You need a new top. You go to a big online retailer, find one you like, and place your order. When it is delivered, you check the quality, the size, and if it makes you look good; if it doesn’t pass these tests, you send it back for a refund. Now you want to make a donation to charity. Unlike when buying a top, you don’t receive anything tangible for your money. You simply have to trust the charity to make a positive impact with your donation.

Drawing from research working with healthcare professionals, here are five things they think about the third sector - and insight into what this means for charities.

 ACEVO and nfpSynergy are partnering to provide ACEVO members and nfpSynergy clients with a comprehensive understanding of trust, and how it relates to charities. With this series of reports we hope to give you are a more nuanced understanding of what trust is and why it is important for your charity. In this first report, we will look at how trust in the charity sector has performed over recent years, how the public disclosure of bad practice has affected it (which demographics in particular have seen the biggest falls) and which charities are more likely to be trusted.

What can the UK charity sector learn from third sectors around the world? Joe Saxton distills some key findings from an upcoming new report.

Journalists are likely to scrutinise charity CEOs when given the opportunity because there is an appetite from the public to read about things like CEO pay; but our research shows that there is generally good faith towards charity CEOs amongst (some) journalists, and we're sharing tips on how your charity CEO and media team can play a part in owning and changing negative conversations.

Announcing our new monitor, the Charity Brand Evaluator, our product for in-depth brand research to help charities understand how their brand is performing in all circumstances.

Our latest blog explores the public and MPs opinions on charity lottery regulation.

We're pleased to release our latest findings on the public and MPs attitudes towards charity lottery regulation from Autumn 2018. 

Key findings of the report are:

In response to the pressures of eight years of efficiency savings, last week the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport released “the first Civil Society Strategy in 15 years”. The plan aims to bring together charities, business and the public sector to empower communities.