Charity

Donations by text message to charities fell by 28.1 per cent last year, latest figures show.  Data published by the Phone-paid Services Authority shows the amount donated was £35.9m in the year to the end of March, down from £50m in the previous year. It is down from a record £65.8m in 2020/21. The report, which

Girlguiding UK will press ahead with proposals to sell its five activity centres, affecting almost 100 staff.  The charity said in May that it was planning to sell the sites because they had been losing money for years and would cost more than £20m to bring up to standard. It has this week confirmed it

The chief executive of MSI Reproductive Choices has received a £233,068 bonus in 2022 – doubling his annual salary. The reproductive healthcare charity’s annual accounts for 2022, which were filed with Companies House last week, show bonus payments to Simon Cooke rose from £229,068 last year. His base salary is £233,068, the accounts show. The

The Bone Cancer Research Trust has appointed Will Burchell as its new chief executive. Burchell, who joins from the same role at the Nottinghamshire Deaf Society, succeeds Mat Cottle-Shaw, who has become chief executive at Rotherham Hospice after eight years at the trust, the last almost two as chief executive. The Bone Cancer Research Trust,

Charities have welcomed a decision by the Mayor of London to boost cash support to change their vehicles to ensure they are compliant with the expansion of the Ultra Low Emission Zone scheme. Sadiq Khan announced last week that he would increase the funds available under the associated scrappage scheme by £50m to £160m. As

The conservation charity the Yorkshire Dales Rivers Trust is set to receive a donation of almost £24,000 from a farming business that was found to be illegally spreading waste sludge.  The Environment Agency said J E Hartley Ltd, of Thorganby, near York, had submitted an enforcement undertaking after repeatedly spreading waste sludge on its own

SOS Children’s Villages UK has filed a serious incident report with the Charity Commission after undercover footage showed fundraisers working on its behalf appearing to break the fundraising code.  An investigation conducted by WalesOnline involved a reporter seeking work at two connected agencies called Vantage and Solution Cardiff.  The companies were raising funds for SOS

A UK charity has pledged £29m to train thousands of young people in heritage skills. The cash injection comes from the Hamish Ogston Foundation, which said it was the largest single commitment to the cause ever made.  The funding will pay for up to 2,700 new young people in the UK and across the Commonwealth to

A group of advice charities have launched a summer campaign to highlight a threat posed by “imposter firms” that they say are trying to cash in on their names. StepChange, Citizens Advice and the Money Advice Trust are concerned that rogue companies are running copycat advertisements online that look very similar to their own official

The defunct telephone fundraising agency Listen left legacy debts of more than £3.3m to unsecured creditors, including thousands of pounds to the housing and homelessness charity Shelter, documents show. The details have been revealed in documents submitted to Companies House last week by the firm of liquidators appointed to wind down the business. Listen, which

CAF Bank has defended its financial position after a national newspaper reported it had made “significant paper losses” on investments last year.  The Financial Times reported over the weekend that CAF Bank, which supports more than 14,000 charities, had “amassed significant paper losses on its bond holdings in the wake of rising interest rates”.  It

The Scout Association has earmarked more than £1m from its reserves to cover the costs of evacuating thousands of UK campers from an international gathering in South Korea. Tens of thousands of teenagers at the World Scout Jamboree in the south-western county of Buan have been removed from the campsite because of issues including extreme

The healthcare charity Nuffield Health recorded income of more than £1.2bn in 2022, latest accounts show.  The charity, which runs 37 hospitals and 114 health and fitness centres in the UK, said the increase was down to factors including a growth in hospital activity plus a rise of more than 10 per cent in its

The Charity Commission has opened a statutory inquiry into a heart disease charity that has not filed any accounts since 2019.  The regulator said it was also concerned about financial record-keeping and the level of charitable expenditure at the Have a Heart Foundation, which was registered in 2013 to raise awareness of and support patients

A Cumbria-based charity that supports children and young people has appointed Teresa Jennings as its new chief executive. She joins the Brathay Trust after spending eight years at the helm of n-compass, a health and social care charity based in Preston, Lancashire, which grew from 70 employees to 170 and increased its turnover from £2.1m

A 13-year-old fundraiser has raised more than £1,000 for the homelessness charity Emmaus UK after camping in his garden for more than a year. Billy began sleeping in his family’s garden on 17 July 2022 after he was given a teepee for his birthday. He originally aimed to spend 100 nights outdoors and raise £150

The Disasters Emergency Committee’s appeal to support people affected by the earthquakes in Turkey and Syria has passed £150m. The DEC said the appeal, which was launched in the wake of the massive earthquakes that struck the region in February, had become the third largest in its 60-year history.  The appeal has raised £151.8m so

Charities have reiterated calls for the UK government to restore overseas aid spending to previous levels after an impact assessment warned the reduction could cost thousands of lives.  An impact assessment produced by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, published today by MPs on the International Development Committee, predicts that almost 200,000 women across Africa

Charities should look to build alliances within and beyond civil society to protect the narrowing “democratic space”, a new report urges. The publication, Defending our Democratic Space, published today by the Sheila McKechnie Foundation and the think tank Civil Exchange, warns of the increased threats to the UK’s democratic space, which it defines as the

Daniel Fluskey, director of policy and communications at the Chartered Institute of Fundraising, is to step down.  Fluskey, who joined the then-Institute of Fundraising as head of policy and research in 2013, is to join the National Aids Trust in October as director of policy, research and influencing.  His time at the membership body has encompassed

The Charity Commission has dropped the use of the phrase “ethical investment” in updated guidance. The regulator has today published updated guidance on charities and investments, known as CC14. The commission had promised to revise the guidance after the High Court’s “Butler-Sloss” ruling last year, which found that trustees can exclude investing in areas that

The British Red Cross has appointed Clive MacTavish as its chief financial officer.  MacTavish, who joined the BRC in January as interim finance chief, was previously CFO at the development finance company British International Investment.  He succeeds Martin Halliwell, who left the BRC in December. The British Red Cross is one of the UK’s biggest

NSPCC has introduced a policy whereby candidates for jobs at the children’s charity will receive interview questions ahead of time. The initiative, introduced as part of the charity’s equality, diversity and inclusion commitments, is being rolled out after consultation with the NSPCC’s “lived experience groups”, its EDI trustee Sheanna Patelmaster, who is also a strategy

NGOs are a “far cry” from the organic, democratic organisations society needs to make the calls that anti-racist movements must, Amnesty International UK’s racial justice director told an event today. Speaking on a pre-recorded panel entitled ‘Reclaiming Anti-racism’ which was scheduled to be streamed as part of today’s BAME Online conference, Ilyas Nagdee, who is

St John Ambulance continues to experience challenges retaining and recruiting staff and volunteers, two and a half years after facing allegations of bullying. According to its accounts for 2022, published by Companies House this week, more than 4,000 people joined the first aid charity as volunteers in 2022, but a comparable number also decided to

Proposals to abolish inheritance tax must take into account the risk that charities may lose out on legacy fundraising income, the charity legacy consortium Remember a Charity has warned. Earlier this month, The Guardian newspaper reported that Downing Street is holding talks about making the scrapping of inheritance tax part of its manifesto for the

The Charity Commission has closed its regulatory compliance case into a foundation set up by the UK’s second-richest man, saying it is satisfied that the charity’s activities further its purposes. The regulator opened its case in January into the Jim Ratcliffe Foundation, a sport and conservation charity, after allegations – published in The Guardian newspaper –

Stuart Dean is to join Leonard Cheshire as its new chief financial officer, two months after the Charity Commission launched an investigation into the disability charity’s “challenging financial situation”. Dean, who starts at the charity in September, joins from England’s health and social care regulator the Care Quality Commission, where he spent eight years designing

The supermarket chain Morrisons has raised £5m for children’s palliative care charity Together for Short Lives in just over a year. Morrisons and Together for Short Lives began their partnership, which aims to raise funds for children’s hospices, in February 2022. Staff at Morrisons stores across the country raised funds at events such as in-store

Charity donations by UK millionaires in the second quarter of this year were less than one-third of their value during the previous quarter, according to research from The Beacontree Collaborative. A quarterly survey of 300 to 500 high net worth individuals carried out by the market research firm Savanta found that the median level of