Complaints about charity governance, legitimacy and finances received by regulator

There was a 13 per cent increase in the number of concerns about charities reported by members of the public last year, with complaints relating to governance, legitimacy and financing being made most regularly.

The Charities Regulator’s annual report for 2022 said 642 contacts raising concerns about charities were received, up from 568 in 2021. The report said there were 11,506 charities operating in the State last year, with 163 new organisations registered.

Some 36 per cent of the complaints filed related to governance issues, while 35 per cent of concerns were about the legitimacy of individual charities. A further 17 per cent of complaints received last year related to charities’ finances.

About 6,400 charities submitted declarations about their governance, with 73 per cent stating they were fully compliant with a code of good governance. However, when the regulator examined a sample of these declarations, it found only 65 per cent of those reviewed were actually compliant.

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Just three-fifths of charities filed annual reports detailing their finances on time, the report noted.

Helen Martin, the regulator’s chief executive, said it was “very disappointing” to see so many charities missing deadlines to submit annual reports about their finances. She said the forms were a “very basic statutory requirement, which is there so the public have some transparency about charities’ finances”.

“In the interests of the public and out of fairness to the majority of charities that submit their annual reports on time each year, we have signalled to the sector that we will deal decisively with those charities that have repeatedly failed to file annual reports in a timely manner,” she said.

“There is a clear and direct link between public trust in the charity sector and transparency and accountability within the sector.”

The regulator launched two statutory investigations last year, one into governance concerns at the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ISPCA), and another into concerns about Navan Mental Health Housing Association Limited.

On the question of governance, Ms Martin said one major red flag was where there had been no turnover of board members for “quite a while”.

She told The Irish Times that many complaints about charities’ legitimacy related to clothing collections, where operators were not registered charities and sold collected clothes for profit.

The watchdog said it received nine concerns about charities inappropriately engaging in political campaigning.

Ms Martin said she was confident the regulator had enough resources to investigate the charity sector. She said less than 2 per cent of complaints resulted in the regulator having to use its legal powers.