We know that trust in nonprofits is waning.

You can see it in the Edelman Trust Barometer that we talked about in February, along with the reasons why trust is important to fundraising.

And last week, the Charity Commission in the UK came out with similar results, showing a drop in trust for UK charities.

Unfortunately, the Commission’s report shrouds legitimate concerns about the levels of trust in nonprofits with poor methods, hyperbolic headlines, and hidden agendas.

Poor methods.  Let’s start with the fact that this trust polling occurred two weeks after the Oxfam scandal.  How much did that weigh on people’s minds?  Here’s the word cloud they had for the answer to the question “When you think of ‘charities’, what types of organisation immediately come to mind? What are their characteristics?”

I’m going to venture a guess that people were thinking more about Oxfam than usual.  To compare, try to find how often people mentioned “volunteers” when they thought of charities.  (Hint: it’s in the top upper left.)

Let’s say for the sake of argument that –the Commission had set the survey up well ahead of time and somehow the person writing the press release just forgot to mention that the timing was equivalent to polling about blimp safety two weeks after the Hindenburg explosion.

That still doesn’t excuse committing a cardinal sin of polling and surveys: asking people to explain their motivations. People are horrid at understanding why they believe what they believe.  As Nick pointed out here,

Quite frankly, human beings are horrible at understanding what influences them.

Take the study that asked people to rank how important 16 influences were on them. They rated “sexual satisfaction” at #14. Then, they tested how people reacted in real life. Sexual cues were number one in this ranking.  Shocking results only to those who had met no other people in their lives.

Or consider subjects in Dutton and Aron’s study of arousal. They had men talk to a female researcher who gave the men her phone number. Half of the men talked to her right after crossing a suspension bridge, where their heart was racing and they were short of breath; half had time to catch their breath. More of the men who had just crossed the bridge called the woman afterward. They mistook their thinking that their arousal came from the woman, not the bridge.

In short, we lack what behavioral scientists call “metacognition”. That is, we don’t think about how we think.”

Additionally, we don’t remember what we thought in the past all that well.  There’s a famous study where —before the trip– few people thought President Nixon’s  visit to China would be a success.  .  Then, asked later– after the trip –the same people said of course they thought it was going to be a success.

So, not to put too fine a point on it,  most of the Charity Commission’s study– especially those parts that talk about the factors that make a nonprofit trusted– are bunk.

Nowhere is this clearer than in two contradictory results:

• Trust dropped slightly – from 5.7 to 5.5. The researchers say most of the dip was due to a methodology changed.  Let’s sum this up as “trust levels virtually unchanged”
• They also asked people whether their trust in charities had increased or decreased. 5% said increased; 45% said decreased (48% said the same).

In order for both of these to be true, the scores of people whose trust had increased had to go up nine points for every point down among the people whose trust had decreased.  Up nine points.  On a ten-point scale!

Clearly, the second bullet point is wrong – on average, people’s trust didn’t change.  The only reason the researchers thought it did is because they asked a stupid question and got a stupid answer.

Hyperbolic headlines. But guess which of those two points the Charity Commission led with?  They chose to focus on how charity trust had plateaued and how sad it was that almost half of people in the UK thought less of charities than they did in the past.

They also reported that charities were less trusted than doctors, police, or the average person in the street.  First, as Kirsty Weakley of Civil Society UK points out, it’s entirely different to see how much you trust a hairdresser (for example) than a charity.  Second, you were asking people on the street how much they trust people on the street. So there’s a clear self-selection bias there.

But more telling is the Charity Commission’s stated aspiration in the report: “aspiration that charities are among the most trusted social institutions.”  OK, let’s look at charities versus other society institutions (which doctors, police, and average people are not):

• Charities: 5.5
• Social services: 5.3
• Private companies: 5.0
• Banks: 4.9
• Your local council: 4.8
• Newspapers: 3.9
• Government ministers: 3.7
• Members of Parliament: 3.6

If the Charity Commission’s goal is to make charities among the most trusted social institutions the good news is that they can now pack up and go home.    As their study shows, Charities are already the most trusted social institutions.

Let’s add a few more pinches of irony to this Commission stew.

The Charity Commission doesn’t report to government ministers.  Rather, it reports directly to Parliament– a body that people trust at 3.6 on a 10-point scale.  In sort the Commission is evaluating  the trust placed in charities (5.5) for masters whom the public trusts at a 3.6 level.

The Commission’s findings are echoed by results from Edelman, which rated NGOs ahead of government, business, and media and nfpSynergy, which rates nonprofits as fifth most trusted in the UK, behind police, National Health Services, schools, and the military.

In fairness, people who know what the Charity Commission is rated them a 6.4.  However, only 52% of people said they knew what it was.  I’m sure if you took out the people who don’t donate to charity from the poll results, charities’ trust ratings would go up quite a bit.

Can we do better? Yes.  Should we do better?  Yes. Should we have as our goal to make charities among the most trusted social institutions?  No.  We should lead the way, as we have.

Normally, I wouldn’t belabor a study like this as much as I have here.  After all, crap polls are published all the time.  But this one comes with a hidden agenda against nonprofits.

(Barely) hidden agendas.  On page 15 of the Report , probably because it didn’t get the answer the Charity Commission was hoping for, is this question:

“If you were told that a small fraction of your donation (less than 1p in £10) would be paid to the Charity Commission to help it regulate charities, how, if it all, would you respond?”

Ah hah!  Is this why you are bad-mouthing trust in charities!  Is why you are ignoring good polling conventions!  Is this why you are claiming it’s regulation that will make charities great again!

Doesn’t look that way to The Agitator. Rather it appears you’re slithering toward permission to “wet your beak”, to use the mafioso term for it.  You want your cut.  You want charities to pay a portion of donations to go to creating more crap polls like this one.

Thankfully, despite the poll’s rigging to deliver a “yes” on this question, only 17% of respondents said it would make them want to donate more to charities.  Eight percent said it would make them want to donated less. Three-quarters said it would make no difference at all.

What headline would you put on this?  I’d go with something like “FIVE OF EVERY SIX DON’T SUPPORT A TAX ON CHARITIES.”

What headline did the Commission put on this?  “The proposition of a small levy on charities to fund regulation would have a net positive effect, according to the public, on the extent to which they support charities.”

Tomorrow..to positive suggests we can take from the Commission Report.

Roger