A woman who fraudulently claimed money from the Cumbria Community Foundation charity has been given a suspended sentence.

Nicola Moore, 33, claimed for flood damage to her own goods, as well as for furniture that belonged to her landlord, not to her, after last years Storm Desmond. Having received £1,250 she then put in a second claim, which included the same items of her landlord’s.

Moore received an 18-month prison term suspended for two years, a 250-hour Community Service Order and was ordered to pay back £350 to the charity.

It is a pity someone at the otherwise excellent Art Fund has decided the charity will behave like a big, bad company and suggest donors pay for its mistakes.

One gentle editor of a charity publication we know fell foul of this bad thinking when he gladly took out an annual direct debit subscription to the excellent Art Card, giving him valuable free entry to a number of highly-regarded art galleries, and discounts from many others. Sadly the Art Fund then wrote claiming that his bank had “declined the transaction” and suggesting that he either fund the amount, around £80, some other way or send the card back explaining why he had cancelled it. (he hadn’t) There was also the suggestion that he could phone an 0844 number to discuss other options. Continue reading →

Military charities are under investigation after it emerged that some of their fund-raisers lie to the donating public about how much actually goes to the causes they represent.

Support The Heroes, set up in 2014 to help veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was banned from collecting donations, and closed down on the eve of Remembrance Sunday after their fund-raisers were filmed by the BBC telling donors that every penny collected went to good causes when in fact 33% of the money was paid to a professional fundraising company, Targeted Management Ltd, run by Tony Chadwick from Blackpool. Support The Heroes is run by two of Chadwick’s former business partners and has paid over more than £60,000 of the £192,000 it has raised. Continue reading →

The NSPCC has set up a dedicated helpline for sexual abuse victims in football since a number of footballers have revealed on national television that they had been abused by their coaches as children, many by convicted predatory paedophile Barry Bennell, now 62, who worked as a talent spotter and coach for Crewe Alexandra and had links to Manchester City, Leeds United and Stoke City. Continue reading →

An internal investigation into the RSPCA’s putting down of a 16-year old cat in 2013 and attempt to prosecute its owners for cruelty has seen the charity accused of acting unlawfully, misinforming a vet, hiding evidence and triggering a hate campaign against the cat’s owners by making false claims on national radio. The charity admitted behaving in an insensitive and disproportionate way by threatening the cat’s owners with fines and imprisonment if they did not allow it to be put down. Continue reading →

Debt charity StepChange has called for the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to intervene on overdraft fines charged by the banks, commonly £45 for sending a computer-generated letter at a few pence cost, and set a cap on the amount banks can charge for unarranged overdrafts.

StepChange, who receive 15,000 calls a month from people with overdraft problems, say that adding to the debt of people with debt problems is a “vicious circle” that further entraps the bank’s victims.

Patients with damage due to heart attacks are being offered a £10,000 procedure by a charity whereby their own stem cells from their bone marrow are extracted and injected into their hearts, to improve heart function and energy levels, and extend life expectancy, a treatment not currently available from the NHS.

Heart Cells Foundation was started by London businessman Ian Rosenberg in 2003, after he was given two months to live and had to travel to Germany for the procedure. He died, having had three extra years, in 2006 and the work of his charity is continued by his wife Jenifer Rosenberg OBE.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) has published new guidelines aimed at preventing care homes from punishing residents whose relatives complain by restricting or even banning visits from relatives, or evicting the patients.

The guidelines, published last month, follows a case in Somerset in 2012 where a son was prevented from visiting his 93 year old father, who died three months later, and a case at an Essex care home where an 86 year old was evicted after her children complained of poor care there.

The Royal National Lifeboat Institute (RNLI) will be the UK’s first major charity to adopt “opt-in” rules on how it communicates with its donors, though it expects to lose £36 million in donations over five years by doing so.

The rules forbid charities from cold-calling potential donors – they have to wait for donors to contact them and opt in to a relationship. The RNLI expect to lose around 500,000 from the 2 million donors on their database. Continue reading →

The Centrepoint charity for young homeless people, a favourite of Prince William, has been accused of “crude hustling” following allegations that they promised wealthy donors special access to the Duke of Cambridge at this year’s annual Centrepoint Awards event at Kensington Palace in return for a donation of £40,000+. Kensington Palace has declined to comment on the allegation.

The evening featured Craig David, Phil Collins, Ellie Goulding and Dirty Vegas and was hosted by celebrity top-ranker Jonathan Ross.