Public trust falls in overseas aid & development charities, nfpSynergy figures show
Melanie May | 22 March 2018 | News
Figures from nfpSynergy show public trust in overseas aid and development charities declined between Autumn 2017 and February this year.
In nfpSynergy‘s report, overseas aid and development is the sector with the second lowest level of respondents who said they trust the sector ‘a great deal’ at 10%, just behind religious charities, trusted ‘a great deal’ by 8%. Charities scoring the high levels of trust were hospices, cancer, and rescue services, trusted a great deal by 40%, 39% and 37% respectively.
Overall trust in charities has fallen 6%, from 60% last Autumn to 54% in February this year, close to August 2017’s levels. Overseas aid and development charities saw a drop in trust from 40% to 36%. Most sectors have remained steady however with only three others: children and young people, sensory impairment, and religious, also seeing slight decreases in trust levels.
However, the report concludes the trust in overseas development and aid charities has not fallen as much as might have been expected following the Oxfam and other charities’ sexual misconduct cases. It suggests that this could be because overseas charities are already seen differently by the public with lower trust levels than many other sectors.
nfpSynergy also asked the public how much of each charity sectors’ income should come from government as well as how much does come from government. For almost all sectors the public thinks that what should come from government exceeds what they do get by 15-25 percentage points. The only exception to this is the overseas aid and development sector, which people think receives much more of its income from the government than it does (42% compared to 29%).
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About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.