When is a Charity Register not a Charity Register?
Howard Lake | 26 February 2008 | Blogs
When it doesn’t register charities!
OK, so I exaggerate a little, but read on …
I mentioned in an earlier blog (30 January, 2008) about plans to establish a Charity Register in Jersey that will not include all charities. Now it seems that the Charity Register that has been established in New Zealand will not include all charities. fResource (www.fresource.info) recently posted an article on “privacy” for wealthy philanthropists. (http://digbig.com/4wjck).
It would appear that “Wealthy philanthropists will be allowed to continue to operate their charitable trusts under a veil of secrecy, provided they don’t seek social kudos for their generosity.” Guardian Trust charities “expert” Mark Cassidy was quoted as expressing the concern that “a deluge of begging letters could result in high administration costs” if charities were registered. Surely if people want the advantages of registering a charity, they need to accept the accountability and transparency that should accompany that? It is also possible that fundraisers who are able to search the register can put proposals to the grant-making trust that could benefit people/plants/animals, etc., in just the way the philanthropist might want. Otherwise, no matter how knowledgeable the philanthropist might be, they could easily slip into a lazy way of allocating funds or even sitting on them.
I hope that this is not a new trend emerging of incomplete charity registers coming on line. Whatever the faults of the Charity Commission (England & Wales) www.charity-commission.gov.uk, it is a marvelous resource, particularly when used in conjunction with Guidestar UK http://guidestar.org.uk/. The Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator website www.oscr.org.uk has a good search function, but no accounts to peruse, and I must get along to the Isle of Man one of these days to check out the files for charities registered there. www.gov.im/registries/courts/charities/index.xml
Never a dull moment!
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.