ABSTRACT
Registered charities are required to operate under most of the same regulations which govern private companies. Charities’ decisions about how they operate will always involve some level of ethical trade-off, balancing the best possible practice against their available resources and their charitable mission. Charities have many different stakeholders: trustees, beneficiaries, volunteers, employees, funders and donors all expect a charity to operate in different ways. Funders’ reluctance to pay for the full cost of delivering the work they want to support means that the costs of management often need to be found from a charity’s precious pool of unrestricted income. In small to mid-sized charities, employees and managers have rarely worked in the private sector and few have professional-level business training. Competition in charities is all around fundraising, its channels and audiences, rather than about innovation. There is a split in charities between those that are engaged in the ‘modern culture of problem-solving’ and those focused on ‘alms-giving’.
