The season of good will and giving is just around the corner – and many charities will be reaching out to donors with their key appeals and campaigns. We know Christmas is one of the most important and valuable times of the year for charities, yet we think it is going to become increasingly difficult to engage donors during this time.

Earlier this month we released results which showed a marked decline in public trust in the charity sector as a whole between April and October 2015. With charities still reeling from the media attacks of the summer, these results appeared to confirm that the stories in the press were having a very real impact on how the public view charities. What’s more, the results were the continuation of a longer term trend of declining trust in charities that can be tracked back more than two years.

Joe Saxton looks at what the coming decade looks like for charities

The charity world has a conflicted attitude towards companies. Our concern is that the relationship between companies and charities is becoming ever blander. For charities and companies to make the most of each other we need innovation and courage. So what might new ideas look like?

To answer this, Joe Saxton draws on more than 25 years experience in non-profit sector to investigate the effectiveness of current and new models of partnerships in this report. The report consists of five parts:

Have you ever wanted a few facts and figures about the sector at your fingertips?  Have you wished you could give a journalist a few nuggets of info to show how important the sector is to society? 

Last month the regulator for premium rate text messages, PhonepayPlus, released data showing that in 2014 text donations raised over £114 million.

This is a great success story for fundraising and charities. At nfpSynergy we are pleased to have played an important role in the changes that bought about the development of text donations. Back in 2008 when I finished my stint as Chair of the Institute of Fundraising I agreed to take on the task of trying to make text donations economic.

• Trust in charities falls from 53% in Spring 15 to 48% in Autumn 2015
• Charities have fallen from 8th place to 12th place in just 6 months in the list of trusted public institutions
• Now behind supermarkets and TV & Radio stations in levels of trust
• Charities are most trusted by the under 24s and least trusted by the over 55s

The latest wave of nfpSynergy research in trust in charities and other public institutions shows that the summer of media coverage and newspaper revelations have taken their toll.