LAST YEAR CHARITABLE GIVING did not rocket by more than three times the rate of economic growth - despite what The Guardian, ITV News and others have reported. The story is plain wrong.

This isn't the usual case of lazy journalists manufacturing a story. Read the Guardian article, and you'll find an Oxfam (see profile) bigwig quoted next to a spokesman for the Institute of Fundraising - and both seem to peddle the idea that the business of giving is booming. Over at ITV News, someone from Cancer Research UK (see profile) says that these wider trends apparently "chimed with their experience."

This made us worried. These news stories had their roots in the publication of Charity Trends, a fat statistical yearbook published last Monday. At first glance this year's figures do seem to be significantly up on last year's. But a quick glance at the notes shows that thanks to a change in charity-accounting law, this year's giving stats cannot be compared to any previous year.

Ever astute industry rag Third Sector pointed this out in its report on the issue, and the editor drummed the fact in again on the comment pages. But such rhetorical nuances seem to have passed by both the charity reps and the Institute of Fundraising.

This confusion illustrates a wider point. Nobody, but nobody, really knows how rich charities are, where they get their money from, and how this is changing over time. The recent - and in our view, wrong-headed - change in the accounting regulations means that it's now impossible to find out how much the British public gives to charity, and if you're in search of year-by-year trends you might as well give up now.

One day maybe this will change. But for the time being, misinformation reigns. And for as long as the shape of the charity world remains murky, it will be difficult to find out which charities need your money and which don't.

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