OK, finally got around to reading the results.

First up: agree on poor wording of question. Do *I* have trust in charities? Charity as an organisational model - Yes. All charities - No. The charities I support? - Yes (no-brainer). Who knows what was in the respondents' heads when they answered this one.

Second: 1,008 adults. Not a sufficiently large sample. National surveys of this nature should include at least 10,000 in my opinion to be able to truly "iron out" sampling errors and demographic variations.

Third, and most importantly; Where can I get the names and addresses of the "Confident agreers?" Pls post on CD to Trust me, It's For Charity at PO Box ...

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... nearly Vlad the Impaler

Lack of clarity in reporting regulations don't help. SORP is practically incomprehensible to a layperson - trying to get to grips with "the original" made me lose the will to live.

Take insurance for example. Is it an overhead or is it a charitable cost? If a project is running in a building, then a charity could quite legitimately claim that some of the cost of insurance is directly related to a project and therefore a charitable cost - e.g. some or all of the public liability element.  Smart charities do this. But they don't necessarily explain the ins and outs of it very well.

Many charities who Should Know Better (i.e. medium size) are still asking questions which make it clear that they are treating staff salaries as overheads, even if the staff member is doing direct delivery work and that salary could absolutely legally and ethically be treated as a charitable cost.

See Full Cost Recovery website for good methodology on transparent charity accounting. It's not necessarily possible to make rules for how charities account for their costs. But if they are clear as to how they have allocated them and why (transparent), that doesn't matter as it will still be possible to compare.

[1] Core costs.

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... nearly Vlad the Impaler

The account number in Sweden is called a "90-account". To get it, charities need to send in extensive annual reports showing exactly where the money goes and with the possibility to check that out.  The reports are also made public.

Now that I work with VeoSearch.com towards UK, I've been in contact with the Charity Commission some to understand better how to know what charity to trust. On our site, we need to have credible charities, and no fakes.

In the end, every donor has to take its own responsibility to check out for themselves where they give their money, just like buying a shirt :) 

...with you, Ginsters. I should have made exactly that point in my previous comment. 

Adam, Intelligent Giving

Whilst the proportion of income channelled directly to the 'cause' or 'end user' tells you something, it doesn't give anything like the full picture. For example, you could have a tiny charity run on an entirely voluntary basis with virtually no running costs. If it raised £1,000 and spent only £30 it would be hailed as a great success. However, it might be better off investing in ways to make more money even if that skewed the rate of return somewhat. Surely charities are there to make a difference to a particular problem. Being frugal (or being seen to be frugal) is only a means to an end and not the end itself.

Don't shoot the messenger

I had no idea that's how charities in Sweden worked - and it's fascinating stuff. But how does the regulator know that the money is going to the rigt place? From everything I've heard about charity accounting from accountants in this country, it's seemingly easy for charities to call whatever they like 'charitable expenditure' (or at least it was, until the rules changed and almost every cost incurred by a charity became 'charitable' anyway.) Are Swedish accountants just a lot more transparent?

Adam, Intelligent Giving

I come from Sweden and am now working for an organisation raising funds for UK charities by people's searches, it's called veosearch.com

In Sweden, we have regulators controlling the charities' activities. If more than 75 or 80 percent of the donations goes directly to the cause and the end user, they are given a certain donate bank giving code which certifies that they are a charity to be trusted, similar to the work of the Charity Commission.

A lot of random charities are still opening up and scamming people but more or less everyone knows not to trust a charity without the certain bank code.