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So what's on the research agenda?

By Helen Barrett, Third Sector, 31 January 2007

The centre of excellence for charitable giving is attracting great interest but little agreement.

This summer, the £2.2m centre of excellence for charitable giving will open its doors. The signs so far are that there is plenty of interest in bidding for the work, but little consensus about what the centre should actually do.

Should it expand the existing 'core monitoring' of the sector? Investigate the motives for giving? Find out what giving achieves for society? Investigate better ways of raising money? The answer depends on who you ask.

There are pointers from the Office of the Third Sector, which said in a consultation paper last autumn that its remit should be to "strengthen the provision and use of independent, high-quality, relevant and robust research and evidence on the identified big questions facing charitable giving".

The Office of the Third Sector, the Economic and Social Research Council, the Scottish Executive and the Carnegie UK Trust will provide the funding over five years, and the tendering process will begin in the spring. To ensure the centre retains an academic focus, each bidding consortium must include at least one university. It will be housed by the successful consortium rather than have its own premises.

A focal point

The Carnegie UK Trust has just completed a series of nationwide consultation workshops, garnering views from potential stakeholders such as academics, donors and researchers on what additional research is needed.

The consultation paper says the centre will provide a focal point for existing research. But what will this mean in practice? And how will it dovetail with existing research reports, such as the Charities Aid Foundation's Charity Trends?

Greg Piper, research officer at the NCVO, believes the best option would be for the centre to build on established work. "Although £2.2m sounds like a lot of money, it won't go far over five years," he says. "It would be better to expand the existing core monitoring and to look at giving by seasonality, or different segments of society or geographical region.

"We need to know more about how giving works as an act of citizenship, and to study motivations for giving."

Cathy Pharoah, founder of research company Third Sector Prospect and former research director of CAF, believes the centre should study what charitable giving achieves.

"There is little information on outcomes, and it's holding some major donors back," she says. "Such research would help charities decide how to use donations effectively, provide good feedback to donors and stimulate more giving."

Pharoah believes this is urgent because major donors are used to being provided with clear business cases for how their money is spent.

Professional fundraisers believe the centre should focus on their information needs. Joe Saxton, founder of think tank nfpSynergy and chair of the Institute of Fundraising, says: "The only justification for spending public money on research is to raise more money.

"Trend data on charitable giving tells us what percentage of the population gives what amount of money, but is that useful? I have yet to meet a fundraiser that finds trend data useful.

"If, in five years time, half of all fundraisers say they absolutely rely on the centre's research, then it will have been a success."

Saxton believes there is a danger that a bid-winning university department will become an 'ivory tower' of academic knowledge, with little relevance to the practical business of fundraising. "A university department could spend all the money very happily and produce nothing of benefit to fundraisers," he says.

Adrian Sargeant, professor of philanthropy at Indiana University, fears the centre's funders could present the biggest problem if they get involved in commissioning research.

"This worries me greatly," he says. "Funders need to step aside and let the professionals decide on what the priorities and specific projects should be." Instead, Sargeant says, academics, researchers and key research users such as fundraisers should set the centre's research priorities.

A statement in the consultation paper that says the centre will start by mapping existing work has heightened Sargeant's fears.

"The notion that anyone who does not presently understand the state of knowledge would be in a position to direct our research agenda fills me with horror," he says.

A selection committee, including the Economic and Social Research Council and the other core funders, will consider bids to run the centre. Whoever is chosen might decide to contract out individual pieces of research work.

However the centre is structured, it seems certain that it will struggle to satisfy everyone's need to understand what makes people give.