Charity

The mental health charity Calm and the blood cancer charity Anthony Nolan were the big voluntary sector winners at this year’s Purpose Awards.  Calm won the Best Advocacy Campaign, Best Health Cause Campaign and the Best Public Awareness Cause Campaign for its work with the agency Hope&Glory on their campaign called ‘The Last Photo’, which

A charity that has been supporting people since the time of Queen Victoria has appointed a new chief executive. Sue Freeth has been chosen to lead VSA, the social care charity that operates in Aberdeen and North East Scotland.  Freeth has a 40-year career serving in UK social care charities and held both executive and

An under-pressure military veterans’ charity that is being looked into by the regulator has received another blow – a demand from the MoD to return a £25,000 grant. British Nuclear Test Veterans’ Association is the subject of a Charity Commission compliance case after trustees terminated the contract of chief executive Ceri McDade. She has challenged

The lawyer chosen as interim manager of the Islamic Centre of England has hit back at critics of her appointment. Campaigners said last week that Emma Moody was not a suitable choice because she “is not from that faith community” but Moody stressed that she brought experience and expertise to the role. She is head

One of the UK’s largest charities has today won a Supreme Court case that experts believe could be of benefit to the entire voluntary sector. Nuffield Health, which made almost £1bn in 2021 and employs 16,400 people, claimed victory over Merton Council – for the third time during a seven-year legal battle. Judges ruled unanimously

A charity in memory of the victims of the Glasgow helicopter disaster is embroiled in legal action against an energy company over almost £300,000 it says it lost in “hidden fees”. The Clutha Trust, set up after 10 people died when a police helicopter crashed into the Clutha pub in 2013, is taking the French

A small hospice charity has been saved after its larger neighbour stepped in to agree a merger. The 31-year-old Bedford Daycare Hospice said it had found it “challenging” to sustain the charity in recent years. But, following negotiations, the organisation has today revealed its merger with Keech Hospice Care, whose staff levels are 10 times

Health and wellbeing charity Westminster Drug Project has changed its name after 30 years. The charity said the original name “no longer spoke” to its identity and services, which have grown to include mental and sexual health programmes alongside drugs and alcohol services. The decision to adopt Via as its new name came from an

The former Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, has resigned as chair and trustee of Christian Aid after criticism of his handling of historic abuse claims. The charity announced Sentamu’s resignation on Friday, after less than two years as chair, a position he took up after retiring as archbishop in 2020. According to Christian Aid, Sentamu’s

The National Lottery Community has named three new members to the committee that oversees its funding strategy in England. They are Helima Khan, a former Downing Street advisor, the social entrepreneur Kamran Rashid and social policy expert Karin Woodley.  The committee members have been unveiled in the week before the NLCF announces its strategy to

A second major charity has distanced itself from TV presenter Philip Schofield following Schofield’s admission that he lied about an affair with a younger colleague. Royal Voluntary Service said this morning that it had no future plans to work with Schofield, who has been an ambassador at the charity for more than a decade. RVS

The Big Issue Group has merged its frontline charity and trading operations in a bid to help more people during the cost-of-living crisis. This means that the Big Issue Foundation, a charity, will close, with staff moving to either a new community interest company or the group’s private arm. The foundation’s frontline staff, who work

The government should lose its powers to appoint Charity Commission board members, a sector leader has said. Sir Stephen Bubb, former boss of Acevo, the body which represents charity chief executives, was speaking after a major Conservative donor was named on the commission’s board.  Rory Brooks, a financier and philanthropist, is one of three new

Three senior figures with a passion for the charity sector have been appointed to the board of trustees at the Charity Commission. The men, who specialise in growth capital provision, banking and charity leadership, will serve for three years from 27 March 2023. They are: Rory Brooks CBE Brooks spent 13 years in banking in

Dozens of civil society figures have protested against the Charity Commission’s decision to impose interim managers at the Islamic Centre of England. The regulator appointed managers to take over the charity last month as part of an ongoing statutory inquiry, saying the trustees had failed to comply with their legal duties. In their open letter to

The overwhelming majority of small charities have been hit with higher costs during the cost-of-living crisis – and say they are braced for things to get even worse. Three quarters of small charities and community groups said everyday costs had gone up in the last 12 months and more than half faced higher energy bills,

Senior figures from Girlguiding UK are meeting with campaigners to try and head off a growing row over plans to close the charity’s activity centres. The charity says that it cannot afford to refurbish the five centres and announced two weeks ago that shutting them would “help financially secure the organisation”. But thousands of volunteers

Funders should aim to maintain higher levels of unrestricted grants post-Covid-19, researchers say. Experts from Durham University said charities and grant-makers trusted one another despite fears that a small number of organisations may have “gamed” the system during the pandemic. Data published in the paper, released today, show that the proportion of charities receiving some

A Scottish gay rights charity has quit Twitter saying it had been the victim of “targeted attacks” on the social media site. LGBT Youth Scotland said it decided to stop using the social media platform this month after noticing an increase in “extreme views” expressed there. The charity had about 33,000 followers on Twitter when

The Charity Commission is deciding whether to intervene after an internal review found that the Methodist Church was “not seen as a safe place” by some female members. The Methodist Church, a charity that oversees the church’s work across the country, admitted that its work with victims of sexism “needs to improve”. Methodist leaders commissioned

The chair of trustees at a military charity has been accused of causing “acrimony” during an ongoing racism storm surrounding a former senior figure at the organisation. Tony Bolton, who also leads the executive committee of the Western Front Association, faces criticism over his handling of the allegations against another committee member, according to reports

Campaigners have welcomed a sign of “shifting power” after a UK-based aid charity set up a trustee board in Africa. Ripple Effect, formerly known as Send a Cow, said that the creation of its Africa Board was part of a commitment to correct an “imbalance” in its work, so that more decisions were made by

King Charles has been urged to intervene after The Prince’s Trust said it would pay compensation of £2,000 each to survivors of childhood sexual abuse, according to reports. The settlement includes hundreds of working-class British children who were removed from their families and taken to “farm schools” in Australia, Canada and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) by

A controversial religious charity has shut its doors, saying it is concerned for the safety of worshippers. The Islamic Centre of England said it had suspended all its programmes “after receiving the concerns of the community and for their safety”, according to a sign posted on its gates this week. The sign, photographed by the

The Vagina Museum will be moving into a new home after securing enough funding to stay open. The charity says that it has raised the £85,000 it needed to avoid being forced to close. The museum launched an emergency fundraiser two weeks ago saying that it required a “substantial cash injection” in order to stabilise

Giving by the country’s biggest charitable foundations rose by 13 per cent in the first year of the pandemic. The value of grants made by the 300 richest foundations grew from £3.27bn to £3.7bn in 2020/21, research shows. This is a far bigger year-on-year increase than the five-year average of about 6 per cent. The

A number of staff at the Chartered Institute of Fundraising may lose their jobs as it starts consulting on restructure plans. The CIOF said that it was proposing changes to the way it worked after finishing a review of its services and products. The charity, which represents thousands of individual fundraisers and hundreds more organisations,

A project has been announced today by NCVO, offering over-50s a paid internship and a route into charity sector employment. The organisation is supporting and hosting Charity Interns, which has been set up to explore new opportunities for people aged over 50 who have not previously worked in the sector. It will begin in late

Hundreds of staff at two large charities are now required to attend their offices just twice a month under post-Covid-19 reforms, it was revealed today. Friends of the Earth and Leukaemia UK have both significantly cut back the amount of time employees are mandated to work in the office. Leukaemia UK said it tried to

Charities and other good causes received a record sum of just over £1.8bn from National Lottery ticket sales in 2022-23, it has been revealed today. Overall sales of almost £8.2bn are the second highest since the lottery’s 1994 launch – beaten only by 2012-13, which included the London Olympics. The news comes as Camelot prepares