The first speech by the new Chair of the Charity Commission took place yesterday at the NCVO annual conference. The full text is available here. As part of the speech Baroness Tina Stowell made a number of statements which providing they are followed through will mean that she will be able to help return the focus of the Commission to the needs of charities, rather than the demands of the Government. Of course this will mean that she will need to stand up to her ex-colleagues in the Conservative Party which she promised to leave if she was appointed, so as well as fulfilling her words she will need to demonstrate her willingness to stand up to the party she used to be a member of. The NCVO is an organisation open to all charities that can afford to pay their membership fees which are graduated depending on their income. As Tina pointed out in her speech there are 167,000 charities in England and Wales (although in fact the current number is 168,237 as disclosed on the commission website) so along with those that choose not to be members of NCVO, the 76,903 that have an income of less than £10,000 are probably not members as will be the case of many of the 57,570 with an income below £100,000. This means she was almost certainly speaking to an audience that represented around 20% of the sector. Let us hope her positive words are not intended just for the 20% represented in the room. She stated:

“So it is early days for me. And I don’t come here this morning pretending to have all the answers. I know I have much to learn from you about the charity and voluntary sector.

This potential of charity to build meaning and to contribute to a healthy, successful society is profound. So it must be nurtured and promoted. And many of you do that, every day, as do the thousands of people who work alongside you in your organisations.

We’re currently reviewing our strategy; our current strategic plan ends this year. But the fundamental aim of the Commission is already clear to me.

To help increase – I would say rebuild – trust in charities as vehicles for charitable endeavour.

Because the Commission’s job is not to represent charities to the public, but to represent the public interest to you.

To help you understand what the public expect, and to help you respond.

The Commission’s strategy review continues. We plan to publish our new strategic plan in the summer. Between now and then, I intend to do a lot of listening. First, to the public whose interest we exist to represent. But also, I will listen to charities. To you.

Because I believe we can and must work together to ensure that the public – whom we all serve – has well-founded confidence in charities.

That’s why I joined the Commission and that’s why I am looking forward to working with you in the months and years ahead.

Not as an adversary, nor as a cosy friend, but as your partner. Your partner in a shared, vital mission to rebuild public trust in what charity does and has the real potential to help our society achieve.”

So over to Tina to explain how she will listen and how she intends to learn! My own limited contact with her via Twitter is that she does listen, but that she does not necessarily learn, assuming of course my views are correct. When her name was first announced as the proposed Chair of the Commission I checked out her biography which came with the press release presented by the Charity Commission and saw no reference to charitable experience. So I asked her on twitter did she have any charity experience as explained in this blog back at the beginning of February. She pointed out that she was Trustee of a couple of well known (and effective) charities, Crimestoppers and the Transformation Trust. I suggested that the Commission list this experience on her biography, because unless people have confidence in her charitable experience, the rest will seem irrelevant. Here we are today and still there is not a mention. Now as she made clear along with leaving the Tory Party, she would resign from the charity boards. However that does not in my view mean that we should not see her previous experience as relevant. The words referring to the role of a listener are consistent with speeches from a number of Government Ministers over the last few months, whose willingness to do so leave a lot to be desired. Let us hope Tina is willing to carry on listening!