Blaming the media for charity scandals misses the point - Shawcross

Charity Commission chair William Shawcross has warned that it is missing the point to blame the media for the tumultuous year the sector has faced.

In speech notes from the chair’s address to the regulator’s public meeting in Southampton yesterday, Shawcross stressed that the charities guilty of poor practice are in the minority, with the vast majority conducting “fine work”.

However, the response to stories such as those around fundraising and the collapse of Kids Company was not due to the media, but the fact the news “struck a chord” with the public.

“The stories found a receptive audience who thought in recent years that perhaps some charities had allowed their values to become obscured as they adopted the sharp practices of industry,” Shawcross said.

In order to move past the difficulties of last summer, charities were urged to heed the Charity Commission’s recent alert around commercial relationships and get behind establishment of the new Fundraising Regulator.

Shawcross also outlined the commission’s limited resources, following staff reductions and budget cuts of around 50 per cent in recent years.

The chair again raised the idea of charities contributing towards the costs of their regulation, a practice Shawcross said is common in other sectors.

“Adequate and stable funding of the commission is, I believe, the only way we can achieve an appropriate level of resource to regulate effectively. We will be, therefore, consulting on the concept of asking charities to contribute to their regulator,” he said. “Any moves must of course not hit small charities and we would only seek contribution from larger charities.”

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