When Doing Good Provides Cover

Charity, trust, access and the opportunities we don’t always think to investigate

We are taught to trust people who do good.

The fundraiser. The volunteer. The philanthropist. The person who gives years of their life to a charitable cause. The familiar face raising money for vulnerable people. The organisation whose name has become synonymous with helping others.

Usually that trust is deserved.

Most charities, trustees, volunteers and fundraisers are doing exactly what they say they are doing, often giving extraordinary amounts of their own time to help other people.

Safeguarding, however, cannot operate on the assumption that doing good means somebody is incapable of doing harm.

Because good works create something enormously valuable.

Trust.

And trust creates access.

THE TRUSTED ROUTE IN

Think about what association with a respected charity can provide.

Access to homes.

Access to elderly people.

Access to children.

Access to people who are bereaved, lonely, disabled or dependent upon others.

Access to personal information.

Access to families.

Access to donors.

Access to money.

Access to institutions.

Perhaps most importantly, access accompanied by an assumption of good intentions.

That last part matters.

A stranger arriving repeatedly at an elderly person’s home may attract questions.

A trusted volunteer doing exactly the same thing may not.

Someone asking an older person about their finances might cause concern.

Someone they have known through a charitable organisation for years may simply be regarded as helping.

A person attempting to establish themselves within a hospital or other institution might ordinarily encounter boundaries.

Someone who raises enormous amounts of money for that institution may find rather more doors opening.

That isn’t theoretical.

The official investigation into Jimmy Savile’s association with Broadmoor was specifically required to examine the access and privileges he received, his fundraising activities and whether his celebrity or fundraising role played a part in what occurred.

Savile is an extreme example.

The principle he demonstrates is not.

Good works can build trust.

Trust can create access. Access can create opportunity.

That doesn’t mean opportunity will be abused.

It means safeguarding should recognise that it can be.

CHARITABLE STATUS IS NOT A CHARACTER REFERENCE

There is another psychological shortcut worth challenging.

We see the word charity and instinctively associate it with goodness.

Quite reasonably.

Yet charitable status describes the purpose and legal structure of an organisation. It cannot certify the character or intentions of every human being operating within it.

Indeed, regulators themselves recognise that charities can be vulnerable to conflicts, private benefit and financial abuse.

In April 2026, the Charity Commission reported that compliance cases involving alleged abuse of charitable status for private benefit had risen by 23% in a single year. Its updated guidance stresses that trustees must identify financial conflicts and conflicts of loyalty and properly manage them.

That doesn’t tell us charities are inherently unsafe.

It tells us something much more useful:

charitable purpose does not remove human risk.

WHEN REPUTATION BECOMES CURRENCY

There is another form of benefit that is much harder to see in a set of accounts.

Credit.

Who gets publicly associated with successful charitable or community work?

Who actually created it?

Who spent years building it?

Who did the unpaid work?

Who established the relationships?

Who raised the money?

And who eventually became publicly recognised for it?

Taking credit for another person’s work may look insignificant compared with financial exploitation. In isolation, it may simply be bad behaviour.

Repeatedly, however, appropriation can do something more significant.

It can transfer reputation.

And reputation has value.

It creates credibility, introductions, opportunities, influence and trust.

Someone who becomes known as a pillar of their community may consequently gain access to people and places that would otherwise remain closed to them.

The original creator may gradually disappear from the history altogether.

Taking credit doesn’t just steal somebody’s work. Done repeatedly, it can steal their place in their own history.

And sometimes the person who inherits the credit also inherits everything that credit attracts.

MONEY CREATES OTHER QUESTIONS

Then we reach fundraising itself.

Again, receiving donations isn’t suspicious. Receiving large donations isn’t suspicious. Receiving a legacy isn’t suspicious.

Yet some methods of giving naturally require stronger safeguards.

Cash is one obvious example because it provides less of an automatic transactional trail than electronic payments.

Then there are gifts in wills.

Legacy fundraising is a perfectly legitimate and extremely important source of charitable income.

It is also sufficiently sensitive that the Fundraising Regulator has specific standards intended to protect testators from pressure and undue influence.

Fundraisers must consider someone’s freedom to provide for family and others and any sensitive circumstances they know about. They must not exploit their relationship with a potential testator, must not be directly involved in drafting a will in their favour and organisations must have procedures for dealing with offers of personal legacies to fundraisers themselves.

That tells us something important.

The possibility of inappropriate influence isn’t an attack invented by critics of charities.

The sector’s own safeguards recognise the risk.

SO ASK THE INVESTIGATIVE QUESTIONS

Suppose an elderly or vulnerable person leaves a substantial amount to a charity.

The existence of the gift proves very little by itself.

Perhaps they supported that organisation faithfully for thirty years and independently decided they wanted their money to continue its work after their death.

Wonderful.

Yet where concerns arise, an investigator should be prepared to look beyond the final will.

When did the charity first appear?

Was it present in earlier wills?

What changed?

Who had contact with the person?

How frequently?

Did that contact increase as the person became frailer, bereaved or more dependent?

Who first discussed leaving a legacy?

Who arranged the solicitor?

Who transported the person there?

Was anybody else present?

Who knew what the will contained?

Was a charity representative ever asked to become executor?

Did anyone associated with the organisation receive a personal benefit?

Did previous beneficiaries unexpectedly disappear?

Was the person’s relationship with their family changing at the same time?

What safeguarding records exist?

What contemporaneous records demonstrate that the decision originated with the donor?

No single answer proves undue influence.

That isn’t how good investigation works.

Zoom out. Look at the chronology. Look at the relationships. Look at the pattern.

FOLLOW THE MONEY, BUT FOLLOW THE ACCESS TOO

Financial investigation traditionally asks:

Where did the money go?

Safeguarding needs another question:

How did this person get close enough for the opportunity to arise?

That might reveal a perfectly innocent relationship.

Or it might expose something else.

Money laundering.

Misappropriation.

Conflicts of interest.

Self-dealing.

Undue influence.

A personal legacy.

Sexual exploitation.

Emotional dependency.

Reputational protection.

Institutional reluctance to challenge an important fundraiser.

Or an individual whose charitable activities have created such an impressive public identity that allegations against them become psychologically difficult for others to believe.

That last possibility may be particularly dangerous.

Because the very reputation created through doing good can become the reason warning signs are dismissed.

“Not him.”

“Not her.”

“Not them.”

“Look at everything they’ve done for people.”

That isn’t evidence.

It is reputation being substituted for investigation.

WHO WATCHES THE PEOPLE WE ALREADY TRUST?

Safeguarding has historically concentrated, understandably, upon identifying suspicious people.

Perhaps we also need to become better at scrutinising trusted people.

Not because trust is inherently dangerous.

Because trust removes barriers.

The more trusted somebody becomes, the less likely other people may be to question their access, their relationships, their motives or their explanations.

That is precisely why good governance matters.

Even the Charity Commission warns that conflicts don’t have to involve dishonesty to require action. Conflicts can arise simply because personal interests or loyalties could influence decision-making. The Commission says these need to be identified, declared, managed and recorded.

Safeguarding should adopt the same intellectual discipline.

Don’t begin with:

“They’re a good person.”

Don’t begin with:

“They’re a respected charity.”

Don’t begin with:

“They’ve raised thousands for good causes.”

And equally, don’t begin with:

“Something sinister must be happening.”

Begin with the evidence.

THE CHARITY MAY BE INNOCENT TOO

There is another important distinction.

An organisation can itself become the vehicle through which somebody gains trust without the organisation knowing that person is exploiting it.

The charity may therefore be victim rather than perpetrator.

Its name may be borrowed.

Its reputation may provide credibility.

Its beneficiaries may provide access.

Its fundraising activities may provide opportunity.

Its trustees may themselves have been deceived.

That distinction matters enormously.

We should never leap from wrongdoing by an individual to wrongdoing by an organisation without evidence connecting the two.

But neither should an organisation’s charitable status prevent questions being asked about what happened beneath its banner.

DOING GOOD DOESN’T CREATE IMMUNITY

Perhaps that’s the simplest principle of all.

Charitable work deserves recognition.

Volunteers deserve our gratitude.

Fundraisers deserve support.

People who dedicate themselves to helping others should not become objects of suspicion simply because they do so.

Yet nor should charitable status create an invisible shield around anybody.

History has already demonstrated why.

The question isn’t whether we should trust charities.

Of course we should be capable of trust.

The question is whether trust has replaced scrutiny.

Because safeguarding isn’t about assuming the worst of everybody.

It is about ensuring that nobody becomes so respected, so useful, so generous, so connected or so publicly associated with doing good that we decide they are beyond question.

Good works can build trust.

Trust can create access.

Access can create opportunity.

And wherever trust creates access to vulnerable people, their homes, their finances or their lives, safeguarding must remain capable of asking one final question:

Who benefits?

Not because the answer will necessarily reveal wrongdoing.

But because sometimes the person everybody trusts is precisely the person nobody thought to investigate.

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