Today our group editor Tania Mason appeared on You and Yours on Radio 4, debating the value of charity awards ceremonies with Dame Hilary Blume. In this blog Tania expands on her arguments; we invite Dame Hilary - and readers - to respond.

The story begins when Dame Hilary, chief executive of Charities Advisory Trust, was contacted by the organisers of another sector awards programme - not ours, merely a poor imitation of our Charity Awards (the Baftas to our Oscars) - to say she had been nominated by her charity for an individual achievement award and had made the shortlist.  Did she want to come along on the night? She might? That would be £375 for a ticket then, thanks.

At this startling revelation Dame Hilary contacted Radio 4's You and Yours programme to complain about charity awards organisers fleecing charities.  The BBC contacted the organisers of those particular awards, who declined to appear on the show but issued a statement. The producers then contacted me, and I jumped at the chance. Go on the radio and talk about how wonderful our Charity Awards are? Just try and stop me!

So that's how I found myself in the BBC's Millbank studios at 3pm Tuesday with presenter Winifred Robinson in one ear and Dame Hilary in the other.  I relished the opportunity to tell Radio 4’s listeners that we've run the Charity Awards for the last 15 years because we think it's really important to identify and celebrate the amazing work going on in the sector, to help spread good practice and drive up standards.  I was proud to be able to say that unlike those other awards that tried to charge Dame Hilary to attend, we provide two free places at our gala ceremony to every shortlisted charity – that’s usually 60 places – and the recipient of our Daniel Phelan Award for Outstanding Achievement also attends for free, with their family.  All the charities can buy extra places if they want to send more than two representatives, but two places are guaranteed free.  I was happy to explain that our revenue model relies on sponsorship and table sales to cover the cost of the event so that we can keep it free for the charities, because we believe that’s the right thing to do.

But Dame Hilary wasn’t satisfied with that.  She argued that it didn’t matter who paid for the ceremony and dinner, it was wrong for the event to take place at all.  She said the money paid out by sponsors for such an event should be spent on bowls of rice for refugees or on educating poor children in Africa.  She rejected my contention that even charity workers deserve a thank you, a pat on the back, a night of celebration in recognition of their efforts, and said that their feelgood factor would be amplified much more by the knowledge that they had been able to help more people than by a glitzy night out in a five-star hotel.  Their work is reward enough, she said.

I have some sympathy with her argument.  Of course it would be better that every child in the world was fed and educated before anybody spent any money on anything else.  Unfortunately that utopia does not yet exist.  In the meantime, we live in the real world and for that reason Dame Hilary’s argument does not, in my view, stand up to scrutiny.  Here are some reasons why, in no particular order:

The organisations that buy sponsorships and tables at The Charity Awards could, if they wanted, donate that money to charity, as Dame Hilary suggests.  They choose not to.  Our overall Charity Awards partner for the last 11 years, Charities Aid Foundation, support the awards because they too recognise the importance of highlighting and rewarding well-managed and effective charities.   They believe that spending their money in this way delivers more impact in the long run.

The notion that charity workers should never be thanked or rewarded with benefits such as a night out at a great event, that the simple act of doing their job is enough reward, is nothing but unenlightened grandstanding.  Why should the private sector have all the fun?  Charity staff, in the main, work hard in difficult circumstances, navigating complex challenges, to help people less fortunate than themselves.  Why shouldn’t they be praised for their good work, and treated to a bit of a party occasionally?  No, according to Dame Hilary it ought to be all work and no play.  I don’t believe that’s good for anyone, including the people the charities are trying to help.

The value of keeping your staff happy cannot be underestimated.  Charities often can’t pay their staff as much as they might earn in other sectors, so they have to be a bit creative at finding other ways to keep them motivated, and make them feel their work is worthwhile and their contribution valued.  There are many ways to do this, and I don’t believe that sending them to an exciting night out where they can have their efforts applauded by hundreds of their peers and be inspired by great projects from other charities, is all that bad.  They might even go back to work the next day with a crop of new contacts and a host of new ideas.

There can be other benefits too.  One of the many success stories from our Charity Awards is that of Julia’s House Hospice, who won the Healthcare & Medical Research category in 2012. On the night, the well-known cookery writer Annabel Karmel presented the trophy to Julia’s House staff, who asked her to visit Julia’s House, where Annabel agreed to become a patron of the charity. Soon afterwards Annabel met Samantha Cameron, and Mrs Cameron offered to host a reception for the charity at 10 Downing Street. This took place in June 2013, attended by many current and potential major donors. One of these was Guy Ritchie, the film director, who lives on the Dorset/Wiltshire border.  Ritchie was persuaded to host a fundraising party for the charity at his house, which raised £1m. This party was attended by Robert Downey Junior, the actor, who went on to organise a raffle and raised a further £2m.  A new hospice in Wiltshire is due to open in 2017 - all thanks to the Charity Awards.

The very act of entering the Charity Awards is, we believe, a positive thing.  The application form is very structured and requires charities to think clearly about they identified a need, how they planned to meet that need, how they implemented their plan, what they learnt from the implementation and how their learning fed back into what they are doing.  Evidence of results is requested throughout.  Many people over the years have commented on how revealing they have found it to simply complete the application form.  It has forced them to think more clearly about what it is they are trying to achieve and how they will know when they have achieved it.  One of our 2011 winners, Absolute Return for Kids, asked if it could adopt our form internally as a method of assessing its own projects.

Demonstrating time and again that charities are capable of coming up with really great, innovative ideas and then executing them brilliantly reinforces the role that charities have in combating social ills.  Celebrating these charities by giving some of their staff a fantastic and inspiring night out and making them feel proud of what they’ve achieved, at no or very little expense to the charity, is not, I believe, immoral or wasteful.

You can listen to the programme on You and Yours on iPlayer here.

Please continue the debate by posting your comments below.

The Charity Awards 2016 will open for entries on 1 December.  See charityawards.co.uk for more details.