20 October 2006
The Cabinet Office's voluntary sector unit has set up a research centre to improve levels of charitable donations, as the government strives to provide more public services through such organisations.
Whitehall's Office of the Third Sector, led by Cabinet Office minister Ed Miliband, has invested £750,000 in the new centre. OTS partners, including the Economic and Social Research Council, the Scottish Executive and the Carnegie UK Trust will invest a further £1.25m in the project until 2011.
The centre will research donation patterns and assess why people give money to charities.
Miliband said: 'Between three-fifths and three-quarters of us regularly give to charity, donating over £8bn a year.
'But we still know far too little about how people can best be motivated to give and why they choose to give in one way and not another.'
One of the centre's first projects will be to find ways of encouraging the public to take advantage of tax breaks on donations, so that charities receive more.
The OTS was established by the Cabinet Office to co-ordinate Whitehall's extended use of charities and voluntary organisations to provide new welfare, education, leisure and health-related services.
Meanwhile, Miliband has appointed Campbell Robb as the civil servant charged with leading the OTS. Robb, currently director of public policy at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, will become the OTS's director general.
PFoct2006
