Our trust in good causes is being abused
The ruthless exploitation of former Army colonel Samuel Rae is a harrowing tale for anyone who cares about the work of charities. This 87-year- old gentleman, who gave a lifetime of service to his country and now suffers from dementia, was subjected to a frightening barrage of intimidation and deceit.
The campaign against him, revealed in the Mail yesterday, amounted to straightforward theft, as surely as if he had been mugged in the street time and time again.
Victims such as him are often elderly, partly because they are more trusting, partly because their loneliness makes them potentially more vulnerable to smooth-talkers, and partly because they tend to be more generous, as well as less technically savvy.
So people like Colonel Rae, understandably, do not realise that if they fail to tick a certain box on an innocent-looking survey, ensuring that their details should not be shared, then they are making themselves a possible target.
having worked closely with several charities, including the Silver Line – a confidential helpline for older people which was launched nationally in 2013 and has now taken more than half a million phone calls – I have seen for myself the impact of this sort of exploitation. One of the heroines of the Silver Line was a lovely lady called Delia who passed away recently and is profoundly missed.
After her death, her home was found to be full of begging letters from charities, most of them urging her to hand over more of her cash. To me, this was nothing more than unscrupulous bullying.
As a broadcaster, I have also seen the operations of the hustlers from the other side. One of the companies that extorted money out of Colonel Rae was called Biotonic, a scam outfit which fleeces customers by telling them that they have to buy an item from its catalogue in order to release a possible sweepstake prize.
By coincidence, I once made a programme for the BBC about a bunch of cheats operating the same scam, an assignment which at one point involved my standing in an exclusive office in Paris where I confronted the bosses over the way they had scammed an elderly woman with dementia. They showed no remorse at all – and simply threw me out.
These are the kind of people with whom British charities are colluding when they pass on people’s personal details – even if those charities are sometimes too naive to realise it. For I don’t think their motivation is a deliberately sinister one. After more than 30 years of involvement with this sector, I am sure most charities are not acting out of any villainous purpose. Compassion and concern are still what motivates most people who work in this sector.
But what has happened is that they are under such severe financial pressure, and the demand for their services is growing so rapidly, that they have become desperate to raise money by almost any means. As a consequence, some of the old ethical constraints have been abandoned. The realisation that a list of donors can be enor- mously lucrative has proved too tempting for many charities.
But in the end, a strategy of pressing people to give ever more money is bound to be destructively counter-productive. The charitable sector depends entirely on trust. Without public belief in its good intentions and careful stewardship, it will collapse.
The British people are among the most generous in the world, as has been proved time and again through events like Children In Need, and magnificent responses to disaster appeals. But that bond of faith will be broken for ever if donors begin to feel their compassion and generosity is being exploited in the name of commercial greed.
So what can be done, apart from tightening the law on the sale of personal data, and mounting prosecutions against the fraudsters? One step would be to demand that all trustees of charities take their duties seriously. They are meant to ensure that none of their executives, even for the best motives, is tempted to slide into dodgy territory. We have seen recently, in the unfolding scandal at the now sadly defunct Kids Company, what can happen if trustees fail to protect a charity against its own ambition.
Run by the charismatic social entrepreneur Camila Batmang- helidjh, Kids Company started out in 1995 as an inspirational organisation for marginalised children and teenagers in south London. But it became a sprawling, ill-managed organisation, constantly teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, and seemingly dishing out cash willy-nilly in a way their supporters would surely not have approved of.
I think Kids Company could still be doing good work if the trustees had been more rigorous in their governance.
WHAT right have I to make that judgment? Because I have been there myself. In 2005, when Childline had only two weeks of financial reserves in the bank, we decided to merge with the NSPCC – and that is why it survives to this day.
There are more than 160,000 individual charities in Britain, enjoying an annual income of more than £40billion. Given the importance of this sector to our civic life, I think broadcasters should give it far more attention, not only celebrating achievements but also highlighting issues of concern, like the sale of personal information.
I also think that we need far tougher regulation, perhaps by beefing up the Charity Commission or by creating a new, more powerful public body with real powers to counter wrongdoing.
Amid the scandal, we do need to celebrate the work charities do: millions of vulnerable people depend on them. If the sector continues to be undermined by scandal, then they will be the biggest losers.