Charity Ethical Principles, the document published in 2019 by the NCVO and mentioned in Chapter 19, asserts that charities should create a culture where donors, supporters and the wider public can ‘see and understand how they work, how they deal with problems when they arise, and how they spend their funds … charities should be willing to share information about how they work, ensuring it is easily accessible’.

This is often easier said than done. Charities live in fear of anything that will damage their reputation and pose a threat to their funding, and possibly to their very existence. They know that the word ‘charity’ arouses expectations in the public mind that they are somehow saintly and have higher standards of behaviour than the rest of society. Charities also know that donors generally don't want their contributions spent on salaries, pension contributions, comfortable offices and the cost of fundraising; they tend to want every penny to go to ‘the cause’ and every charity worker, metaphorically speaking, to wear a hair shirt.

The tendency therefore is for charities to keep an eye on these unrealistic public expectations in the way they present themselves to the world. This can mean disguising problems if possible, and being coy about salaries, overheads and fundraising costs. For example, some of the costs of direct mail, intended mainly to raise money, are often assigned in the accounts to education, which is more likely to meet approval than fundraising costs. This may be justifiable to a certain extent, but can be taken too far.

There is inevitably a tension between that tendency to control and massage information and the NCVO's exhortations to transparency. This chapter looks at two main channels through which charities communicate with their stakeholders and the public, assesses the extent to which they provide transparency and explores proposals and prospects for improvement. The two are interaction with the media and published accounts.

Partial stories: Oxfam and Save the Children

When a huge earthquake hit the impoverished country of Haiti in 2010, killing more than 220,000 people, one of the first charities to respond was Oxfam, the biggest and bestknown UK aid organisation. It sent 100 people to the island, recruited 450 local staff and by the end of 2014 had spent almost £80 million providing food, water, shelter and sanitation.