When taking our surveys, we want to make sure that all research participants feel valued and satisfied that their preferences for how they wish to describe themselves are being respected, not least in terms of gender.

We feel this represents not only ethical research but also best practice research because participants are more likely to be open in their responses if they feel comfortable with the research process itself. This is at the heart of what we do. We see the people who participate in our research as participants and not respondents.

At nfpSynergy we’re always working to give our clients the latest stats on what the public think of charities and how they interact with them. Whether it’s what proportion currently trust the sector (56%), what the ideal charity would spend on fundraising costs (14%) or how far the public support the Fundraising Preference Service (31% ‘definitely’, 33% ‘probably’), we’ve got our finger on the pulse when it comes to public opinion.

It’s been a year since the government’s new Shared Parental Leave came into force. The change enables eligible men to share up to 52 weeks of parental leave with their partner and has been held up as one of the key contributions of the Lib Dems to the coalition government.

Our new report Past Imperfect, developed over the last 18 months examines data from the fields of Cancer, heart disease, disability, poverty, and the environment to try and see what changes, for better or worse have taken place over the last few decades. This blog is an edited version of our conclusions, as much as anything to encourage people to read the whole report!

At last week’s MRS Conference, Baroness Neuberger mentioned that politicians should take more initiative and leadership and pay less attention to the worst examples of public opinion.

She also talked about how in the past the UK accepted around 70-90k refugees from Nazi Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1938, when economic conditions were much more dire, and those people served the country extremely well.

Next month nfpSynergy will be running its first ever research to find out how the people of Wales view charities. This will sit alongside our research in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and we are excited to find out how Welsh perceptions of charities differ to those of their Scottish and Northern Irish counterparts.

This research comes at a vital time as the Welsh charity sector has been facing some serious challenges. They’ve been affected by many of the issues facing the rest of the UK, including austerity and funding cuts combined with increasing demands for their services.

The run up to Christmas 2015 was a busy period for charities. Giving Tuesday, big TV adverts and multiple Christmas appeals meant that people had even more contact with charities than usual. But how do the UK public feel about charities at Christmas? Which campaigns are the most successful and why?

In part one of this report we discuss our recent research into the public’s experiences of interacting with charities at Christmas. We look at which causes, charities and campaigns were the winners of Christmas 2015 and why.

We would like to thank our clients and partners for inspiring us to keep researching the topical issues in the sector. As part of our Social Investment programme we regularly produce Free Reports and feed our finding back to the sector so any charity regardless its size or sector can find something useful. Here are the 12 popular reports this  year.

Michele Madden reports on the first findings from our online community and wonders whether charities are making the most of raising awareness and donations in December. 

The season of good will and giving is just around the corner – and many charities will be reaching out to donors with their key appeals and campaigns. We know Christmas is one of the most important and valuable times of the year for charities, yet we think it is going to become increasingly difficult to engage donors during this time.