What will save the ‘charity’ brand?

What will save the ‘charity’ brand?

Dame Suzi Leather, during her final speech as Charity Commission chair at the Almshouses Association’s AGM, voices concerns about whether charities will be able to retain their distinctiveness as against other social organisations such as social enterprises, mutuals and co-operatives.    

As the ‘third sector’ expands to accommodate many different types of organisations there can be little doubt that that is a very real challenge for charities.

For some the issue is whether it is worth being a charity at all: whether the benefits of charitable status - and registration as a charity - outweigh the restrictions that that status brings.   Particularly when, even in these cash strapped times, access to funding need not depend upon being a charity.   For others, like the Charity Commission outgoing chair it seems, the issue is more about appreciating the distinction: whether charities will be able to demonstrate why they are different as compared to their fellow members of the third sector.

Public benefit rules, Dame Suzi Leather suggests, are a big part of what makes the difference between charities and none charities. That has to be right.

Public benefit has always been part and parcel of what charities are about.   Public benefit may have been brought into sharper focus by the 2006 Charities Act – becoming part of the definition of any charitable purpose – but it has always been fundamental.

On an individual level demonstrating delivery of public benefit has to be a priority for charities.  For the sector as a whole - if public benefit is what makes it what it is - recognising its value can only help protect the ‘charity’ brand and retain that all important public trust and confidence on which the sector depends.