Charity

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

The on-the-night total for Friday’s BBC Children in Need appeal was more than £2m up on last year’s figure, organisers have announced.  A three-hour live show on BBC reached a total of £39.4m compared with £37m at the same stage last year.  Last year’s figure was more than £10m down on the 2019 on-the-night total

Rachael Maskell, the shadow minister for civil society, has called for the application process for the next Charity Commission chair to be restarted with “all political interests” removed.  Speaking in parliament last week, Maskell said “government corruption is not restricted to this place” before raising the ongoing recruitment process for the next chair of the

The Chartered Institute of Fundraising has warned that parts of the government’s new data strategy could be detrimental to charity fundraising. The membership body was responding to a government consultation on reforms to the UK’s data protection regime, which the CIOF said was welcome and contained some positive proposals. These include the creation of a

Union members at the animal charity Mayhew are to be balloted on strike action in a dispute over staffing levels and union recognition.  The union Unite said it would canvas members at the charity over strike action because of concerns about the charity’s strategy and a rationalisation plan, which the union said could lead to

A union has successfully argued that The Royal Parks charity’s outsourcing of an employment contract was unlawful indirect race discrimination. The charity was set up by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport to administer and maintain the eight royal parks in London, including Hyde Park, St James’s Park and Kensington Gardens. The United

The Social Investment Business returned to recording a surplus in the year to 31 March 2021 after what it described as a “strong financial performance”. The social investor recorded a surplus of almost £400,000 for the period, according to its latest accounts, after recording a deficit of more than £560,000 in the previous year. Fund

The charity sector must be more transparent and do more to reduce its carbon emissions and tackle climate change after a snapshot survey that suggests most charities are not committed to being carbon neutral. A poll by the Charity Finance Group found that eight in 10 charities surveyed in October said they did not have

The government has pledged to consider introducing a 60-day time limit for the Attorney General to consider requests from the Charity Commission to refer matters to the charity tribunal.  It comes after the regulator waited almost four years for the government to ultimately reject its request for the tribunal to consider the governance arrangements of

A quarter of charities lost at least 40 per cent of their income from 2019 to 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic hit, researchers have found. The paper, from David Clifford and John Mohan of the Third Sector Research Centre at the University of Birmingham and Alasdair Rutherford of the University of Stirling, is based on

The Charity Commission has opened a statutory inquiry into a charity set up by a Saudi billionaire amid claims it took donations intended for one of the Prince of Wales’ charities.  The regulator said today it had opened the probe into the Mahfouz Foundation, which has charitable aims including the promotion of the history and

Virtual Event with Star-Powered Musicians Tomorrow, November 18th, 9 AM to 4 PM EST Malvern, PA – November 17, 2021: Rajant Corporation, the inventor of Kinetic Mesh® wireless networks, will host the second annual “World Music Benefit 2021” to bring awareness and donations for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), a United Nations agency responsible

Almost two-thirds of workers in the aid sector have experienced racism, according to new research. A report by a working group at the Racial Equity Index, a volunteer-led group that was established to hold the global development sector accountable in dismantling forms of systemic racism, sets out to understand “the state of racism in the

A charity is attempting to distance itself from a trustee it allowed to continue working after he admitting paying for sex with a 16-year-old. Kenneth Lowry, 48, a trustee at the Community Emergency Response Team UK, was sentenced in February to a two-year community service order, 40-day rehabilitation order and a month’s curfew, after he

Together for Short Lives has been named as the next charity partner for the supermarket Morrisons. The partnership, which will begin in February, is expected to raise £10m for the charity over three years. The charity, which had an income of £4.4m in the year to the end of March 2020, said the partnership would

An accounts assistant has been jailed for four years after he fraudulently diverted almost £120,000 from a charity into an online bank account he set up in his mother’s name. Jaswant Singh Kang, also known as Jake Kang and Jake Elliott, of Marina Close, Bournemouth, was convicted of two counts of fraud by false representation.

Tracey Bleakley, chief executive of Hospice UK, is to step down at the end of the year. Bleakley, who has been with the umbrella body for the past six years, will become chief executive designate of the Integrated Care Board for Norfolk and Waveney’s Integrated Care System, as part of the ongoing reforms to the

The Charity Commission for Northern Ireland has been given a list of recommendations to improve its handling of statutory inquiries after an independent inquiry into two highly contentious cases. The CCNI’s actions in its inquiries into the lifeboat charity Lough Neagh Rescue, which took place between May 2013 and January 2015, and the Disabled Police

The Charity Commission has written to the trustees of an animal charity after claims were made that it acted improperly in its pursuit of private prosecutions. Manchester Crown Court judge Nicholas Dean criticised Animal Protection Services earlier this month after finding dozens of pet owners might have suffered miscarriages of justice after being unfairly prosecuted

The National Lottery Community Fund will make £16.3m in grant funding available to social enterprises that have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic. The Social Enterprise Support Fund will offer grants of between £10,000 and £100,000 to eligible organisations in England. The funding will be distributed by five social enterprise support agencies to help organisations