Our country has a long tradition of charity dating back 1600 years. Charities are woven into the fabric of our national life, contributing to our sense of community, social cohesion and public service. And of course Britain’s charities play a major role in humanitarian aid across the globe. Indeed, Britain’s charity law forms the basis of charity in so many parts of the world. Of course, Christ Church itself is a charity and has had some interesting discussions of late with our own charity commission!

So you might think it’s surprising that there is so little academic interest into how charities are organised and run, and precious little academic research into areas like the impact that charities make. Whilst there has been research into philanthropy and giving, it is surprising that academics and policymakers have not looked at the governance and leadership of charities. I would argue that because charities are so under researched, they are misunderstood and their impact underrated. So it was when I stepped down from my national leadership role as a spokesman for charity leaders, in the Association of Chief Executive of Voluntary Organisations, I wanted to tackle this gaping hole in academia. A worthy 'retirement' job I thought.

Fortunately, this work has borne fruit in the establishment a year ago of the Gradel Institute of Charity, which is based in the new Gradel Quadrangles at New College. We are in the rather wonderful and iconic tower of that quadrangle which you see as you walk along Mansfield Road. I love the irony, of a charity research Institute in an ivory tower, though there will be nothing ethereal about the research we do, which is intended to help improve the effectiveness of charities as organisations and the impact they have for us all.

We have drawn together a research team of 11 individuals who are drawn together from across the globe and are led by our academic director Professor Peter Frumkin, who has a significant track record as an academic, writer and teacher from the University of Pennsylvania. We are at an early stage in our development and the research team comes together this Michaelmas term, to develop their research projects and to consider how best to develop executive teaching programmes for charity practitioners.

We have an ambition to expand beyond research and programmes for practitioners, into developing graduate and undergraduate teaching. It’s always been surprising to me that these days you can study almost any subject you like but charity seems to escaped the attention of universities as a subject for academic teaching. So whether that’s a masters in charity or an undergraduate course, I suspect this would be of significant interest to many students in our universities. We could even start small. I read PPE at Christ Church, so perhaps we could think of a paper on “charity driving social change“? Any takers?

With the advent of a new government we have seen changing mood music towards charities; more  positive and proactively thinking about their role in driving social cohesion and more effective, citizen-focused public services. Hopefully we have moved on from the toxic debate on culture wars and  negative attitudes towards charity campaigning and advocacy. I doubt if there are many Members of the House  who have not had involvement with charity; some working in the sector, some as trustees or perhaps just as donors to a particular loved cause. From this small beginning, I hope Oxford will act as a beacon to other universities here and across the globe in fostering proper academic research and teaching into charity and its impact in building better societies.