Faith

Tuesday, October 24th, 2006
The Muttart Foundation and Ipsos Reid released a study ” Talking About Charities 2006″ last week and the Executive Summary and report can be found at http://www.muttart.org/news.htm

Overall Canadians feel they are familiar with the important work of charities and they believe that charities are more effective at delivering services than the government. The report says that Canadians trust the leadership in the sector but would like greater accountability and transparency around spending.

A big issue for respondents was fundraising. Almost all expected that there would be costs associated with raising funds but saw the use of professional fundraisers as unacceptable. Interestingly more people than in 2000 felt that charities need to be involved in advocacy and that ” opinions expressed by charities on issues of public concern have value”. In the 2000 survey the methods of acceptable advocacy were softer in nature but in 2006 there was support for ’street protest’ advocacy.

The full report runs 88 pages but the Executive Summary (8 pages) offers a lot of detail.