Charity

Islamic Relief Worldwide has appointed Waseem Ahmad as its new chief executive.  Ahmad is director of IRW’s international programmes division, managing the design and delivery of the charity’s global humanitarian and development work.  He succeeds Naser Haghamed, who stepped down at the end of January for health reasons.  Acting chief executive Tufail Hussain will return to

Tributes have been paid to Simone Joyaux, a US fundraiser and founding chair of the Centre for Sustainable Philanthropy, who has died at the age of 72. Fundraisers on both sides of the Atlantic paid tribute to Joyaux, describing her as a “campaigning fundraiser extraordinaire” and “one of the greatest figures in fundraising”. She died

Fourteen charities are in breach of the fundraising code because they have failed to access requests to stop communication made through the Fundraising Preference Service, the regulator has found. The Fundraising Regulator said today that although more than 2,200 charities had set themselves up on the FPS charity portal, a small group of organisations was

The British Psychological Society has expelled its president-elect amid “persistent bullying” allegations, which he described as “baseless and without merit”. Nigel MacLennan was due to become the president of the BPS later this year at the charity’s annual general meeting, after a period as president-elect. The BPS is the charity that acts as the representative

A group of major social investment organisations are calling on the government to halve the minimum limit for issuing retail charity bonds to £5m. The Treasury and HM Revenue & Customs are consulting on potential changes to the regulations on the taxation ofsecuritisation companies, which are used by organisations looking to raise funds in capital

A support charity unfairly dismissed a former staff member after it failed to recognise an “anxiety state” as a disability, an employment tribunal has ruled. Tribunal documents published this week show that Blenheim CDP, which provides support to people on a range of issues, unfairly dismissed offender recovery worker Miss E Okeke after she struggled

Two charities are going to the High Court to seek clarification of the law relating to responsible investments. An update on the Charity Commission’s website, published yesterday, said the two unidentified charities had been granted permission to bring the case in the middle of last month. It says: “The two charities seek clarification of the

Bond, the membership body for development charities, has lost nearly £1m in funding as government cuts to official development assistance begin to bite across the aid sector. The government announced last November that the UK’s overseas aid budget would be cut from 0.7 per cent of gross national income to 0.5 per cent, slicing more

Charitable donations made by waiving a refund or loan repayment can be considered a donation under Gift Aid rules, HM Revenue & Customs has said. Updated guidance, which is applicable retrospectively, was published by the government yesterday after discussions with the Charity Tax Group. The new policy says: “Donations made via the waiving of a

The Children’s Society unfairly dismissed an employee after it did not do enough to help find him a new role within the charity during a redundancy process, an employment tribunal has ruled. Tribunal documents published this week show that the charity unfairly dismissed Richard Brown after it did not provide “adequate support” to him when

A major UK retailer has raised more than £40m for Cancer Research UK as part of a 17-year partnership.  TK Maxx announced yesterday that it had reached the milestone with the UK’s biggest cancer research and awareness charity.  In a statement, the retailer said the money raised would help ensure more children and young people survived

The founder of a children’s cancer charity has been jailed for 20 months after being convicted of defrauding the organisation of more than £200,000. Colin Nesbitt, 60, of Bingley, West Yorkshire, and founder and former director of the now-defunct charity Little Heroes Cancer Trust, stole £87,000 from the charity and transferred a further £181,000 into

The Chartered Institute of Fundraising has appointed Dhivya O’Connor as interim chief executive.  O’Connor, a former chief executive of Children with Cancer UK, will join the CIoF next week for a two-week handover with Peter Lewis before he steps down.  Lewis announced in March that he would step down after almost 10 years leading the

Almost three-quarters of young volunteers have credited the experience with improving their job prospects, research shows.   A new study by the Royal Voluntary Service, conducted in partnership with the University of Kent, set out to explore the potential of volunteering to improve people’s life chances. The report, called Social Mobility: Unleashing the Power of Volunteering, found

The board of St John Ambulance  has allocated an additional half a million pounds to improve the culture of the charity, following multiple allegations of bullying earlier this year.  Martin Houghton-Brown, the charity’s chief executive, said the work remained a “high priority” for the charity and would be supported by external partners. Multiple current and

The Times newspaper has agreed to pay £50,000 plus legal costs to a Muslim charity it falsely accused of colluding with people smugglers.  A High Court statement yesterday said The Times had agreed to make the payment to the humanitarian charity the Al-Khair Foundation after an article about Somali migrants trying to reach Europe was

A man who joined Refugee Action in an entry-level position 19 years ago has been appointed its next chief executive.  Tim Naor Hilton, who has been the charity’s interim chief executive since the departure of Stephen Hale earlier this year, joined Refugee Action as a frontline development worker in Manchester in 2002.  He subsequently became

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts has filed a serious incident report with the Charity Commission after sexual harassment allegations were made against the award-winning actor Noel Clarke.  Twenty women spoke to The Guardian newspaper to outline allegations against Clarke, who strongly rejected the claims and said he intended to defend himself against

The Charity Commission was the least likely of any major government department or body to fully respond to requests made under the Freedom of Information Act last year, new figures show.  Statistics published by the Cabinet Office yesterday showed that in 2020, more than 44,000 requests using freedom of information legislation were made across a

Two charities have pulled out of a controversial government scheme being used to obtain data that could lead to the deportation of non-UK rough sleepers. The London-based homelessness charities Camden Routes Off The Streets and the Single Homeless Project pulled out of the Rough Sleeping Support Service after an investigation by the campaign group Liberty.

A fifth of small health charities are at risk of closure once the government’s furlough scheme ends later in the year, according to the Small Charities Coalition. A survey conducted by the membership body showed that only 42 per cent of members polled were able to access the scheme because its complexity meant that many

The social investment body Big Society Capital has promoted Stephen Muers to chief executive.  Muers, who joined BSC as head of strategy and market development in 2016, has been interim chief executive since the departure of Cliff Prior in May last year.  Before joining BSC, Muers was director of criminal justice policy at the Ministry

Tearfund has pledged to no longer use non-disclosure agreements and said it will lift confidentiality clauses from people who had previously signed one with the charity.  The Christian development charity said in a statement there was a wider debate in society, the church and the voluntary sector about the use of confidentiality clauses in settlement

Two Age UK charities in south London have revealed they are in merger talks. In a joint statement, they said the trustees and the chief executives of Age UK Croydon and Age UK Sutton had been mulling over the move for the past year. The charities said the decision to explore the opportunity was not

Charmaine Griffiths, chief executive of the British Heart Foundation, Amar Abbas, chief executive of Youth Action, and Gemma Sherrington, director of fundraising and marketing at Save the Children, will speak at Third Sector’s 2021 Fundraising Conference in May.  The annual conference will be held online this year, as the UK continues to follow the roadmap

The existential crisis posed by the coronavirus pandemic has been felt by everyone working in the sector – and it’s not just those who are paid to work for charities that are feeling the strain. A recent survey by the Association of Chairs found that 62 per cent of chairs reported that they were spending

The Chartered Institute of Fundraising said it has postponed its annual convention as it prioritises issues surrounding harassment in the sector. The CIoF said in a statment it had pushed back the conference from its usual slot at the beginning of July to 27-29 September. Setting out its reasons for delaying the convention, which will

The government should form closer working relationships with voluntary and community sector organisations in preparation for future crises, a new report urges.  The Voluntary and Community Sector Emergencies Partnership, which was set up in 2018 to provide co-ordination among local and national organisations in the wake of crises, says in a new report today that

A charity devoted to the author Jane Austen has dismissed reports of an interrogation of her alleged links to the slave trade as a “misrepresentation”. Reports in several newspapers this week alleged that Jane Austen’s House in Hampshire would re-evaluate her colonial roots, due to her father’s plantation, in the wake of the Black Lives

Funders should recognise that putting black and minoritised people in certain posts does not necessarily make them anti-racist, according to new research. A study by The Ubele Initiative looks at the extent to which newfound awareness catalysed by the Black Lives Matter movement and the disproportionate impacts of Covid-19 on minoritised communities led to enduring