A third of the public say their views towards charities have become more positive in the last three years, compared with a quarter who are now more negative, according to a new research.
However, the authors of a briefing paper on the research, New Philanthropy Capital (NPC), have warned charities not to be complacent and to find ways to address concerns held by the public.
Mind the gap, based on polling conducted on behalf of NPC by Ipsos MORI, was undertaken to explore whether the recent ongoing attacks on charities from politicians and the media on issues including lobbying and excessive levels of CEO pay, had adversely affected the attitude of the public.
The top five concerns were that charities spend too much on executive salaries (42 per cent), are not transparent enough about how they are spending their money (36 per cent), spend too much abroad (29 per cent), put pressure on people to donate (29 per cent) and spend too much on running costs (26 per cent).
Three-fifths of respondents (58 per cent) thought that charity CEOs should earn less than an MP, with 16 per cent thinking that CEOs should not be paid at all. However, only around one in ten (11 per cent) were unhappy about spending on employees salaries suggesting that the public are mainly concerned with pay at the higher end.
It was also found that there is a gap between what public think charities do compared to what they actually do.
Some 48 per cent say they pay attention to evidence that an organisation is having an impact when making a donation although 50 per cent pay little attention or none at all. In fact, around one in ten people (9 per cent) say that they pay extremely close attention.
One of the reasons for these findings could be that the public do not really understand what charities - or their leaders - actually do.
NPC chief executive, Dan Corry, said: Charities have a role to play in bridging this gap in perception with their own supporters by explaining their role and why they take the decisions that they do.
Not all charities are perfect and the sector must be open about this, but many of the comments made about the sector are unfair and misleading. If the sector can work together, it will be in a stronger position to withstand any erosion of trust it might yet suffer should the attacks by the press and MPs continue, says Corry.
