Charities that seem to be run for the benefit of direct marketing firms, rather than those the charity is supposed to be helping, have come under fire from the Charity Commission.

Its latest investigations have shown that some UK charities spend up to 90% of the money given to them by donors on expensive mailshots to raise more money. The Commission randomly selected a sample of ten British charities from a list of 350 known to be reliant on mailshots for their fundraising. The snapshot of the charity sector was not a pretty picture, which then became more ugly as two of the ten closed down after the Commission issued confidential action plans to help them improve. These were the Hungry Children Project, which spent the 90% figure on its mailshots to raise money for children in Haiti, and the World Relief Mission, which spent 72%. Continue reading →

The National Trust, Britain’s largest charity with more than 4 million members has been accused of hypocrisy over its sales of greenfield land for building. Continue reading →

The Good Country Guide has placed the UK fourth in a list of 163 countries for its high contribution to the common good of humanity. Continue reading →

Donors allowing charities access to their bank accounts to collect agreed donations may wish to revisit the wisdom of this after charity Concern helped themselves to up to 100 times the agreed amounts from the accounts of 25,000 donors.

This left many in the red and liable to pay their banks exploitative unauthorised overdraft fees. One had £1,500 taken from their account, instead of the usual monthly donation of £15. Rose Caldwell, executive director of Concern, which helps the poor to combat hunger, has apologised for the errors and pledged that none of her donors would lose money over them.

If you’ve bought, either knowingly or unknowingly a counterfeit electrical product in the last twelve months you are in the company of 2.5 million who have done the same thing.

According to charity Electrical Safety First this is double the figure for the previous year. It also reveals that one in 12 of us would buy a fake if it was cheaper but that 56% of those who did had problems with it.

The actions of an unmarried woman in Newcastle who has had seventeen consecutive children taken into care over the last 20 years have persuaded childcare charity Barnado’s to release funds to help her further. Barnado’s explained that it was likely that the woman had issues of mental health, domestic abuse, a chaotic lifestyle and possible substance abuse. Continue reading →

Oniomania, the posh word for compulsive shopping, is as likely to take over and damage the lives of its sufferers as gambling, sex or work addictions.

This is the view of charity Action on Addiction which points out that compulsively spending time and money on something to lift a mood and seek a “high” puts it firmly in the category of addiction, and that the shopping addiction affects around 7% of the adult population. Continue reading →

Portable loos at the Glastonbury festival are delivering charitable messages from Water Aid to music fans, using the voices of Brian Blessed, Kathy Burke and Cerise Matthew’s, to raise awareness of the 2.3 billion people worldwide who have no access to a basic toilet.

Some of the doors in the low cubicles have been fitted with two way mirrors, which give the impression to those sitting inside that they are visible from outside, while those outside just get their own reflections, the idea being, say Water Aid, to highlight those who have nowhere safe to go to the toilet by making those using the cubicles feel “exposed”.

Many high street charity shops should be closed as they cost the Government more in tax breaks than they make in profits.

This is the conclusion being drawn from a True and Fair Foundation study of the UKs 10,500 charity shops which showed that many were less profitable than high street retailers, which didn’t have the advantages of an 80% reduction in business rates, donated goods to sell and volunteer staff. The Foundation campaigns for more efficiency in the charity sector and points out that £1.6 billion in tax breaks to charity shops only results in profits of £290 million, or just 18% of the value of the concessions, without the free goods and free staffing.

According to the Foundation: “There simply are not enough sales or customers to justify 10,500 charity shops in the UK”