1. 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.