Our weekly round-up of outlandish and interesting information collected from the corners of the charity sector.

But it's where I say I live when I claim expenses

When Nicky Morgan, financial secretary to the Treasury and the minister with responsibility for charity tax matters, took to the stage at the Charity Finance Group conference yesterday, she can’t have been surprised to have a question about gift aid.

“We have a lot of gift aid we can’t claim,” one questioner told her. “That’s because a lot of our donors don’t know the difference between their work address and their home address.

“Most of them are MPs and members of the House of Lords.”

Morgan looked a bit taken aback. “I hope I know the difference between my home address and my work address,” she said. “I hope my family know too.”

Society Diary understands, though, with MPs having all those houses to choose from, it must get tricky.

I agree with Ian

Trust was a big issue at the CFG conference. In particular, an increasing number of people seem to have spotted a trend: almost no-one who trusts charities actually has any idea what they do.

Ian Theodoreson, chair of the CFG, spoke a few weeks ago of supporters being “extraordinary disconnected” from charities, and warmed to a similar theme yesterday.

But he wasn’t alone. Politicians of all major parties joined in.
During a panel session both Nick Hurd, the charities minister, and Lisa Nandy, his shadow, spoke of the need for charities to explain their role in society better to donors who still seem to think that no charity worker should be paid.

“Mind you,” added Hurd with mock-lugubriousness. “At least they trust you. They don’t trust me.”

Baroness Barker, a Liberal Democrat peer, got up to say she supported the ideas Hurd and Nandy put forward.

“I agree with Nick,” she said.

“You’re a Liberal Democrat,” Hurd quipped. “You’re trained to say that.”

Are you a chicken or a turkey?

Transparency was top of the agenda at the Directory for Social Change’s Charity Law Conference this week. Debra Allcock Tyler, chief executive of the DSC, had a four-minute slot as part of a panel debate to talk whether the sector is sufficiently transparent.

To make her point, Allcock Tyler had popped out at lunchtime to buy a prop – a chicken and turkey sausage.

It led to an interesting and not immediately forgettable analogy about the need for background knowledge as well as raw data.

Apparently the sausage is like a charity and the sausage packet is like a charity's annual accounts.

During the same debate Allcock Tyler tore into charity trustees, saying they were scared to defend their ideas about remuneration. So perhaps the sausage was supposed to indicate that they were a bunch of chickens and their ideas were turkeys.

But no, it appeared she was now making a different point.

Just because the sausage packet told you everything that was in the sausage, she explained, it didn't tell you what you needed to know. While the packet said it’s made of 21 per cent turkey and 20 per cent chicken, it didn’t say whether it would make you fat or if it was bad for you, she said.

Society Diary feels that working in charity won't make you fat but it might be bad for you. But that, apparently, is not the point either.

The point is that it's not enough to tell people information about your charity and let them figure it out for themselves. You have to actually communicate what you do, not just be transparent about it.