Category: Food for thought

The DCMS says charities will also be offered free training so they have the ‘highest possible safeguarding standards’

The government has said it will spend “up to £2m” on measures to improve safeguarding among charities in England.

An announcement from the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport today said the funds would be used to improve incident handling and would include digital solutions to reporting incidents.

Charities will also be offered free training so they can “implement the highest possible safeguarding standards” and they will be given clear guidance on reporting and whistleblowing, the DCMS said today.

The funding is understood to be coming from existing DCMS budgets and will be used to develop projects such as finding digital ways for people to report safeguarding concerns to the correct person.

A new digital tool along these lines is expected to be trialled in early 2019.

More announcements on the precise funding amounts are expected to be made in due course, Third Sector understands.

The DCMS, which has been working with the Home Office, the Big Lottery Fundand the Charity Commission on the new measures, said the work would build on the code of ethics, which is being led by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations.

The final version of the code has not yet been published. It is expected to come out later this year after a consultation on a draft version closed last month.

The DCMS said it had appointed John Drew, former chief executive of the Youth Justice Board of England and Wales, to chair a new cross-sector Safeguarding Programme Group, which would oversee the implementation of the new measures.

The DCMS said the group would complement the programme of work for the international aid sector announced last week by Penny Mordaunt, the international development secretary.

Mordaunt said the government was planning to pilot a £10m online platform to help prevent sexual predators finding work in the aid sector.

Tracey Crouch, the Minister for Sport and Civil Society, said today that the government wanted to instil fundamental changes to help restore the reputation of the sector

“Safeguarding is non-negotiable,” she said. “Charities are widely trusted and we need to ensure an environment exists where everyone feels safe, from service users to the employees and volunteers who dedicate their time and skills to benefit communities across the country.

“These measures will help to protect and empower people to speak up and ensure charity leaders tackle poor behaviour head on.”

https://www.thirdsector.co.uk/minister-plans-pilot-online-platform-fight-against-sexual-predators/policy-and-politics/article/1496476

Sir Stuart Etherington, chief executive of the NCVO, said: “Charities have been leading a lot of work to improve safeguarding, and I’m very pleased to have the minister’s backing. This funding will help turn plans into reality and prevent abusers using charities as cover for their crimes.

“We had positive feedback to our consultation on the charity code of ethics – a charity sector equivalent to the Nolan principles for public life – and expect to publish it later this year.

“I hope it will become an indispensable tool for charity trustees to ensure their organisations are always acting with the greatest integrity.’

Source: Third Sector

In a speech to launch the regulator’s new strategy, Baroness Stowell says charities should uphold their traditional values and work as the public expects them to charities should operate less like businesses and a culture change is needed in the sector to uphold its traditional values and operate in a way the public expects, according to Baroness Stowell, chair of the Charity Commission.

In a speech at the Royal Society of Arts last night to launch the regulator’s new strategy, Stowell said that charities were “at heart, about altruism and selflessness”, but some had undermined that concept in the eyes of the public, and that meant charities were no longer being given the benefit of the doubt.

“People have seen some charities displaying uncharitable behaviour – whether that be aggressive fundraising practices, exploitation of vulnerable people or single-minded pursuit of organisational growth – and they have become less inclined to trust them unquestioningly,” she said.

“They feel that the promise of charity has not always been kept.”

Stowell warned that charities “do not have a natural, eternal monopoly over the channelling of our altruistic impulses” and said that new technologies, enterprise models and social changes were providing an alternative to the traditional charitable model.

All charities and the regulator, she said, should therefore take steps to promote what is special about charities and to meet public expectations or “risk being complicit in its decline”.

Stowell said that a culture change was needed and told the story of a charity chief executive who she said did not compete to deliver contracts that were already being provided by another local charity.

“That leader understands that the charity’s purpose is to help their beneficiaries, not to grow bigger and stronger for the sake of it – or worse, at the expense of another, smaller charity,” she said.

“And because they are aware that, as a leader of a charitable organisation, they have a wider responsibility towards the flourishing of charity as a whole, so more people benefit.

“That’s charitable behaviour,” Stowell said. “That’s behaviour that separates a charity from a profit-making business – that’s the attitude, the ethos, the public expect.”

Stowell also took aim at sceptics in the charity sector who felt the public’s view of what a charity should do was too simplistic.

“I also know there are some in the sector whose response might be to pooh-pooh the idea of charitable behaviour,” she said.

“Who might reject the notion as ‘motherhood and apple pie’, as the perspective of a naive public that simply doesn’t understand how complex an operation a modern charity is, or how clever and sophisticated you need to be to run one.

“Of you I ask: if you do not buy into the basic principle that a charity should hold itself to high standards of charitable behaviour and attitudes, then why are you involved at all?”

If these charities’ operations were so complex that they was difficult to understand, she said, this was “all the more reason to reassure the public and your beneficiaries that you’re getting the basics right” to prove the charity was competent enough to deliver sensitive programmes and oversee complicated structures.

Charities should also be more vocal about their high standards and how they make a difference, as well as taking responsibility for the idea of charity and how it is viewed by the public, Stowell told the audience.

“If you are involved in a charity today, you form part of the ship that holds within it the very concept of charity,” she said.

“And if you fail the public, you’re chipping away at the hull of that ship, and you risk sinking more than just yourself and your own organisation.”

Source: Third Sector

Speaking at a Conservative Party conference fringe event, Philip Dunne, the MP for Ludlow, praises the British Lung Foundation for linking with about 30 other charities to push respiratory health up the agenda

Charities should speak to government in a single voice to have the most impact, a former health minister has told the Conservative Party conference.

Philip Dunne, the MP for Ludlow, was speaking at a fringe round-table event in Birmingham yesterday on the role of charities in tackling health and care challenges.

He praised the work of the British Lung Foundation, which had joined with about 30 other charities to ensure respiratory health issues were pushed further up the agenda.

He said it was an “extremely appropriate development that the NHS and government are able to talk to interested charities as a block rather than individually”.

He said charities and sector bodies needed to “work together on certain issues as a body because you carry so much more weight when you do”.

Much of the session focused on how charities could alleviate demand for public services, either by providing certain services themselves or by providing care and activities that prevented people needing more drastic medical intervention further down the line.

But Andrew Selous, the MP for South West Bedfordshire and member of the Health and Social Care Committee, said many public services were cautious about referring members of the public to charitable organisations, fearing they would get the blame if provision turned out to be inadequate or unsafe.

He said that statutory bodies might be more comfortable signposting service users to the voluntary sector if organisations providing such services were given quality kitemarks.

“What I think we need is a basic health check on an organisation that it’s got a good equalities policy and DBS checks,” Selous said. “A couple of basic things so services such as GPs can refer with confidence”.

He said statutory services would still be accountable to the people they referred, but it would allow them to have more confidence in the service they were referring people to.

“We’ve really got to be able to crack that to get this link between the voluntary and community sector, civil society and the guys at the coalface of public services.”

Sagar Sharma, director of policy and communication at Barnardo’s, warned that charities needed to be careful about how much statutory and contract work they took on, because they risked being seen as “not really a charity” and losing public trust.

Source: Third Sector

A survey by nfpSynergy in conjunction with Third Sector finds that complying with the new data protection rules has had mixed effects for the charity sector.

More than half of charities have seen the number of supporters they can contact by email fall as a result of the General Data Protection Regulation, a survey has revealed.

The survey of 176 charity workers by the research consultancy nfpSynergy, in conjunction with Third Sector, found that 53 per cent had seen their email database shrink to some extent as a result of complying with the GDPR, stringent data protection rules that came into force in May.

The number of people who were contactable by email more than halved for 18 per cent of respondents, although 31 per cent said their email database had stayed the same size.

Postal databases have also been affected, with 37 per cent of respondents saying theirs had shrunk to some extent, and 38 per cent saying it had remained the same.

Meanwhile, 20 per cent of respondents said their phone database had shrunk and 21 per cent said it had stayed the same. Most people (59 per cent) said they did not know or the question did not apply to them.

Joe Saxton, the founder of nfpSynergy, said: “Given that people might have spent years building up these databases of supporters, this could mean a large set of income-generating and relationship-building opportunities that are no longer possible.

“Some organisations will have seen their opportunities to raise money severely diminished.”

He said that some organisations might have believed that they needed to rely on opt-in consent to contact supporters and were unaware that they could use the concept of legitimate interest, which becomes invalid once someone has been asked for consent.

“They might have a whole chunk of supporters who are still interested in them but they do not have the mechanisms to talk to them,” Saxton said. “And of course if they’re very small organisations that’s a serious long-term financial implication.”

Half of respondents said they were using legitimate interest to contact donors, and 62 per cent said they were using consent, the survey found.

When asked about the challenges they had found in preparing for the GDPR, many pointed to the time and effort it had required, one saying it had been “enormous”, another saying it had “seriously limited” the charity’s ability to carry out its mission and another describing it as “a total and utter waste of time and money” that would horrify donors.

Almost nine out of ten respondents (89 per cent) agreed that preparing for and implementing processes to comply with the legislation took up a lot of staff time, and almost three-quarters (74 per cent) said it had taken a lot of money or resources.

Saxton said he thought it was likely that small charities would have found becoming compliant especially difficult.

One respondent said worrying about the GDPR had “hamstrung” the organisation and it had been given “often vague and contradictory” advice.

“Small charities are really suffering in the wake of the introduction of GDPR,” the respondent said.

The majority of respondents (70 per cent) agreed it had really helped their organisation get its data protection processes in order, and 53 per cent said it would help to improve trust in the charity sector.

But less than half (49 per cent) felt the GDPR had been beneficial overall and only 15 per cent agreed that it had improved their relationship with their supporters – 28 per cent disagreed.

Saxton said: “There are some very frustrated people over GDPR and a huge amount of time and energy has been spent on becoming compliant.”

He acknowledged that there was no difference in the law for charities and other organisations, but said charities had been particularly affected because they were less likely to be able to rely on having a contract or a legal obligation to contact people than businesses.

Despite the money and time put into preparing for the implementation of the legislation, only 61 per cent of respondents felt that staff at their organisation had a good understanding of the GDPR and 17 per cent strongly disagreed with the idea that their colleagues had a good grasp of it, the survey found.

When asked to rate their organisation’s GDPR compliance out of 10, the average rating was 7.5, which Saxton said was “moderately encouraging”.

But he added: “I worry about where we’ll be a year from now. I think quite a lot of organisations won’t be compliant or will get shoddy if they think they can stop worrying.”

Source: Third Sector

Michelle Russell, director of investigations at the Charity Commission, tells meeting that she would welcome the responsibility to file such reports being put on a statutory footing

Charities that do not file serious incident reports to the Charity Commission could be deemed more risky than those that do, according to the regulator’s director of investigations, monitoring and enforcement

Speaking in a debate on serious incident reporting at the law firm BWB’s annual charity tea party yesterday, Michelle Russell said the commission wanted charities to treat serious incident reporting as a responsible way of managing risk, rather than an indication of wrongdoing.

“We are actually more worried about your peers that are not reporting than the ones that are,” Russell said. “If you are operating in the same area, you can’t not be exposed to the same risks.

“So we want to change the message to ‘if you do report, you are acting responsibly and we think you’re managing your risk’.”

The Charity Commission has previously called for more serious incidents to be reported to it, and suggested in its evidence to the International Development Select Committee’s inquiry into sexual exploitation and abuse in the aid sector that serious incident reporting should be placed on a statutory footing.

Russell said she wanted to provide more guidance on the information charities should submit in serious incident reports, and added that the regulator was considering a digital system to guide charities on this subject.

She said that putting the system on a statutory footing would increase the amount of information the commission had about issues affecting charities and allow it to take action to protect others in the sector.

“Without having some of the bulk information in a systematic way, we can’t have a grown-up conversation with the public and the press that says ‘don’t panic, because these things will happen but the charity is on it’,” she said.

Russell added that having this information would help the regulator send out alerts about issues such as frauds targeted at charities.

Rosamund McCarthy, a partner at BWB, told delegates that serious incidents were under-reported, with 99.2 per cent of charities not having filed serious incident reports last year.

But she said putting the system on a statutory footing would risk charities reporting too many minor incidents, and there should be a government-backed, independent review of the serious incident reporting scheme.

This review would examine how the system worked, what information the commission wanted, what it needed to do with that information and the resources the regulator needed to manage that information properly.

Elizabeth Chamberlain, head of policy and public services at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, said more clarity was needed for trustees on what information to provide the commission with.

“There is a lot of uncertainty around how trustees fulfil their responsibilities here,” she said.

“Putting the regime on a statutory basis has an appeal in that it would it would force the guidance to be clearer, and there is a lack of clarity at the moment.”

She said charities needed to see serious incident reporting as responsible management of a problem, rather than a sign the charity had failed.

“Serious incidents are inevitably going to happen,” Chamberlain said. “It is not a sign that the trustees have done something wrong – them reporting it is a sign that they have identified an issue and they are reporting it to the commission and dealing with it.

“I don’t think that message is getting through to trustees.”

Source: The Third Sector

A monitoring review published by the Charity Commission, based on a random sample of 106 annual reports, says 51 per cent have a clear understanding of the issue

Too many charities are still “falling short” when telling the general public about the work they do through their annual reports and accounts, according to the Charity Commission.

The commission today published three monitoring reviews of charity’s annual reports and accounts, including one about public benefit reporting in the charity sector, based on a random sample of 106 annual reports and accounts.

The reviews say that 51 per cent of charities have a clear understanding of public benefit reporting, an improvement of five percentage points on the previous year.

The commission found that the majority of accounts – 62 per cent – included public benefit statements and 71 per cent of them clearly explained who benefited from the charity’s work.

Charities have a legal obligation to follow the commission’s guidance on public benefit reporting in their annual accounts and reports.

The commission found that 74 per cent of annual reports and accounts for charities with incomes exceeding £25,000 a year were of an “acceptable quality”, but this figure fell to 64 per cent among smaller charities.

The main reason for which charities were deemed unacceptable on this issue was the failure to include either the annual report or the accounts, according to the commission – with some submitting neither.

Eighty-nine charities included in the reviews received regulatory advice from the commission, the regulator confirmed.

Nigel Davies, head of accountancy services at the Charity Commission, said: “Producing an annual report and accounts is not an administrative box-ticking exercise. It is a chance to show how your charity is making an impact and how you are delivering on your core purpose.

“Today’s results show that too many charities are still not meeting very basic standards when it comes to making key information available to the public. I am encouraged to see that an increasing number of trustees recognise the value of public benefit reporting, but there is clearly more work to be done across the sector.”

Source: The Third Sector