Fundraisers must persuade trustees and senior leaders to become more involved in their sector, and must respond more effectively to public criticism, an audience of fundraisers heard at an event yesterday morning.

The comments were made at a breakfast meeting for those involved in fundraising, convened on Twitter by Becky Slack, founder of Slack Communications, and hosted at Change.org’s office.

The event was intended to discuss why charities had been so “timid” in responding to criticism following the Olive Cooke scandal this summer.

Fundraisers said that part of the problem was a lack of interest and involvement from trustees who were too focused on the Kids Company scandal, which unfolded at the same time.

Martin Jervis, chair at Thames Hospice, said that he had been to two Association of Chairs meetings where the phrase “the events of the summer” applied exclusively to Kids Company.

“Not one person meant fundraising,” he said.

He said that the Charity Commission’s announcement that it will review its fundraising guidance was “a huge opportunity to engage with trustees” and said he had tasked all of his fellow trustees with reading the current guidance.

Laura Croudace, partnerships and engagement manager at the Resource Alliance, told the room that in a previous role a trustee had been surprised when she told him that she was a corporate fundraiser, as he did not realise that the charity did that in-house.

She said trustees could have provided effective support for fundraising if they had been more engaged.

“Afterwards I googled the trustees,” she said, “and they’re all really well connected.”

She called for a qualification for prospective trustees “so that those people who take on the role” are “really down with it”.

Richard Sved, director at 3rd Sector Mission Control, agreed that new trustees should be trained in fundraising.

“Fundraising is always down the agenda. It is never talked about strategically. We all have a responsibility to try and change that,” he said.

Sved added that the way fundraisers were perceived was still a problem in some charities.

“Some people not in fundraising look disdainfully at fundraisers; we need to change that,” he said.

He said it was concerning if fundraisers allowed themselves to be separated from the policy and communications functions.

Ian MacQuillin, director of fundraising think tank Rogare, said that his organisation is due to publish research in the new year, which has found that fundraisers “didn’t have the support of their board, chief executive and finance director”.

Adina Claire, fundraising and communications director at War on Want, said: “I know all the members of my board and they understand fundraising because I talk to them and I use their language.”

“They have confidence in me - they know I talk to my team about them.”

“What are directors of fundraising at other charities doing if they are not doing that?”

Emma Malcolm, director of fundraising at Rethink Mental Illness, said: “Directors of fundraising need to be leading by example” and spend more time communicating with other departments.

She said that as her charity’s first director of fundraising she had just written a five-year strategy and “done a complete review what we are doing” taking into account that it works with vulnerable people, and that “we are maybe going to raise less in the first year”.

“The board of trustees have said that feels right,” she said.

She added that: “The charity sector is obsessed with growing – if we are not careful we are going to screw ourselves over.”

Fundraising advocates

MacQuillin said that he was looking into the possibility of setting up a group of fundraising advocates, who could defend the sector in the media.

He said that this was a model that had worked well for the Public Fundraising Association, when he was its head of communications, and that it was “transferable” to other forms of fundraising.

“Charities didn’t want to speak up and we didn’t see it as our job as a regulator," he said. "We identified a series of advocates who weren’t people connected with the charities.

“When the media called we could put one of those up and we were able to change media opinion quite well by doing that. We were then able to bring charity people into that advocacy programme.”

He criticised the “information deficit theory”, which suggests that subjects of negative publicity should not put out more information in response, because it prolongs the story.

He said the sector also needs to stop thinking it can change opinions through education, but instead focus on engaging better to understand concerns.

Macquillin also called for fundraising to be put “into a much wider context”.