Caroline Diehl, chief executive of the Media Trust, has said that it is important that charities are scrutinised by the press to help rebuild public trust, at a Labour Party Conference fringe event.
Diehl said that bad practices need to be raised in order to help all charities behave better, and that it is important to have an “open and on side” media.
Diehl, who announced earlier in the month that she was leaving the organisation, said: “Would we really want a society where the old-fashioned press didn’t investigate some of those old-fashioned charities? I would say no actually.
“It is really important as far as restoring and building trust in charities that at least some of the bad practices that are going on are raised, and that will help us all in our charities behave better. I think there is a real issue there around trust. We want the media to be open and on side.”
Diehl, who founded the Media Trust 23 years ago, said that the most important thing that the organisation pushes is “building trust and transparency is giving a voice to, and remembering, the very people that charities are there for”.
She said: “We are not there as charities to create profit, even if we are profitable that is fantastic, but we are there for our beneficiaries, we are there for our communities, we are there for the very people that we are supposed to be supporting, and our donors are there to support.”
She was speaking at a fringe event, hosted by the think tank Covi, on the future of charities.
Too many charities
Diehl added that there were too many charities and smaller ones should collaborate more.
She said that another issue around public trust, “which hasn’t come out so much recently, but is still there, is the issue of there being too many charities”.
She said that “the vast majority of charities are tiny, so how about we all make more of an effort to join up and connect together to campaign”.
And that “the health of the charity and voluntary sector will have to depend on that ability to join up and work and campaign together”.
