while the proportion of concerns relating to fundraising was broadly the same for both camps.
Presenting the findings of the report yesterday, James Noble, deputy head of measurement and evaluation at NPC, said: “Fundraising approaches do cause concern and irritation, but they don’t in themselves cause low trust.”
Improve trust by increasing engagement
NPC has also noted a correlation between the people who have a high trust in charities and those who are engaged in any way with the sector.
Those people that were engaged with charities in some way were less likely to have complaints about their practices.
“Charities could increase levels of trust by engaging more people, any kind of engagement at all seems to be positive,” said Noble.
More than 80 per cent agreed with the statement that charities should be transparent about how money is spent.
Dan Corry, chief executive of NPC, said: "Charities have a crucial role to play in society, both in helping people on the ground and making the voice of civil society to the public debate. But evidently charities have work to do to persuade voters that they are concentrating on the right work."
