Charity

Liam O’Toole, chief executive of Versus Arthritis, will retire next year after more than a decade in the role. The charity said the move was unrelated to recent issues at the organisation, which included it filing a serious incident report with the Charity Commission after multiple employee accounts of systemic racism, racially motivated microaggressions and

“Short-sighted” cuts to the international aid budget will increase the pressure on philanthropic foundations, an opposition MP has warned.   Rushanara Ali, the Labour MP for Bethnal Green and Bow and a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Philanthropy and Social Investment, was speaking as part of the Association of Charitable Foundation’s annual conference earlier

The government has pledged that the long-awaited UK Shared Prosperity Fund will be worth an average of about £1.5bn a year – but might not be available until 2022.  Papers released as part of the Spending Review yesterday said that the UKSPF, which will replace EU funding for communities and charities, will at least match

Lockdown restrictions and financial pressures during the pandemic have left many charitable causes in crisis and created additional hardship for service users as industry professionals strive to meet increasing demands for support. We would like to hear from our readers about whether individuals working in the sector could be considered more vulnerable than most to

The Kids Company founder Camila Batmanghelidjh “kicked back” against trustee attempts to impose financial controls in the months leading up to the charity’s collapse, the High Court heard yesterday.  Richard Handover, a former Kids Company trustee and ex-WHSmith chief executive, was being questioned by Lesley Anderson, on behalf of the Official Receiver, about the period

Funds raised for good causes through the National Lottery dropped slightly in the first half of its financial year as the coronavirus pandemic hit sales before recovering.  The National Lottery operator, Camelot, said today that £863.7m excluding investment returns had been raised for good causes between 1 April and 26 September, a fall of £13.1m

Three-quarters of charities expect demand for their services to rise over the next year while more than 80 per cent expect income to fall, new figures indicate.  Latest data from the research charity Pro Bono Economics’ monthly Covid-19 charity tracker shows that 36 per cent of charity respondents said they expected demand for their services

The NSPCC has appointed the former acting chief executive of the youth charity Impetus as its director of strategy and knowledge.  Maria Neophytou, who has been director of public affairs at Impetus for the past four years, was interim head of the charity from July to October.  The NSPCC said Neophytou had 20 years’ experience

Community groups should be given greater power over local assets and a £2bn Community Wealth Fund should be set up to support local devolution, according to a new report.  Renewing Neighbourhood Democracy, published by the think tank Localis, sets out measures to give local communities the powers they need to improve their areas.  The paper calls

Two directors at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations are set to leave as the umbrella body restructures amid the coronavirus pandemic.  The NCVO said Susan Cordingley, interim deputy chief executive and responsible for finance and services, and Megan Griffith Gray, interim director of strategy and transformation, who has been with the charity for 17

The Charity Commission upheld less than five per cent of all complaints made against it over the past three years, new figures show. A response by the regulator to a request made under Freedom of Information legislation, which has been shared with Third Sector, revealed that 20 of 431 stage one and stage two complaints

The National Emergencies Trust has appointed Mhairi Sharp as chief executive. Sharp, who was chief operating officer at the charity, has been interim CEO since the departure of John Herriman in September. The charity said Sharp led the formation of the NET, which was launched last year to respond to domestic disasters. Before joining the

A former Charity Commission chair has accused the Church of England of misinterpreting charity law and freezing out community groups from purchasing its redundant assets.  Geraldine Peacock, who became the first chair of the commission in 2004, is among those claiming that the church is “riding roughshod over community interests” by insisting that properties must

The youth homelessness charity Centrepoint has appointed Julie Milnes as director of fundraising.  Milnes spent almost eight years at the British Red Cross, latterly as director of high value giving and events.  After leaving the BRC at the start of the year she has held interim senior fundraising roles at the Teenage Cancer Trust and the

Trustees at a Buddhist charity failed to properly investigate allegations of sexual and physical abuse against its spiritual leader, the Charity Commission has concluded.  An inquiry report by the regulator, published today, criticised the London-based charity Rigpa Fellowship, which was set up to advance the Buddhist religion, for leaving students at risk of harm. The

Almost half of UK charities expect to run out of reserves in the next year, new research indicates.  A survey of more than 250 charities commissioned by the insurers Ecclesiastical and carried out by YouGov found that 12 per cent of respondents said they expected to run out of financial reserves in the next three

Virtual Event with Musicians on November 19th, 9 AM to 5 PM EST Malvern, PA – November 19, 2020: Rajant Corporation, the provider of Kinetic Mesh® wireless networks, will host a fundraiser to bring awareness and donations for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), a United Nations agency responsible for providing humanitarian and developmental aid

A group of academics and privacy campaigners are calling on charities to remove advertising trackers from their most sensitive pages amid concerns they could be liable to fines running into hundreds of millions of pounds.  A report published in September by ProPrivacy, which describes itself as a privacy education and review site, found that charities

This year’s BBC Children in Need appeal has raised an additional £4m since announcing its on-the-night result, taking the total amount to more than £41m.  The charity said over the weekend that this year’s event, which culminated in a three-hour show broadcast on Friday evening, had raised just over £37m by the end of the

Marie Stopes International has changed its name to break the perceived connection to the woman whose name it carried.  The charity, which adopted her name when it was founded in 1976 in a building previously used by the Marie Stopes Mothers’ Clinic, has changed its name to MSI Reproductive Choices and unveiled a new 10-year

The National Audit Office has opened an investigation into the government’s support of charities during the Covid-19 pandemic.  The spending watchdog said it would examine how the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport has distributed the £750m in emergency funding provided to help the sector through the coronavirus crisis.  The government faced heavy criticism

A poverty relief charity has been removed from the register and its founder banned after the Charity Commission concluded he had treated it like a “private business”.  An inquiry report published by the regulator says it began looking into Kenya Community Support Network in 2016 after Comic Relief suspended its grants to the charity amid

The on-the-night total for Friday’s BBC Children in Need appeal was £10m down on 2019 as coronavirus restrictions appear to have affected people’s ability to raise funds.  A shortened three-hour show on BBC One on Friday night reached a total of £37m in donations compared with £47.9m at the same stage last year.  Highlights of this

The government has rejected calls for a review into the National Trust after MPs criticised the charity for researching its properties’ links to slavery.  In a parliamentary debate yesterday about the future of the National Trust, Andrew Murrison, the Conservative MP for South West Wiltshire, criticised the charity over what he said was a “dramatic

Kids Company was issued with a winding up order over a £500,000 unpaid tax bill a year before it finally collapsed, the High Court heard yesterday.  Camila Batmanghelidjh, the founder and former chief executive of Kids Company, was giving evidence via video link for a third day as part of a case being brought by

Dozens of voluntary sector leaders have given their backing to Barnardo’s and its chief executive Javed Khan after the charity’s work to tackle white privilege was met with racist abuse.  The charity faced a flood of racist comments after it began tweeting about white privilege and what could be done to tackle it and create

More than 8,000 charities have been allocated a share of £200m in emergency funding from the Coronavirus Community Support Fund, the government has announced.  The money is being distributed by The National Lottery Community Fund as part of the government’s £750m support package for the sector announced in April. A total of 8,250 small and

Combat Stress made 41 redundancies as it grappled with a drop in income of more than a third in the last financial year.  Income at the veterans mental health charity fell from £16.4m in 2019 to £10.2m in the year to the end of March, its latest accounts show. The charity warned in January that job

The Fundraising Regulator should find a way to “significantly reduce” the cost of the Fundraising Preference Service because the number of users has declined, an evaluation of the service has recommended. The FPS, which allows people to block communications from specific charities by phone, email, text message and post, was launched by the Fundraising Regulator

The Fawcett Society and the Young Women’s Trust have begun merger talks, the two charities have announced.  They said in a statement that discussions were at an “exploratory stage” and that both organisations were in stable financial positions.  The statement said the talks would consider what the charities might achieve by merging in terms of