Charities need to accept their transparency failures, warns Charity Commission chair

Charities need to acknowledge they may have failed to meet public expectations around transparency and accountability if they are to be stronger amid the Covid-19 pandemic, warns Charity Commission chair Baroness Stowell.

Speaking during the regulator’s virtual annual public meeting Baroness Stowell said: “Charities need to tell people that they understand and respect that they have expectations in return for their support. And they need to signal now that they haven’t always done this as well as they might in the past and that this is going to change.”

https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/chairs-speech-to-the-charity-commission-annual-public-meeting-2020

Charities need to commit to “greater transparency and accountability in return for the financial support they receive”, she added.

https://www.charitytimes.com/ct/Top10-impact-reporting-resources-for-charities.php

In particular charities need to explain to the public the difference that their donations make “and the care that will be taken in spending every penny”.

She calls for “more humility and accountability” across the charity sector.

In addition she urges the charity to focus on improving diversity, in terms of different political opinions as well as from a wide range of communities.

She added: “We need people who may not naturally agree, people who think differently, perhaps look differently to come together, to get on board together, perhaps literally.

“Ensuring that people with a diversity of outlooks, and a diversity of backgrounds are involved in charities is the right way of meeting the challenge of ensuring that charities are truly welcoming for all people.”

Another recommendation she gives to charities is to focus more “on standards and less about structures”.

She says that the public if often moved by good causes where charities are passionate about the “motives” given for improving society and lives.

Captain Tom Moore

She cites Captain Tom Moore’s record breaking fundraising push during lockdown for NHS Charities Together as an example of the way the public was impressed by “all that he represented in the way that he championed his cause”.

“That is why being clear about the standards people expect of charity – humility, decency, dignity, commitment, accountability – and ensuring they are met is so important to the future of the sector,” added Baroness Stowell.