Charity

Longfield Community Hospice has appointed Clare Davis as its next chief executive.  Davis, who will join in November from the same position at the health and wellbeing charity Pets as Therapy, succeeds Simon Bernstein, who is retiring after four years in the role.  Before joining Pets as Therapy, Davis was director of the consultancy The

The Disasters Emergency Committee’s total income fell from £274.3m to £215.7m in the year to the end of March, its annual accounts reveal. The fall is partly as a result of an anticipated fall in donations to the Ukraine humanitarian appeal, which was launched in March 2022 and fell by nearly 70 per cent to

The government has said it has no plans to scrap Empty Property Relief after experts expressed fears it could be lost to charities. The Treasury and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities have launched a joint consultation aimed at reducing evasion and avoidance of business rates. The consultation asks for views on measures

Lilian Greenwood has been named as the shadow minister for civil society.  The MP for Nottingham South succeeds Barbara Keeley, who had held the charity brief for the Labour Party since March last year.  Keeley remains in Labour’s team under the new shadow culture secretary Thangam Debbonaire, but her brief will cover music and tourism.

The British Heart Foundation’s total income rose by £30m to a record high of more than £380m last year, new figures show.  The charity’s annual accounts, for the year to the end of March, show total income was up by 8 per cent year on year to £381.3m.  Trading income rose by £29m to £229.4m

The Charity Commission has opened a statutory inquiry into a sanitation and healthcare charity that supports people in west Africa. The regulator said today it had begun a probe into Water for Africa because of the charity’s failure to file its accounts and due to concerns about its financial controls. The commission said it had

An internal Church of England investigation has revealed a founder of a Christian charity abused his position and had “inappropriate relationships” with young male interns. Mike Pilavachi, co-founder and former leader of Soul Survivor, exhibited a “systematic pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour”, the Church of England’s National Safeguarding Team said. Pilavachi worked as a

A vegan charity’s advert has been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority because it caused “unjustified distress”. The advert, created by the campaigning charity Viva!, shows a woman eating raw offal and blood in a parody of popular fruit yoghurt ads.  The advert also included voiceover lines that invited consumers to “be complicit” and “taste

About 170 roles at St John Ambulance are at risk as part of a major restructure. The first aid charity said its “refreshed community first aid-focused strategy” would affect about 10 per cent of its 1,700 employees. SJA said it was changing its approach in response to a post-pandemic downturn in revenue due to lower

The Fundraising Regulator has opened a 12-week public consultation on proposed changes to the Code of Fundraising Practice.  The consultation, which runs until 1 December, invites anyone with an interest in fundraising by UK-based charities and third-party organisations to have their say on the code.  The regulator said the review would include amending existing rules,

Income at the development charity Voluntary Service Overseas has grown for the first time since 2016, latest figures show. The charity’s accounts for the year to the end of March show overall income of £40.4m, up 17 per cent on the previous year.  It also breaks a downward trend that started after the organisation’s income

Two youth charities based in the North East of England have merged in an effort to strengthen their support for youth across the region. NE Youth, which runs youth programmes across 12 local authority areas, has today added the Northumbria Coalition Against Crime (NCAC) to its portfolio of services. Six staff and 30 volunteers have

The director of communications at the National Trust has hit back at claims the charity needs “a bit of common sense”. Celia Richardson was responding to comments from the seven-time failed parliamentary candidate Nigel Farage who said: “I hope that Restore Trust knocks a bit of common sense into what was once the great National

A children’s reading charity has announced the appointment of its new chief executive. Bookmark confirmed Emily Jack took over from Graihagh Crawshaw-Sadler from 1 September. Crawshaw-Sadler stepped down in July and is moving on to be the chief executive of the teacher training charity Now Teach. Jack is a qualified teacher and has worked with

The handing over of royal patronages appears to be a ‘totally opaque’ process, a sector analyst told Third Sector, as charities that had the late Queen Elizabeth II as their patron await news on whether they will continue to have royal support. Following the death of the Queen – who was the patron of more

Funders and the wider sector must take equitable approaches to their evaluation processes in order to shape a fairer sector, research from a charity think tank has argued. The paper, Equitable Evaluation, from New Philanthropy Capital, challenges funders and the wider sector to consider who makes decisions when determining whether a given investment or programme

Girlguiding UK has today closed its overseas operations more than 100 years after its first unit was established in Portugal in 1911. British Girlguiding Overseas (BGO), the international arm of the charity, has units in the Middle East and Africa, Asia, Benelux and France, which cease operations today.  Units in British Overseas Territories in the

A charitable incorporated organisation founded by former Girlguiding leaders has launched a crowdfunding campaign to buy an activity centre due to be shut down by Girlguiding.  Foxie’s Future CIO is named after the mascot of the Foxlease activity centre in Hampshire, one of five sites Girlguiding announced it would sell earlier this year to help

An animal welfare charity announced it will close down after it failed to secure new operating premises.  Runham Wildlife Rescue (RWR) in Norfolk has had to stop taking in new rescues because they say they no longer have the requisite space to “help sick and injured animals.” The organisation was founded by its director Kelly

Cancer Research UK has refreshed its branding to tell a more consistent story of the impact its work has on the lives of people affected by cancer, the charity announced today.   The brand refresh aims to connect CRUK’s scientific and research breakthroughs with what they means for cancer patients and their families every day.  It

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has apologised after publishing a series of social media posts that called the Prime Minister and two other ministers “liars”. The thread on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, accused Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, along with ministers Michael Gove and Therese Coffey, of weakening

Dhivya O’Connor has been announced as the next chief executive of the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women. O’Connor joins the foundation from her role as the interim chief executive of The Girls Network, which she took up in October 2022.  In a statement, the foundation said O’Connor would bring “a wealth of experience in the

An environmental charity will receive a £135,000 funding boost under a river ‘pollution penalty’ imposed on two house-building companies. The sanction has been announced by the Environment Agency (EA) following an investigation into repeated pollution of Pitty Beck, near Bradford. Keepmoat Homes Ltd, a company that specialises in building residential housing and owns the site

A £10m fund for charities that deliver suicide prevention services has been made available by the government. The latest round of funding from the Suicide Prevention Grant Fund is now open for applications from charities that work in England. The scheme first ran from 2021 to 2022 and led to the investment of £5.4m in

An Islamic charity has said it “rejects violent extremism and hate crime” after its government funding was paused over accusations of homophobia and misogyny. The Green Lane Mosque and Community Centre (GLMCC) in Birmingham was awarded a grant of £2.2m from the Youth Investment Fund at the beginning of August. But on Friday, the Department

Disability charity Motability has changed its name and rebranded to the Motability Foundation in an attempt to increase awareness of its wider remit of grant-giving, research and innovation, and to make it easier for disabled people and organisations to find and access the support it provides.  The organisation is well known for its role overseeing

A five-year core costs grant programme for UK charities that support the delivery of free legal advice to marginalised people and communities has been launched in partnership with the Community Justice Fund. The Improving Lives Through Advice (ILTA) programme is supported by The National Lottery Community Fund and is intended to help about 75 organisations

A leading outdoor education charity has revealed its next chief executive. The Ernest Cook Trust has announced that Ed Ikin will take up the top job later this year.  Ikin is currently the director of Wakehurst, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew’s wild botanic garden in Sussex, and co-founded Kew’s Nature Unlocked programme, which researches the

A former senior manager at an addiction charity, who travelled overseas to avoid jail after defrauding the organisation out of almost £160,000, has been detained and returned to the UK for sentencing.  Donna Wells, 41, was employed as the service manager at Young Addaction Halton and used her position to transfer large amounts of money

The British Museum’s director, Hartwig Fischer, said today that he would step down from his role over the theft of multiple precious items from the museum’s collection. In a statement, Fischer described his presence at the museum as “a distraction”, a little over a week after multiple thefts reported to management in 2021 were made