Fundraisers must take the lead in pushing for transparency above and beyond what is legally mandated, says Celina Ribeiro.

No doubt that charities will still be smarting from the furore over charity executive pay over the last few months. With parliament and the BBC taking an interest, it is likely to remain a bugbear for a little while longer.

But another can of worms has been prised slightly open. In the Charity Commission’s proposed changes for 2014 accounts onwards, charities will have to identify right up front whether they pay trustees. Of course, charities already have to outline trustee remuneration within their accounts, but the new system will make this far more prominent.

Obviously, of the Charity Commission changes, most fundraisers will be predominantly concerned about the new requirement to state whether their charity is a member of the Fundraising Standards Board. And fair enough.

However, with the argument still not yet won for remuneration for full-time staff, the increased public visibility of paying trustees could aggravate old public resentment to paying charity people at all. Trustees, after all, have traditionally been – and largely remain – volunteers.

So this suggests that charities have a task ahead in winning the argument on remuneration as a whole. Not ‘educating’ the public, because, in truth, the public, media and others are only sporadically interested in and/or outraged by the issue. But rather charities have a job in presenting salaries and payments as a necessary, efficient and effective way of spending charity income to their own stakeholders.

This doesn’t mean placing salary packages on the front page of a charity’s website, but it means being as transparent as possible within your own domains: your website, your communications. While the Charity Commission is determined to improve transparency, it would be sad if the Commission was the main place donors and others could go to for easily accessible information on the governance of charities.

As fundraisers know all too well, these issues are not limited to the headlines. They have an impact on the bottom line. And so fundraisers must be champions for transparency within their own organisations. Not a mouthpiece for donor hang-ups, but rather facilitate frankness and openness between donors and the organisations they love and support. Fundraisers must take part in this debate from a proactive stance or face more difficult times ahead.