Café conversation session: Charity investigations Measuring misconduct in the Scottish Charity Sector Diarmuid McDonnell, University of Stirling Background: - OSCR’s key mandate is to protect and enhance public confidence in charities; with that comes a requirement to investigate misconduct in the sector. - The sector is under pressure to demonstrate its legitimacy as a result of perceived and actual misconduct: unethical fundraising practices, financial incompetence (e.g. Kids Company), CEO pay, private schools. - Useful for multiple stakeholders to know the nature, extent and determinants of charity misconduct. Data: Linked multiple public and internal datasets from OSCR: The Scottish Charity Register; Annual returns; Monitoring and compliance data; Misc (registrations, SIMD, ICNPO). Findings: - 2,109 regulatory investigations of 1,566 Scottish charities over the period April 2006 – December 2014. - Members of the public most likely to complain and most likely to complain about general governance. - Size is a proxy for the ‘real’ explanatory factors: visibility and high stakes. Pros and cons: - Doesn’t capture all misconduct in the sector (what about the charities good at keeping up appearances?). - Probably our best source although there are others: NFA, other regulators, news reports, charity reports… - Reliable, accurate and accessible data source. - Lots of cases but not many variables leads to broad but generalisable/stable findings. www.thinkdata.org.uk