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In his speech, David Holdsworth looks ahead to the challenges and opportunities facing the sector in the years ahead.

Introduction 

Good morning and thank you joining us – whether in person or online – at the Charity Commission’s Annual Public Meeting for 2024.  

I’m sure I speak for many within the Commission, across the charitable sector, and beyond, in expressing admiration for what Orlando has achieved as our Chair. 

He has served the office with integrity, enthusiasm and immense expertise, and he has modelled the principles he has set for us all – of balance, fairness and independence.  

As the new CEO I am immensely grateful for the stable, independent, respected regulator that he has nurtured in his time as Chair and which we will continue to build on moving forward.  

But it’s too early for eulogies. Orlando has made very clear that he is not done yet… and that he will continue to hold my toes to the fire as his new CEO. 

Following on from Orlando’s reflections on the years gone, I’d like to look at the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.  

And I will consider how we – the Commission, charities, and our partners – can respond. 

First, a few words about my own return to the Commission.  

I took up the post as chief executive earlier this year having spent several years running diverse government agencies. 

I’ve learnt a great deal over recent years from working with some of our country’s foremost science, veterinary, biosecurity, operational and intellectual property experts as well as private sector partners. But the Commission, like the sector it regulates, is special.   

Not only because it’s an incredible organisation with a remarkable history and a dedicated, expert staff. 

But because being part of the Commission is like working in the engine room of society, in the beating heart of a system that fuels community, offering solutions to some of our most intractable challenges – personal, social, environmental – with a unique way of bringing people together where others might seek to divide.  

So I am delighted to be back.  

I’d like to start with some challenges – before moving on to the reasons I see for great optimism for the sector and what it can continue to achieve.  

Current operating environment and challenges 

The current operating environment is not easy, for charities.  

There are three factors in particular to highlight.   

First, are pressures on the financial resilience of the sector.  

We see that as regulator. 

The pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis that followed have left many charities depleted.  

Some continue to face a ‘triple whammy’ of simultaneous pressures on demand, costs, and income, leading to acute and in some cases chronic battles for survival and sustainability.  

These challenges are reflected in the fate of individual charities - barely a week goes by without news of the demise of a charity due to unsustainable pressures on its finances.  

Last month, many were shaken by the closure of Getting on Board, which for twenty years played a vital role in encouraging new talent into trusteeship. Its contribution will be missed.  

I should note, however, that while many charities’ financial resilience is wearing thin, overall, the sector has proven, again and again, responsive and resilient. More on that in a moment.  

Second, charities, like other organisations, are contending with rapid technological and social change.  

The tools charities use in working, and attitudes and expectations that influence charities’ work, are changing at a pace that seems likely only to increase.  

Some tech innovations, notably in the space of AI, offer tools that can help charities do more with less and increase their impact.  

But looking ahead, these technologies potentially challenge the very role of organisations and institutions in the traditional sense.  

Notably when coupled with changing attitudes, especially among younger people, whose allegiances are increasingly to causes, not ‘bricks and mortar’ or brands and institutions.  

People’s changing expectations around immediacy are also reflected in the rise of direct giving to those in need, facilitated by fundraising platforms.  

Similarly, the power of social media means that public campaigns no longer necessitate an institution to own and drive them.  

Linked to this, are worrying downward trends in volunteering. According to some data, levels of volunteering have dropped starkly since the pandemic.  

Volunteers are the lifeblood of the sector. To return to my earlier analogy – if charities are engine room of our communities, then volunteers are their fuel… and I should add, we don’t want them to get burnt out! 

Third, the Commission’s capacity to respond to this context may become increasingly limited by the growing stretch associated with our ‘bread and butter’ work.   

Notably, the complexity of our compliance case load is increasing, often involving intractable or generational disputes – often along lines of allegiance that mirror debates that the media might brand as belonging to wider ‘culture wars’.  

These can really challenge charities, distract them from their cause, undermine public trust, and absorb significant public resources at the Commission.  

More widely, over the past year:  

1. We received over 9,000 applications to register a charity, a record high – around half of which were added to the register showing that the desire to contribute and make a difference is still there.
2. And we concluded over 3,700 regulatory concern cases and 65 statutory inquiries. 

As I will come on to – I am determined that the Commission maximises the impact we can have in helping charities respond to systemic and strategic shifts.  

But I am concerned about our ability to do this unless we have the resources to do so. 

So those are some of the factors about the current operating environment for charities and the Commission that concern me.  

Reasons for optimism   

But there is also much to be optimistic about as we reflect on the role of charity, and look ahead into the future.  

I am a big believer that challenge can also be a great catalyst of opportunity of innovation. When you face a seismic event or challenge  it can give you permission… to think differently… to look at the previously unthinkable… and importantly also remind you of your true purpose. 

We saw this a few weeks ago with Zoe’s Place, a hospice in Liverpool providing respite and care to children.  

The charity’s future looked, for a time, very uncertain. Politicians, local business leaders, local people as well as a fellow charity the Institute of our Lady of Mercy, fellow hospice Claire’s place and media collectively rallied to save Zoe’s Place, with the Commission playing a vital facilitating role.  

The charity may in future be located in a different but not far location, it may have a different structure but it will still be there delivering its vital services for its beneficiaries – its place in the heart of community and its mission for beneficiaries re-vitalised.  

Over recent decades, while the fundamental purpose of charity has remained stable, its role and relevance to our daily lives has only increased. 

Charities have, individually and collectively, proved consistently agile and innovative, harnessing new technologies in making deep impacts on peoples’ lives.  

There’s no reason to doubt this will continue.  

Innovation isn’t always – or indeed usually – about shiny new technology - it can be incremental.

I had the pleasure of attending the Charity Awards earlier this year. There were many examples of charitable impact and innovation on display that evening – it was a moving event.  

I was especially impacted by the work of one of the winning charities.  

Storybook Dads was set up 20 years ago, with a simple but transformative concept. To make audio and video recordings of parents in prison reading bedtime stories out loud, and send them to their children to watch or listen to whenever they want. 

The charity has reached thousands of families, and improved children’s relationships to their parents in prison. It’s also enabled more than 800 prisoners to receive training in audio and video editing. Today, Storybook Dads operates in 100 prisons across England and Wales, has recorded over 80,000 stories, at a cost last year of only just over £250,000.   

This is just one example of charity innovation that is in one sense simple, but whose positive impact on peoples’ lives has been profound.   

Another example of innovation is offered by the charity Cambridge Certify, which we registered earlier this month. Its purpose is to advance education in the field of artificial intelligence, by providing accessible and affordable education programmes, workshops, seminars, and other training sessions, and by promoting research and ensuring the useful results of such research are disseminated. I look forward to seeing that charity’s work in action in the years ahead.  

Charities’ impact over the decades can also be counted in lives they have saved through innovation, through their use of, and indeed development, of new tools.  

To focus in on just one area: collectively charities have contributed to staggering medical progress.  

In the 1970s, only 1 in 4 people diagnosed with cancer lived for 10 years or more. Now, twice as many survive. Similarly, in the 1960s more than seven in ten heart attacks in the UK were fatal. Today more than seven in ten people survive a heart attack. 

These huge advances have not occurred by accident. Charities have played a huge part – contributing to medical research. Raising public awareness. Helping to shape and inform care provision in the UK. 

And charities consistently use their voice not just in responding to change, but in pushing for progress where that is sorely needed.  

Looking ahead, we continue to consider how we can support and enable trustees to fulfil their duties, and charities to thrive so that communities can survive also.  

We know that improving the knowledge base of trustees not only helps their charities deliver more and better, it also helps prevent the very issues that can absorb the Commission’s resources and undermine public trust. So we are focussing on making our guidance to trustees easier to access, read and act upon, and raising awareness of it through innovative campaigns. 

But there is more we can do to build on and secure the role charities into the future.  

Our strategy to 2029 offers a guide and foundation.  

If we deliver on it, we’ll have done a great deal to fulfil our part in securing the sector’s future – notably in its emphasis on using our voice with confidence and using tech and data smartly and efficiently.   

Beyond that – I am determined to use my position as CEO, and the wider convening role of the Commission, to help facilitate dialogue on the future of charity. 

It is not for us as the regulator in isolation to say what the sector “should” or “could” be.  

That is something for the sector and society more widely. However if we are to maximise the positive impacts of technology, of societal change whilst mitigating the potential negative impacts then we need to think and act now.  

The Commission can have a role in helping the sector, and its partners in government and beyond, to ask these questions, and we can bring people together in tackling the big issues to unleash the potential of not just the sector but the people it exists to serve. 

Which brings me on to the role of the sector itself.  

Given the context I set out earlier, demonstrating the impact and amazing outcome charities achieve has never been more important.  

Our research tells us, consistently over many years, that what matters to people is information about how money is spent by a charity, knowing charity achieves its purpose, makes a difference and operates to high ethical standards.    

Respond to this. Understand that transparency and impact reporting really do matter. Thinking about and demonstrating your impact should run like a golden thread through everything you do.  

We will work with you to evolve reporting requirements to make more visible the sheer scale, impact and outcomes charities achieve.   

And to government I say, recognise that charities not only occupy space the state and the market have never been able to reach or don’t currently reach – from birth to dying with dignity and everything in between – charities are there making a difference.

I welcome that the new government is developing a covenant with the sector. This indicates that it understands charities’ strategic importance.  

I encourage charities to have their say on the consultation currently underway and colleagues from DCMS have joined us among the stalls outside today to explain how you can engage.  

Conclusion 

To conclude – the fundamental collective challenge for all charities, now and into the future is to hold true to their core mission, while influencing, anticipating, and adapting to inevitable change. 

Be confident in rising to today’s challenges as you have always done. 

Be confident in thinking differently about the best way to adapt and deliver your charitable purpose .

And finally, be confident that we at the Commission will regulate robustly but also be right there with you supporting you to achieve your potential, so communities can thrive and achieve their potential.   

Thank you.