William Shawcross thinks charities which get public money should be highlighted on the Commission register. David Ainsworth wonders why Shawcross is singling out one part of the sector.
William Shawcross, chair of the Charity Commission, suggested earlier this week that charities that take government money should be highlighted in some way on the online Register of Charities. It’s not quite clear how, although I have in mind that he means something similar to the red border for those who file their accounts late.
Nor is it totally clear why he thinks this is a good idea, but he also said yesterday that the cynicism about charities in the press was down to a blurring of the lines between charity and state, and he’s previously suggested we need a whole new definition to distinguish between “organisations that are truly voluntary” and those which deliver public services. So he's obviously not 100 per cent comfortable with the idea of charities taking on government contracts.
It seems odd to single out receiving public money, though. While Shawcross is correct that some sections of the public dislike the idea of government funding for charities, it’s hardly the only concern. There is also suspicion of charities that charge high fees, those that promote certain religious beliefs, and those that pay their chief executive more than £100,000. If you had a border for every issue that exercises the public or the papers, there would be no space left in the middle to describe the charity.
It's true that the number of service delivery charities is growing, and that they do look quite different from traditional voluntary organisations. But then museums and schools and zoos also look a bit different, because they earn their money from fees and charges. Trusts and foundations also look different, because they earn their money from investments. To use a couple of well-worn terms, the sector is a big tent, a loose and baggy monster, and when you start to draw distinctions between different types of charities, clear boundaries often disappear quite quickly.
It's true, too, that members of the public haven’t really caught on to the diverse nature of charity. There is a standardised perception in the mind of many Daily Telegraph readers, and there are many different ways in which charities can look different from this perception.
Charities, in the mind of our theoretical Telegraph reader, take in donations and disgorge good works, like some kind of beneficent sausage machine. And they do not waste anything on things like staff or rent. Instead, they turn every bit of fat and gristle into chewy charity goodness. When it turns out that charities look different from this image, it upsets people.
But charities mostly don’t exist to serve Telegraph readers. They exist to serve those in need, and if the affluent folk of the shires don’t like how they look, I’m not sure that’s the world’s largest problem.
Shawcross appears to have got the wrong end of the stick. His proposals are all about how we change the nature of charity to fit with the perceptions of the public.
Surely instead we should change the perceptions of the public to fit with the nature of charity?
