Bad press is a phrase that does not do justice to the criticisms that are currently being hurled at charities. And quite rightly so.
What happened in Haiti beggars belief. And following that story several other large charities that mainly operate overseas have also been implicated. Rumours suggest that already 7,000 people have cancelled their monthly standing orders with OXFAM.
There is real fear that the general public may be reluctant to donate and if this happens then charities will have to reduce their ambitions and, possibly, make staff redundant.
Through our subsidiary CARITAS we raise monies by distributing Insurance commissions to a supporters favourite charity. Will this be affected as well?
But what we have to realise is that only a handful of charities are involved .. albeit some of the largest in the world. But here are the statistics.
*There are over 168,000 charities in the UK
*Combined, they have a total income of just over £75 billion
*In the annual income bracket of between £0 to £500,000 there are over 145,000 charities
*The 2,250 largest charities have a combined income of over £54 billion
So it can be seen that the small number of charities that are are attracting adverse publicity are just a tiny proportion of the total number of UK charities which are delivering fantastic and much needed services.
Penny Mordaunt – Secretary of State for International Development
Ms. Mordaunt has spoken out about the ‘abuses’ carried out by a small number of charity employees and how they appear to have taken advantage of vulnerable girls. She has threatened to restrict Government funding for certain charities until she is convinced that they have put their house in order. And nobody could argue with that!
But the income of this department is just over £13 billion. A massive amount of money but somewhat dwarfed by the £75 billion that the combined charities receiveon an annual basis.
And this £75 billion is mainly raised from the general public. So it remains to be seen whether the headlines that are appearing daily in our press are going to damage the generosity of the British public.
One can only hope it will not because we must realise that the vast majority of charities are well run and serve the most precious of needs.