London-based offices and re-branding seen as wasteful for charities, survey shows

July 2014

London-based offices and re-branding seen as wasteful for charities, survey shows: A study looking into the public’s opinion of charities has discovered that a large proportion see re-brands and London-based offices as a waste of money.

Almost seven in 10 (69%) said that London-based offices would be an improvident way for charities to spend their money – one quarter (25%) said somewhat wasteful and 44% said very wasteful. Marginally over one in 20 (6%) believed having headquarters in the capital would be fairly worthwhile.

When asked how beneficial re-branding – i.e. changing their logo, name or look – would be for charities, the same (69%) number of respondents believed it to be wasteful – two fifths (40%) said very wasteful and three in ten (29%) said somewhat wasteful. Similar to the first statement, just 7% thought a re-brand would be fairly worthwhile.

Spending money on lobbying the government and other organisations received more support, with a net total of 39% believing it would be a fairly or very worthwhile way to spend funds. Around one quarter (23%) of those surveyed thought this would be a waste of money.

Just over one quarter (26%) believed producing and disseminating magazines to update supporters of the charity’s work was a wasteful way to spend cash – 6% said very wasteful and just over one in 10 (12%) said somewhat wasteful. Around two fifths (44%) said this would be a fairly or very worthwhile way to allocate money.

Furthermore, advertising (54%) and developing a website (61%) also drummed up a fair bit of support, with over 50% of respondents believing they would be fairly or very worthwhile areas to spend money.

Elsewhere, respondents said the following areas would make them feel confident that charities spend their donations well:

• No members of staff travel using first class expenses (52%)
• Mostly run by volunteers (50%)
• No member of the charity is paid more than £50,000 (47%)
• No member of staff receives a bonus (46%)
• No offices in London (37%)

Other conditions include: all administration costs are paid for by Gift Aid money; staff pay for their own Christmas party; all photocopying is recycled on paper; no printing is on glossy paper and all new staff are unpaid for their first month, among others.

Less than one in ten (8%) said nothing a charity did would make them confident that they are spending donations well.