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| A
meeting of minds? |
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| As
a media whirlwind surrounds the alleged links between terrorism
and charitable funds, the Charity Commission is meeting face-to-face
with faith charities to improve its understanding of their
work. Hannah Fearn meets the Commission along with 200 Jewish
charities at London’s Finchley Synagogue |
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It
is on a crisp autumn morning that representatives of more
than 200 London-based Jewish charities gather at the Finchley
Synagogue to meet the Charity Commission. They are there to
tackle a host of very modern problems, but old stereotypes
die hard.
Members of traditionalist denominations seat themselves together,
with more liberal groups finding a place at the opposite end
of the room, and already the catering has been called into
question. “They should have allowed twice the time for
refreshments at a Jewish event,” Harvey Bratt, legacy
director of the Jewish National Fund, tells me clutching his
first cup of tea of the day.
This meeting with Jewish charities in London is one of many
organised by the Commission in an attempt to get to know the
faith groups and their links to the charity world better.
Meetings with Muslim charities have already taken place and
similar Christian events are in the planning. The series of
fact finding workshops are certainly timely; recent concerns
about the misuse of charitable funds and the alleged links
between religious charities and international terror networks
have caused faith organisations to be scrutinised more closely
than ever before.
One-in-seven charities in England and Wales has a religious
ethic at its core. That equates to more than 23,000 charities
with a shared income in excess of £5bn. In 2004, the
Commission began a piece of work examining its relationship
with faith-based charities, finding out what issues they face
when dealing with the Commission. “Charities often spring
out of religious beliefs and remain a bedrock of building
faith and social capital,” a statement explaining the
programme reads. “The increase in charities from a kaleidoscope
of spiritual backgrounds requires us to deepen our understanding
of how different faith-based organisations operate.”
The Commission hopes this process, of which the individual
faith events are a part, will help improve the service it
offers to faith organisations. This is the eighth event in
the programme and the largest held so far. Opening the event,
Rabbi Mirvis of Finchley Synagogue welcomes the Commission,
and their scrutiny of Jewish charitable work. “It’s
the right thing for one to be charitable, and when being charitable
it’s important to conduct ourselves in a right way,”
he says.
Some of the most senior representatives of the Charity Commission
are gathered at the synagogue, but it is clear they have planned
for the discussion to focus on the practicalities of day-to-day
operation. “We need to understand what you need from
us as a regulator,” says charity commissioner Tess Woodcroft.
“We know a lot from things like your annual returns,
but we recognise that we often don’t have enough conversations
with the organisations that we regulate – that’s
what the purpose of today is.”
Ken Dibble, director of legal and charity services, pays tribute
to the generosity of the Jewish charity community before explaining
that the Commission needs its help if it is to tailor its
service to support their directors and trustees. “The
Commission as a regulator exists to keep charities on the
straight and narrow but it’s got a much greater role
than that,” he says. “It’s there to help
trustees and charities to do their work in their communities.
Regulation in itself has no purpose other than to assist those
people to do their work.”
But if the Commission was secretly hoping for an easy debate
on financial reporting, charity law and VAT exemptions, then
its worst fears are realised. At the first question and answer
session, before work-shopping has even begun, the question
of financial support for Israel raises its head.
Peter Sheldon, director of the Chief Rabbinate Trust is first
to describe the problem. “Unlike any other faith group,
Israel and Jerusalem is a central plank of our religious belief,”
he says. “One of the confusions that exists is the extent
to which we are able to extend monies to Israel. Promoting
Israeli interests – which is a vital concern for the
Jewish community – is something where there have been
difficulties in the past.” There are murmurs of approval,
and further calls for clarity on the issue.
The Commission’s Dibble attempts an answer, which is
vague at best. He says funds can be sent to support Israel
as long as they fulfil charitable purposes by law, recently
extended under the newly passed Charities Act. It is not well
received, and a hubbub breaks out across the room. Mere minutes
pass before the second call for clarification.
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Jeremy Newmark, chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council,
a membership and umbrella organisation, is unhappy with Dibble’s
answer. “A number of members of my organisation are
extremely concerned that the major national charities like
Christian Aid are seemingly engaged in political activity
in opposition to the state of Israel while still a registered
charity,” he warns. Newmark says Jewish charities are
spending vast sums of money and time ensuring they comply
with the rules on political activity, while others appear
to face no recriminations for flaunting these rules.
Dibble disagrees. “Charities are able to campaign and
carry out advocacy provided it can be justified as being a
furtherance of their beneficiaries and the aims of the charity,”
he says. “When they do that they have to have regard
for both the resources they’re deploying and their own
reputation. The Commission approaches this in an even handed
manner. I’m not aware of any restrictions placed on
Jewish charities that haven’t been placed on other charities.”
But the debate has pushed Dibble to be as robust as the delegates
had hoped, and to the as yet unspoken heart of the issue.
“The Commission takes this extremely seriously,”
he warns. “Charities cannot and should not be involved
in activities which directly further unlawful or terrorist
activities and the Commission will act very strongly if cases
of this nature come to its attention.” The audience
is pacified, and delegates gathered at my table nod in appreciation.
After a second refreshment break, the workshop begins. Each
table of eight is asked to respond to five questions, covering
the charities’ experiences of working with the Charity
Commission, their quibbles with its service and what improvements
could be made to particularly help Jewish organisations.
On my table, the suggestion is made that the regulator dedicates
either a single person or a small team to deal with Jewish
charity issues. Dissent follows; Alan Brill, chair of Abbeyfield
Camden Jewish Society, says it would be preferable to have
a ‘faith team’ rather than a team solely dedicated
to Jewish matters. “I think we would be best serviced
by cross-fertilisation of ideas,” Brill says. “I
think that the more the Commission has people who are across
community groups, the more chance of a common understanding
of the charities and the commonality of the work that they
can do.”
Feeding back after the workshop, a group of traditional Jewish
leaders gathered together on one table suggest that for certain
charities, the advisory Rabbi should be given status in law
above the trustees. “There are charities that trust
implicitly the knowledge and the guidance of their Rabbi to
the extent that the trustee is almost a subsidiary to the
Rabbi,” the group’s spokesperson says. “There
needs to be special status for the Rabbi.”
There is an audible outcry from the moderates in the room
– the remark leads the group to be flippantly dubbed
the ‘Stamford Hill table’. Brill is the most vociferous
in his objection: “If you apply this to other communities
then Jewish communities might feel that’s a problem,
so please be careful.”
Indeed, Brill’s request for a “cross-fertilisation
of ideas” is echoed by other delegates. Ruth Barnett,
clinical director of Jewish counselling services Raphael,
says she feels the chance to meet the Commission face-to-face
is important, but that it should be carried out at a multi-faith
event. Mike Levitt, the Commission’s review visits leader,
is cautious and warns that many delegates would not have been
comfortable in the company of other faith leaders. They would
not have attended, he insists. “Says who?” Barnett
protests. “I’d have come.”
As the feedback session draws to a close, fewer ideological
problems are posed, replaced instead by the practical issues
of charity management. Delegates tell the Commission’s
representatives that scheduling visits, conferences and consultation
meetings for a Friday night and Saturday morning will immediately
exclude Jewish charities. They speak with tired voices –
this issue has been raised before. The delegates also lament
their lack of access to Lottery and EU funding, whose strict
diversity criteria naturally exclude single faith charities.
But Rosalind Preston, chair of one of the oldest Jewish charities
Nightingale, tells me that if the Commission should take one
lesson away from the day’s proceedings, it must remember
that just as not all Jews are the same, not all Jewish charities
are the same. Jewish charities are not a single homogenous
group, and the type of regulation that suits one will not
suit another. The differences of opinion across the conference
floor have certainly highlighted this.
With a series of events for Christian charities upcoming,
and an array of similar meetings behind them, the Charity
Commission has a challenge ahead if it is to regulate faith-based
charities sensitively and proportionately. No doubt the circling
national media will focus its mind on the task.
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