We've noticed a drop in people who say they've given to overseas charities recently, so Rick Wright is here to discuss why that might be and what can be done about it.

As well as running research on individual charities or issues, nfpSynergy keeps a close eye on developments in the charity sector as a whole. Our latest findings show that overseas aid and development has seen a decline in popular support in recent years, and I have been considering why that might be the case. As an area of work, overseas aid is subject to some unique pressures and challenges, so have these contributed to a fall in support for the organisations involved?

Public engagement has always been a significant challenge for overseas aid charities. Our research for our Charity Awareness Monitor has been tracking support for various sectors amongst the general public for more than five years now, and overseas aid and development has always struggled to gain traction compared to popular causes like cancer or animal welfare. However, recently it has fallen even further. In July 2013 we saw 16% of the public donating to overseas aid charities, but by January of this year that had fallen to just 11%, placing it amongst the least widely-supported sectors. This is a slightly alarming drop, and there are a number of factors that might have contributed to it.

One is the nature of overseas aid charities’ fundraising. Often these take the form of major one-off appeals (DEC appeals are prime examples of this) which can raise huge sums, however there seem to be fewer people feeling driven towards long-term giving. While other sectors can rely on a stable base of repeat donors giving monthly or yearly, international aid charities tend not to attract that reliable giving. As well as that, we’ve had quite a domestic-focussed year in the run-up to the election. It may be that increased media scrutiny of domestic issues such as the NHS and unemployment has diverted donors away from international development.

One of the biggest challenges for overseas aid groups is the sensitive nature of where they work – conflicts like those in Syria and Yemen present a range of logistical and political challenges for aid organisations simply due to the nature and context of the work. In recent years this has become an additional source of pressure at home for overseas aid groups. Media coverage of the Islamic State, for example, has focussed on the ‘foreign fighter’ element; men and women from all over the world who decide to join the conflict.

Stories about would-be militants using aid convoys to enter Syria, or of charitable organisations being accused of directly funding combatants, have an impact on public perception of the sector as a whole. There is understandably a huge amount of concern about these stories, and charities working in such delicate areas absolutely should be subject to scrutiny, but the impact of these examples can have the effect of ‘poisoning the well’ for organisations attempting to provide much-needed support in conflict areas.

Pressure related to these unfortunate events hasn’t been purely from the media. Recent years have seen a government drive to strengthen its response to extremism, which reached a new stage last week with the Prime Minister’s announcement of a further expansion to counter-extremism laws. In terms of charities, this push has been led by the Charity Commission, which has the unenviable and difficult task of investigating possible abuse of funds or ‘extremist links’ amongst charitable groups working in conflict areas.

Regardless of whether you feel these regulations are appropriate, the intensity of government and media attention to these stories has had a damaging impact on public perceptions of overseas aid. It remains to be seen what impact the new raft of counter-extremism legislation with have on how overseas aid groups operate; it may have very little impact at all, but in terms of public perception the damage could have already been done.

All this is not to say that there aren’t areas of overseas aid that the public feel very warmly towards. The recent Nepal appeal from the DEC saw a huge outpouring of support (£50 million in just two weeks), and before that the Ebola appeal saw a similar response. Charities providing disaster relief will always have that support for their upstanding work, but circumstances surrounding the Syrian conflict have come together in a way that has somewhat tarnished public perception of overseas aid charities.

The timing of these events coincides closely with the 5% fall in public support for the sector. This does indicate that these developments around aid groups working in Syria have had an impact on the public perception of overseas aid as an area of work, though of course it’s unlikely that they’re the only factor.

Despite the importance of the work these organisations do in disaster and conflict zones, it unfortunately seems that these isolated cases of abuse have negatively affected the sector’s credibility amongst the public.

Why do you think support for international development as a sector has fallen? Leave us your comments below.