That was me below too, but I need a new handle because I'm not 'A former insider' in this context!

Wholeheartedly, although your submissions here don't seem to fit too well with your contributions to another thread!

Charities should be encourged to say "this didn't work too well" or "that could have been done better". It's those that cover up the small mistakes (and far worse) that don't do themselves any favours, or the charity sector more widely.

I could hardly agree more with these comments. 

Is IG the best place to improve public understanding, and if not, then where is?

My spirits have been lifted! LMC (I do apologize - I meant, Ms Vlad) has returned! And with some excellent analysis, too. The idea that charities are prevented from being transparent by an ignorant public is one that I think the IG team should take seriously. Surely, I'm tempted to ask, they know better than most how the media can distort a charity's purported misdeeds?

The only hope I can see for this situation rectifying itself if the public becomes more educated. But this - distressingly - will never happen for so long as charities feel that they cannot be totally honest. This is a vicious circle, and I cannot see an easy way in which it could be broken.

Let's be fair: don't commecial organisations also accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative in their public communications? In my experience they do. So if a charity is honest with its stakeholders (who are *not* necessarily the general public) then why should they hang out their dirty laundry for public view? Public benefit is not necessarily a good argument - a privately-funded small charity working in a specialist or small geographical area could easily report to all its funders, partners and beneficiaries without having to give access to all that information to "the world". Having said that, any organisation which is in receipt of statutory funding is accountable to the general public, so still no excuses for them. The questions IG asks about the British Library are all very valid.

It's very true that too many charities sweep less-good things under the carpet. Possible reasons for this:

1. Both in and out of the sector, there is a prevailing perception that charities are doing good stuff therefore all the stuff they do is good. [There is a really clever word for this kind of erroneous conclusion that I can't think of right now which is really annoying me.]

Anyway, this fallacy leads to

2. The expectation that *everything* a charity does should be perfect. No mistakes or accidents allowed. Ever.

Which means that

3. A charity that shockingly fails to live up to 1 and/or 2 is frequently castigated out of all proportion to the offence. Let's take an extreme example: the Big Lottery Fund makes thousands of awards a year. To their credit, they try to give money to smaller groups as well as large. Sadly, there is the *occasional* case of mismanagement or fraud - which is reported in the media as if the world has come to an end and the BLF, having got 'one thing' wrong - usually to an amount that their auditors would not consider material, is suddenly completely useless.

Given 2 and 3, is it any wonder that charities conspire with 1?

The reasons are not intended to supply excuses - they are purely 'might these be an explanation? - discuss'.

I think that more frankness about a) not-so-good things with a proper explanation of what went wrong and b) mistakes and demonstrating "lesson learned" would be a Good Thing. Unfortunately, until public understanding of charities is improved, the few who dare to be more frank will always be perceived as somehow less good/efficient.

Government should lead on this as the most accountable of all. I know that they are not charities, but how about an IG analysis of some NHS trusts and education authorities - whose work is frequently supplemented by the voluntary sector? How do their reports measure up on the transparency stakes?

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... nearly Vlad the Impaler