Daniel Phelan, who died at home on Wednesday 11 February after a long illness, was a socially-motivated businessman who encapsulated the true meaning of social enterprise before the term was even coined.

As the pioneer of Charity Finance, Governance and Fundraising magazines and their associated training and events programmes, and creator of the sector’s original (and best) Charity Awards, Dan devoted his life to making charities and civil society more effective.

The second-eldest in an Irish-English family of six who spent their early childhood in a two-room ground-floor dwelling with no hot water in Acton, West London, he won one of only two annual Middlesex scholarships to Christ’s Hospital school.   

At Durham University, he quickly bored of translating Aramaic text to Greek for his theology degree and changed to literature.

A colourful start

After a brief dalliance with sales and then a colourful stint in the music industry, including as co-founder of a record label named Malicious Damage and a tour of the US as manager of the punk band Killing Joke, Dan concluded that a media career was a somewhat more stable option. He landed a job at Pigeon Post, which also published Balloon Europe, and then decided he should launch Balloon World. His first voluntary sector magazine was Assembly & Association, a title drawn from the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which provided a forum for representative and membership bodies throughout the not-for-profit sector.

In 1988, in collaboration with what was then the Institute of Charity Fundraising Managers (now the Institute of Fundraising), he founded Fundraising, the UK’s first-ever magazine for fundraisers. In 1990, Dan founded the company which is now Civil Society Media. He started NGO Finance (later Charity Finance) magazine that year and was editor for its first seven years. In 1999, he founded The Charity Awards, now widely recognised as the most rigorous and prestigious awards programme in the voluntary sector. In 2005, he started Governance, the UK’s foremost magazine for charity trustees, and shortly after that he acquired Professional Fundraising (later relaunched as Fundraising Magazine) to complete the strategic picture of all aspects of running charities.

A number of products associated with the magazines have also had material impacts on the sector’s development. Now in its 23rd year, the Charity Shops Survey is by far the most comprehensive study of the charity retail sector and helps those charities that run shops to increase efficiencies and allow more resources to be diverted to the frontline, to support beneficiaries.

Audit firms admit that the annual Charity Audit Survey, also launched back in 1992, has been directly responsible for keeping audit fees lower than they would otherwise have been over the years, saving charities literally millions of pounds.

Enormous influence

In short, Daniel’s influence on the UK charity sector over the last 25-odd years has been little short of enormous. Here’s one example: In Issue 5 of NGO Finance, he reproduced the entire Charity Bill 1992. In those days, HMSO would print a few copies of a Bill, put them on the shelves at their shops in various cities where they would mostly gather dust because no-one knew they were there. There was no internet. PDFs did not yet exist. So Daniel badgered HMSO until they gave him permission to reproduce what is Crown copyright. Getting that permission was not easy. After working all day and through the night to produce an enormous edition of the magazine, he then took the large box of film to Paddington and got on the 6am train to Merthyr Tydfil, then the home of the cheapest print in the UK. Once he arrived in the Welsh valleys they set to making up the printing plates while Daniel borrowed their phone and rang around the chief executives of the umbrella bodies offering cheap run-on copies for them to circulate to their members. Within the hour many thousands were added to the print order and as a result a very much larger number of charity professionals were directly engaged with an important piece of legislation for charities.

Back in 1990 people in charities simply didn’t have access to the information they needed – Daniel Phelan came along and did something about that. And he did it with the utmost integrity and distinction.
 
The charitable sector today is unrecognisable from the one that NGO Finance launched into 25 years ago. It is much bigger, it is more professional, and its influence is far greater. Ultimately this means that it helps many more people. For instance, British Heart Foundation has multiplied its shops turnover 65 times over to £170m and its profit by a factor of 213 to £35m.

Over the years Daniel’s contribution to the sector has amounted to millions of pounds worth of benefit. He has given away well over one million magazines packed full of useful, practical advice on how to run a charity effectively.  He ran The Charity Awards each year at break-even or less because he believed fervently that effective and well-run charities ought to be identified and lauded, and their knowledge and learning shared. He supported countless charities through his magazines’ coverage of their activities.  And all the while he maintained an unfaltering reputation for fairness, honesty and integrity.

A critical friend

Dan was proud of Civil Society Media’s independence, and of the unique status this afforded it to be a critical friend but also to speak truth to power on the sector’s behalf. At last year’s Charity Awards he accepted special recognition for his contribution to the sector, and said: “Running the Charity Awards every year is a welcome counterbalance to our usual business of speaking truth to power and holding folk’s feet to the fire when they go wrong.”

And though he seldom used his media platforms to air his own views, there was one occasion in 2010 when a news story so needled him that he couldn’t let it pass.

The adoption charity Catholic Care (Diocese of Leeds) was trying its damnedest to convince the Charity Commission, and later the Charity Tribunal, to let it change its objects so that it could reject gay couples who applied to adopt children through its services. This was the same Catholic Church that had refused, at the time, to deal properly with its clergy who had been found to have abused children over many years. Dan was incensed by the story – the Church’s hypocrisy was beyond the pale and he had to say so. His blogs elicited a deluge of comments from readers – one or two even agreeing with him.

But this was a rare intervention. Despite holding the job title of editor-in-chief, he tended not to write much. It was simply a moniker he was advised to adopt early on in his venture “so that I can stop you bloody journos publishing something if I need to”. Though to my knowledge, he never did.

After 25 years serving the voluntary sector, Dan had strong opinions on plenty of subjects, but few things got his goat more than people who professed that charities are inherently better, morally superior entities than other types of organisation.

"I've met plenty of genuine, decent, good-hearted people who work for 'commercial' companies and I've met plenty of total idiots who work in charities," is the kind of scornful retort he would be inclined to give.  

"It's not its constitution that makes an organisation good or bad, it's the values of the people that run it."

In an interview to celebrate the 200th edition of Charity Finance in December 2013, just before he fell ill, Dan noted the growing propensity for charities to embrace the devices of enterprise, professionalism and commercialisation – ground normally occupied by commercial companies.

“Enterprise is all-pervading,” he said. “As long as charities remain values-driven, then it’s ok. But it won’t be if charities succumb to the very thing that we criticise businesses for – going flat out to make as much money as possible, with little regard for the customer or society. Charities must always consider their beneficiaries first.”

As Andrew Hind, former Charity Commission chief executive and current editor of Charity Finance, said when Charity Finance published its 200th edition: “Daniel hasn’t spent the past quarter of a century operating on the charity frontline, but his distinguished contribution to the sector is every bit the equal of those illustrious names his Charity Awards have honoured down the years.”

He brought his wisdom and enormous intellect to bear on various trustee boards over the years too; most recently for StepChange Debt Charity and Alliance Publishing Trust.

But it wasn’t all serious – Dan - or Danny to his family and close friends - loved a laugh and was very self-deprecating. When Civil Society News ran its popular doppelganger series in the run-up to Christmas 2013, Dan sent the news team an image of his own lookalike to include in the bulletin. The subject? Angela Merkel.
 
A keen art collector and ardent foodie, he adorned CSM’s office walls with bold, bright paintings and was a regular and valued customer at Trinity Restaurant, Clapham.

He is survived by his artist wife Cathy and a daughter, Fabienne.

Daniel Phelan was a remarkable man who made an indelible impression on all who knew him. His work affected the lives of countless thousands more. He devoted his life to creating a more civil society – and that society is much the poorer without him.

Messages of condolence for Dan's wife and family can be sent to [email protected] and donations in his name can be made here.