The treasurer of Oxfam International has questioned whether being a registered charity is worth the regulatory burden, and suggested charities could want to give up their registration and become social enterprises instead.

Bob Humphreys (pictured), treasurer at Oxfam International, was speaking at yesterday's inaugural NGO Insight conference, in response to Libby James, co-founder of not-for-profit organisation Wiki Development – now known as Ekspi.

James said her organisation had not registered as a charity, and praised the model of Amnesty International, which has a non-charitable campaigning arm. She said charities could operate with more freedom and more confidence if they were to no longer be registered charities.

Humphreys said: "Have we reached the point of which the concept of a charity as a regulatory organisation is outdated?

"Clearly there are some benefits - mostly in terms of fundraising - to being a regulated charity, but the way you are describing is one where we can operate much more freely, with more confidence in terms of financial structures and in achieving our mission.

"I wonder if it is time that we should all just give up our charity registration and rebrand as social enterprises."

Asset lock is a concern

James went on to explain how her organisation was set up. She said they didn't become a social enterprise because they were scared about the "asset lock from an investment perspective", and that it allowed them more flexibility to register as a company limited by shares.

She added: "But we are in the process of setting up a charitable entity that will have a 'golden share' in the company itself. This will mean the social mission is locked in and protected by an independent board".

She added that this will mean investors in the future will never be able to touch or change the mission, and that this has proved "significantly easier to find investment for".

James added that she came from a background in international development and charity, and had never previously considered not registering as a charity before.

She said: "It doesn't mean we that we are a traditional company that doesn't care about things, but it just means we can go about and do what we want to do faster then we would have if we'd registered as a charity. So I think it is really worth exploring".

Rose Caldwell, executive director of Concern Worldwide UK, added that it will be interesting to see if the current state of "over-regulation will drive more people out of that market into something more manageable".

"I think we will end up with a much wider and more diverse ecosystem of organisations. Which is probably not a bad thing," she said.