Charity

Income at WWF-UK grew by about 4 per cent last year, from £80.8m to £84.4m, new figures show. The charity also spent £82m in the year to June 2021, up from £78m, according to its latest annual accounts, which were filed with Companies House today. The additional income was driven by a rise in corporate

Three former trustees of a charitable school have been disqualified for a total of 32 years after the Charity Commission found “repeated and significant failings” at the charity. The regulator said in a inquiry report that trustees of the now-defunct Albayan Education Foundation, which ran the former Birmingham Muslim School and provided aid to people

Charities are being urged to avoid sending blanket emails to politicians and look to focus on one-to-one meetings and events instead, according to a new report. A Shared Interest, published today by the Law Family Commission on Civil Society, a two-year initiative launched by Pro Bono Economics in December 2020 to examine how the potential

The Chelsea FC owner, Roman Abramovich, has said he will sell the club and use the net proceeds to set up a charitable foundation to support people affected by the war in Ukraine. Chris Bryant, the Labour MP for Rhondda, used parliamentary privilege last week to call in the House of Commons for Abramovich’s assets

Measures in the Elections Bill will undermine charities’ ability to campaign and increase the regulatory burden upon them, peers have heard. In a debate about the legislation in the House of Lords, several peers expressed concerns that the legislation would negatively affect charities’ campaigning activities. The Elections Bill, which covers matters relating to the running

The Charity Commission has joined the Fundraising Regulator in warning charities to be careful about where they accept donations from in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Gerald Oppenheim, chief executive of the Fundraising Regulator, warned yesterday that charities should be “extra vigilant” about accepting donations connected to Russia. A statement today from Helen

The military charity Royal British Legion Industries has appointed Lisa Farmer as its chief executive. She will become the first woman to lead the charity in its more than 100-year history, when its outgoing chief executive, Steve Sherry, retires after 12 years in post. Farmer joined the RBLI as its director of strategic development in

Charities need to be “extra vigilant” about accepting donations connected to Russia, the chief executive of the Fundraising Regulator has said. Speaking at a virtual event hosted by the regulator to launch its annual report, Gerald Oppenheim said charities should refer to the Code of Fundraising Practice and to Charity Commission guidance if they were

The Charity Commission has contacted the Chelsea FC Foundation after Roman Abramovich announced he was passing control of Chelsea Football Club to the charity. Abramovich, who has owned the club since 2003, said in a statement over the weekend that he was giving “stewardship” of it to the trustees of the Chelsea FC Foundation. His

Unicef UK has raised more than £1m in four days to support children affected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In a statement to Third Sector, the charity said it was “extremely grateful for the amazing response from the public in just four days since the appeal went live”. The charity said it had been

The charity formed by the merger of Asthma UK and the British Lung Foundation has rebranded as Asthma + Lung UK. The merged charity, which was created in January 2020, said its new logo was “representative of the coming together of the two former lung charities to create one organisation fighting for people’s right to

The chief executive of the grant-maker the Jack Petchey Foundation is to step down after 14 years in the role. Trudy Kilcullen will be succeeded by Gemma Juma, who joined the charity as operations director in 2017 before becoming deputy chief executive last year. Juma previously worked for voluntary sector organisations including the volunteering charity

The grant-maker The Julia and Hans Rausing Trust has made a £3m donation to the young people’s homelessness charity Centrepoint. The gift, which is the biggest individual donation the charity has received in its 52-year history, will go towards Centrepoint’s Independent Living Programme, which aims to build 300 homes in London and Manchester to be

Ninety-eight per cent of the eligible charities paid the Fundraising Regulator’s levy last year – the highest repayment rate in the watchdog’s five-year history. The regulator’s annual accounts, published yesterday, show that in the year to 31 August 2021, 1,974 of the 2,072 eligible organisations paid the fee, contributing a total of almost £2.2m to

Investment gains, better than expected retail performance and an emergency appeal that raised more than £12m helped the older people’s charity Age UK turn a £8.3m deficit into a £9.4m surplus last year.  The charity’s latest accounts show that for the year to the end of March 2021, it recorded an income of £127.1m and

The Queen’s Commonwealth Trust has responded to a national newspaper article that questioned the salaries paid to its top employees. The Daily Mail newspaper ran a piece highlighting the fact that in the year to the end of March last year, the charity spent 98 per cent of its almost £800,000 income on salaries for

The Conservative peer Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts is expected to urge the government to introduce a code of practice covering activities that could be seen as influencing elections and reduce the time period during which election proceedings are deemed to be active for lobbying purposes. The Elections Bill, which has already completed its passage

A trustee of the grant-maker the Southall Trust is to step down next month after 60 years in the role. Ninety-three-year-old Annette Wallis has announced she will step down on 14 March from a position she has held since 1962. The trust was established in 1937 by her grandfather, Wilfred Francis Southall, using proceeds from

Arts organisations in more than 100 culturally underserved areas of the country could benefit from £75m levelling up funding over the next three years in a drive to improve access to the arts. Arts Council England and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport announced today that they have identified 109 “Levelling Up for

A Leicestershire-based heritage charity has received an almost £18,000 donation from a business that failed to comply with recycling regulations. The Environment Agency said the Bradgate Park Trust’s Jubilee Woodland project had been given a £17,600 payment from the local company Trafalgar Scientific, which provides laboratory and microbiological equipment. The regulator said the payment was

Charity legacy income grew by 12.5 per cent last year after it fell in 2020 due to probate delays and disruption related to the coronavirus pandemic, new data shows. Figures from the legacy data company Legacy Foresight, published today, show that the 82 charities in its Legacy Monitor quarterly benchmarking programme reported £1.62bn in legacy

An increase in the number of mergers involving small charities could be an indication of financial stress in the sector, new data suggests. The consultancy Eastside Primetimers’ latest annual Good Merger Index, published today, shows that 77 mergers involving 166 organisations took place between 1 May 2020 and 30 April 2021. The consultancy said that

Two pieces of legislation designed to reduce bureaucracy for charities and unlock almost £900m of dormant assets funding have cleared parliament and are set to become law.  The Charity Commission said the Charities Bill, which is designed to bring into force long-awaited reforms designed to reduce the amount of bureaucracy faced by charities, had been

Steven Kirkpatick has stepped down as chair of the Small Charities Coalition after a year in the role.  He will be succeeded by the consultant Joyce Fraser, who is the founder and chair of The Black Heroes Foundation.  Kirkpatrick was appointed in November 2020 after the previous chair Bushra Ahmed stepped down for personal reasons,

The Charity Commission has stopped trustees making certain financial transactions at the model Naomi Campbell’s grant-making charity while it conducts a statutory inquiry. The regulator said it opened a compliance case into Fashion for Relief in September last year due to a range of regulatory concerns relating to the governance and finances of the charity. 

Smaller foundations are able to be more ambitious with their grant-making practices than their larger counterparts because they can be more agile in their processes and better connected with local communities, a new report has found.  The report, called 10 Pillars of Stronger Practice for Smaller Foundations, is the latest publication from the Association of Charitable Foundations’

The government is being urged to continue its progress on charity lottery reform by doubling the annual sales limit to £100m. Ian Murray, the Labour MP for Edinburgh South MP, asked the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport if the government had any plans to increase the charity lottery sales limit from £50m to £100m a

A charity has ended a Facebook campaign celebrating Covid-19 “heroes” after its posts were flooded with toxic comments by anti-vaxxers. The Covid-19 support charity covid:aid said it had stopped promoting its Covid Heroes campaign on Facebook after some posters laughed and mocked someone who lost both his parents to coronavirus. They also who compared the charity’s

The culture secretary has told MPs that “from where I’m sitting” there was no preferred candidate for Charity Commission chair. Nadine Dorries, the MP for Mid Bedfordshire, made the remark during her first appearance in front of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee in the House of Commons earlier today.  As the Office