Charity transparency

This morning an article in Third Sector has chosen to examine the extent to which charities should aim to improve their transparency. The majority of those consulted suggested that most charities need to get better at communicating both their costs and achievements to donors and potential donors in order to improve their lot in the long run.

Both ‘impact’ and ‘transparency’ are words you hear a lot in the sector, generally woven into an intense dialogue about things that need to be demonstrated, or indeed purposely not demonstrated, in order to prove credibility and/or attract donations.

The Back Britain’s Charities campaign has similarly spoken about the need for value and impact to be evident and tangible, and the importance of charities really ‘banging a drum’ about what they do. Nevertheless, for some charities - and particularly smaller ones that we hear from on a regular basis - most resources acquired must necessarily be diverted straight to the frontline and directly to beneficiaries.

So are debates around transparency a luxury of larger, more well known charities? Well this is complicated by the ambiguity around what we are even talking about when we consider transparency. Within the Third Sector article, Joe Saxton of npfSynergy suggests there could be some dispute:

 ”When people are talking about transparency they are talking about different things. Some people are talking about impact. Other people are talking about finance and figures. It can be in the way you present a set of figures. We probably do need some agreement about what it means to be transparent.” (Third Sector)

When we launched Back Britain’s Charities we felt that it was important to include an ‘ask’ to charities, to sit alongside our asks to the public, government and business. We wanted our stakeholders in business, government and the public to be clear that charities were also taking on responsibility for their own future, and that the campaign wasn’t under the illusion that all voluntary sector organisations work in a super efficient way, or that all fundraising was carried out flawlessly. Equally, it was important the campaign wasn’t solely about other stakeholders from other sectors being called upon to wade in and bail charities out.

A key part of that ‘ask’ reads as follows:

“It’s clearly the responsibility of all charities to ensure that the donations people give are used to achieve the greatest impact possible. Charities should always use resources as effectively and efficiently as possible”.

In real testimony sent to us through the sign-up section of this website we have, since our launch, received an avalanche of anecdotal tales, each telling what good has been done with what little money. Stories of how shoestring economics have been deployed and still achieved results for beneficiaries, making an important difference. What is evident is that some small local charities have few avenues through which they can showcase their ‘value’ or ‘impact’, nor do the they have the manpower or flexibility to do it - or indeed the financial means to justify diverting money away from their beneficiaries to demonstrate their impact. Increased transparency of expenditure would, and does in many cases, reveal organisations on the brink - or at the very least holding it together with limited resources.

We’ve now come to see talking about value and impact as one of the key functions of the Back Britain’s Charities campaign, stepping in where many charities are unable to voice their successes or concerns.

If you have a story that is worth telling to a wider audience (like the one below!), we invite you to send it to us at contact@backbritainscharities.org.uk so that we can talk about charities like yours, their impact and the consequences of the current financial climate.