It was a tough summer for charities. It started with the death of Olive Cooke, whose suicide was linked in the press to fundraisers “hounding her” for money. A series of Daily Mail stings on fundraising agencies followed, along with various news reports on chief executive pay and mishandling of data. Then there was the media and political fallout, which resulted in the closure of Kids Company.
Trust in charities is at an eight-year low and morale is arguably even lower among charity workers, especially those who work in fundraising. As the furore dies down, how can the relationship between charities and the press, and ultimately the public, be improved?
Howard Lake, publisher of UK Fundraising, points out that the behaviour of only a small number of the hundreds of thousands of charities in the UK was called into question. He says: “One of the downsides of this sustained [media] campaign is that it feels like the existence of charities as a whole is being question and that fundraisers feel they can’t be proud of the work they do.”
Fundraisers might be forgiven for thinking the press is out to get them but as Lake points out, it’s the media’s job to expose wrongdoing. “I don’t have a problem with charities being found out if there is anyone doing anything illegal or unethical,” he says. “By all means the media should highlight that.”
This is echoed by Vicky Browning, director of CharityComms, a network for communications professionals who work in charities. While she believes that some published stories were examples of lazy journalism, stories exposing the misuse of data “aren’t a case of evil media having a vendetta”, she says. “As a sector, we need to expect people to question what we do and we need to be able to explain it. If we can’t explain it, we ought to be sorting it out.”
Explaining better what charities do is a huge part of Browning’s project, Understanding Charities, which is a collaboration with the National Council of Voluntary Organisations (NCVO) and other groups. She says: “[It] actually started before all these news reports. It’s a coalition of the willing. We could see there was a disconnect between what people think charities do – especially big charities – and what they actually do.”
Much of the media coverage has focused on fundraising tactics from cold calling to the use of legacy donations. Browning says the charity sector doesn’t explain well enough why they need to ask for donations. “The sad fact is that people don’t just wake up and think ‘oh I’ll donate some money today’,” she says.
It’s a proven fact that donors need to be asked and nudged and reminded before they part with their cash.
Other news reports have focused on how much staff get paid. Again, Browning feels the public have an image of charities as being run by volunteers, which is only the case for smaller charities. The Sun’s exclusive on the Alzheimer’s Society spending a large portion of funding on staff shows the depth of the misunderstanding.
She says: “Shock horror, the Alzheimer’s Society spends 50% on staff. Where do they think the money goes? You don’t give the Alzheimer’s Society a pound and they hand it to a person with dementia. They run services, they give advice, they do research – staff do all those roles.”
One part of Understanding Charities’ remit is to help charities develop a more positive narrative about their work. This is something former ITV and BBC news anchor Martyn Lewis is passionate about. He’s uniquely placed to campaign for it. As well as being chair of NCVO’s trustee board, he’s a patron of Positive News, the world’s first positive newspaper, and director of Ipso, the new press regulator that deals with press complaints.
“What has happened in the media is a salutary lesson,” he says. “It’s an example of the media in this country doing a proper job of calling every section of society to account. They have proved that the voluntary sector is not immune to that.”
However, he believes editors should recognise the news value in the positive work charities do and that they are missing out on amazing stories because of a negative bias. “There is enormous under-reporting of the great work of the voluntary sector by the national media,” Lewis says. “There are serious positive stories being ignored that are interesting by any journalistic standards and should be covered alongside negative stories.”
Explaining what he means by serious positive stories, he says: “A lot of this work is happening in a local way but they could be templates for solutions to the key problems in society. And if they were reported nationally, the government could be inspired to roll them out around the country.”
But not everyone agrees. Polly Neate, chief executive of Women’s Aid says: “Newspapers are always full of bad news because that is news. Unfortunately, ‘person does job he or she is paid to do’ is never going to be a good news story. I’m much more interested in the dialogue that needs to happen about the heart, soul and future of the sector between charities, big funders and the government.”
She adds: “In terms of communication, if you’re a sector at ease with itself, you’re much more likely to communicate in a successful way. Rather than complaining about how people don’t write about how the sector does a good job, what we’re seeing is a sign that the sector is not at ease with itself. It needs to do something about that.”
While some charities are tackling the issue head-on, with Friends of the Earth sending direct mail to their stakeholders asking if they are getting it right, David Hamilton, director of communications for the Scout Association and co-chair of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations’ not-for-profit committee, believes others have buried their head in the sand. He says: “There’s a kind of bunker mentality where people don’t want to talk about it, and that is the wrong approach.”
Others are simply firefighting each crisis as it comes, which Hamilton believes is a mistake. “They need to look at it holistically as a reputation issue, he says. “It should be about getting back in touch with the people that matter the most – the public. Some are, but some are languishing in the bunker and they should get out.”
Whatever the charity sector does next, from sharing a more positive narrative to educating the public on why it needs money, there is a great deal to do to win back the trust of the public after this summer of scandals.
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This article was amended on 17 September to say that public trust in charities is at an eight-year low. A previous version said trust was at an all-time low.
