Why do New Zealanders trust charities?
Tuesday 7 September 2010
The Charities Commission has released research showing that having a lower level of trust and confidence in charities doesn’t necessarily decide whether a person will make a donation.
The research found that even if a person has a lower level of trust in the charitable sector overall, they may still trust individual charities. However, they don’t necessarily give to charities they do trust, and may in fact give to some charities they don’t particularly trust of have confidence in.
Charities Commission chief executive Trevor Garrett says that having trust and confidence in a charity is just one of the factors that influences giving.
“Between them, the 24,000 charities who filed Annual Returns with the Commission for the year ending 31 August 2010 reported donations of more than three quarters of a billion dollars. It is useful to understand why people do or don’t trust charities, and how this might affect their donating behaviour,” he says.
“During the past 18 months, trust in charities has remained consistent, with 55% of people saying they have a high or very high level of trust in charities. This research also shows that people who had a lower level of trust and confidence in the charitable sector overall still tended to have a high level of trust in individual charities, especially if they could see what the charity was achieving and relate to it.”
My Garrett says the research emphasises the need for charities to “tell their story”, and show their supporters that they spend their money wisely, and make a difference to the end cause.
“What people are telling us is that they are most likely to support charities whose work they can see and can relate to, and that they want to see tangible outcomes – such as the new roof on the church, or cataract operations being performed. ”Many of the people who took part in the research made special mention of hospices and helicopter rescue trusts, either because they had seen or experienced their work first-hand, or because they knew they might need their help one day.”
However, he says, charities may wish to take note of some of the things that people said made them feel less likely to trust or have confidence, to see how they can respond. “In particular, people mentioned aggressive marketing and/or collection tactics making them less likely to have trust and confidence in the charity. They were also less likely to trust charities who they saw as spending too much on administration and management, or on advertising and collecting; or whose staff or collectors were disconnected from the charity’s cause.”
“Some people also commented on charities being ‘big business’, and associated them with larger administration costs and advertising campaigns, and with having people who were less closely connected to their cause, and these factors also affected their trust and confidence in them, “ he says.
The survey also showed that some people had lower levels of trust for charities that they saw as pushing an extreme agenda, or funding research that served their own cause, rather than using donations to (for example) help people/animals or habitats in need.