In the news last week...
Weekly roundup of sector news from the DSC research team.
New CAF report looks at how people and households use charitable services
The Charity Street III report, published last week by CAF, found that:
- Almost three quarters of households (74%) have used a charity in the past year – this is down from 83% when it peaked in 2016 and 79% last year.
- Nine in ten households (90 per cent) reported having used a charity’s service at some point, down from 98% in 2016.
- Almost 3 in 10 (29 per cent) were unaware that the service they or someone in their household had used was provided by a charity.
- Women and younger people are more likely to have personally used a charity.
- 67% felt that charities were best placed to speak on behalf of disadvantaged people and 56% said they most trusted charities to do this.
The report concluded that there is an opportunity to raise the profile of charitable organisations, and to develop a “clear vision for the role of philanthropy in their town, city or region”. As part of DSC’s Liverpool lights project, we have been visiting small local charities and highlighting the great work they do – read more here.
Charity is everywhere around us but not always in the most visible way. As part of DSC’s #EverybodyBenefits campaign, challenge yourself to spot the impact charities have on everyday life here.
Charity Commission website ‘misleading and confusing’ on charity spending, says report
A report from nfpSynergy says the site ‘misleads, misattributes, muddles or makes charity finances less transparent in a range of significant ways’. NfpSynergy’s report says missing out data on spending to generate voluntary income and trading to raise funds skews spending graphs and makes it looks like the charity in question ‘spends a higher percentage of its expenditure on charitable activities than is really the case’. It says that some charts conflate figures on fundraising and trading that can give a misleading impression of spending in this area. The commission is working on a new online register that can be viewed as a beta site.
