This report Survey of Charitable Funders’ Views of Accounts prepared under the Charities SORP was published in December 2020 jointly by the Association of Charitable Foundations (ACF), Scottish Grantmakers (SGM), and Philanthropy Ireland.

It is based on an extensive survey circulated to members of all three organisations exploring how we actually use the accounts of charities applying to us seeking grants.

Can I also say a particular word of thanks to wide range of members who responded to the survey: nearly a quarter of the responses were from those mainly awarding grants in Scotland so it appears that SGM members have had a considerable input into the findings.

In summer 2020, both ACF and SGM were accepted by the four charity regulators across the UK and Ireland to be part of an ongoing "SORP Engagement Panel", looking at issues in the future development of the Charities SORP from the perspective of donors and funders who USE charity accounts in funding decisions. SGM was initially represented by Kenneth Ferguson with myself as the alternate, but in the end he asked me to take this forward.

The report contains a range of interesting findings which are summarised in the Conclusion on page 19 – not least a finding that on average grantmakers who responded spend 27 minutes looking at the trustees report and accounts of each charity to which they are considering awarding grants.

I gave a detailed presentation to the report to a meeting of the SORP Engagement Panel shortly before Christmas 2020 and from there it went to the four charity regulators (OSCR, CCEW, CCNI and the Irish Charities Regulator). Our hope is that these findings will contribute directly to the next version of the SORP (probably in 2023/24).

This is a tangible example of work that has been going on in the background ensuring that the views of charitable grantmakers in Scotland are feeding into policy decisions.

Gareth Morgan – Treasurer, Scottish Grantmakers