An article in the UK Guardian newspaper today was very interesting to read.  It was reporting on the results of a survey into factors influencing public trust in charities.

The survey found that in general, most people had a good opinion of charities but … when asked to grade against a direct question on the most important qualities for trust and confidence, “ensuring that a reasonable proportion of donations make it to the end cause” was the highest graded quality. The survey explains that: “This indicates that while respondents may state the importance of donations reaching the end cause, it is actually the impact that charities have that has the strongest impact on their overall trust levels.”

We all know that there have been charities in the past which have misused their funds or perhaps not accurately reported on the way they were distributed. Do you think that has made the public mistrust all charities and not for profits?

Do you think the success of a charity can be assessed by looking at ratios, such as fundraising costs in accounts, and comparing them to the amount raised?

Perhaps we need to be looking at the message we are giving out to the public about how we manage our organisations.  No one expects is to work for free and, of course, there will always be ongoing expenses as there are with any other organisation.  Perhaps it’s time we were more cautious in our financial decision making so that we can clearly show how and why we spend our funds as we do.  Perhaps, too, we should spend more time on demonstrating our successes so that our value to the world is quite visible.

How do you show the balance of funds raised vs expenses in your charity or not for profit?