Our finding that members are an unexpectedly infrequent object in professional body foundation documents may be because many are charities. The Charity Commission requires all objects to be charitable. If a charity’s object will only benefit a defined group of people ‘this needs to be a sufficient section of the public’ (Charity Commission 2014). Benefiting only members would be insufficient.
Almost half (46%) of all professional bodies are registered charities. To test the effect of charitable status we compared these with the 44% that are simply professional associations; that is, not charities nor chartered, for which Privy Council approval requires some objects to be in the public interest, nor regulatory bodies, which have registrants rather than members.
For professional associations without formal restrictions 7% of objects are aimed at members. This is indeed more than the 3% for those with charitable status. However, it is not sufficient to outweigh the 12% of objects targeting the knowledge base (though this accounted for 20% of charities’ objects). It also did not outweigh the 10% targeting standards or the 10% targeting the profession. Those without formal restrictions had higher proportions of objects targeting practitioners 6% compared with 3% for charities. Beyond the knowledge base the biggest difference for charities is their higher proportion of objects targeting education at 13% compared with 7% for professional associations without restrictions. But interestingly the proportion targeting qualifications and exams and CPD and training together were only 7% for charities compared with 10% for those without restrictions. It could be argued that education can be interpreted as referring to what professional bodies offer to the general public, with qualifications and CPD only of benefit to members.
Chartered professional bodies had the same proportion of targets aimed at members as the professional bodies overall at 6%, however they stood out with 22% of objects aimed at the knowledge base and slightly more for education in general at 11% and the combination of qualifications and CPD at 11%. A substantial 17% of professional bodies are both chartered and charities. They particularly stood out with 24% of objects aimed at the knowledge base.
We conclude that relatively low proportion of objects aimed at members is not simply due to the significant presence of charities among professional bodies. Rather the extent of the lack of focus on members is enhanced by their presence. Chartered particularly reinforced the pattern of the knowledge base dominance far outweighing objects targeting members. Those that are chartered but not charities were far stronger on both qualifications and exams and CPD and training together accounting for 16% of their objects.
We conclude that the requirements of the Charity Commission and the Privy Council do not entirely explain the emphasis on learned society types of targets rather than membership organisation ones. However, they do strengthen this pattern. Furthermore the focus on education in general is strongly enhanced by charity requirements but not qualifications and CPD targets. This aspect of the influence was not a factor for chartered bodies.
References
Charity Commission (2014) Set up a charity: step by step. London: Charity Commission
It has been great to share some of the key stats of this research with you through Sector News. Soon we will have the recommendations to share with you; putting the findings into practice.
In order to secure a complementary copy of the recommendations, you need to sign up for the distribution list here and you'll have them sent directly to you once they are available.