Sir Stuart Etherington has restated his criticism of trustees and chief executives for their role in this summer’s fundraising scandals, calling for renewed efforts to improve governance.

Speaking at an event run by Newton Investment Management yesterday, the NCVO chief executive said that while charity leaders appeared to have been interested in the amount of money that was being generated, they had been insufficiently concerned about the way that it was generated.

Calling for the risk register to be used as a management tool, he said “it was quite clear to me that trustees really weren’t aware of the risks and the types of engagement that were being done in their name.”

He added: “I remember asking a group of chief executives if any had ever visited an agency that was acting in their name. The answer was ‘not many’, and that struck me as quite interesting.”

This led him to question the ethics of the UK’s largest charities. “What had happened to the value base? What had happened to organisations that had very high levels of values, and yet this part of their operation seems to have drifted away?”

Pivotal role for trustees

Sir Stuart also argued that the role of trustees is growing in importance, and we therefore need to renew our efforts to support them.

“You can argue that the governance of charities doesn’t fit any more, but I think it broadly does.

“I think what we’ve forgotten is that a lot of effort was put into developing boards, and I think we need to renew that. We need to get back to really helping boards to understand the risks they face and how to mitigate them.”

He said that this is important, not just because of increased media scrutiny, but because changes to the way the sector is financed mean different skills will be required.

Two working groups imminent

Elsewhere, Sir Stuart confirmed that two working groups will be set up “over the next couple of weeks”. One will be to consider how the Fundraising Preference Service will work, and the other will look at how charities can move towards an “opt-in” system for fundraising communications.

The move to asking people to opt in rather than opt out of fundraising communications is required in advance of European data protection rules that come into force in early 2017.

In his speech, Sir Stuart admitted that data handling was an issue which he was “desperately trying to avoid” during his review of fundraising, but it “kept re-emerging”.