Monday, 2 February 2009

Fakecharity of the day

The Telegraph runs an article headed "Childhood ruined by 'me-first' society, landmark report claims" 

Right, this is becoming routine by now ... yada, yada, skim read the article until you get to this... "Bob Reitemeier, the chief executive of The Children's Society, which carried out the inquiry, said: 'This landmark report is a wake-up call to us all...'"

Next, go to www.charity-commission.gov.uk. Type in Children's Society, click the top one on the list (*yawn*), click 'View accounts', scroll down through the most recent accounts as far as the 'Financial Review' (page 19 - sometimes they put this information in the Notes after the proper income & expenditure statement, sometimes they hide it in the cash flow statement), skim read a bit further ... yada, yada ... here we go:

'Income from charitable activities' (local and central government) increased by £0.2Million to £9.3Million as government commissioning arrangements began to settle down.

Right. Next. Every now and then you find that one of these do-gooding bodies is actually funded by people who believe in it, but three times out of four it's a quango.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/charities/becoming/apply.htm

Qualifying for charitable status:
To qualify for charitable status a body must be established in UK law for charitable purposes only and those purposes must be for the public benefit. If a body has a purpose which is non-charitable, (eg political activities) it will not qualify for charitable status, even if it is for public benefit.

Hey Mark W, you're blogging for the public good and are no more political than all those pseudo-charities. You should apply for charitable status yourself.

Nick von Mises said...

They wouldn't be do-gooders if they were doing it with their OWN money.

Dick Puddlecote said...

Oh, that is inspired digging Mark.

Would that be more Labour waste, perchance?

Mark Wadsworth said...

DP, it may seem inspired but actually it's just routine, once you know how. Devil's Kitchen helped pioneer this so I can't take much of the credit. But now you know how to do it as well.

Letters From A Tory said...

Excellent investigatory work, very much appreciated. This charity stuff is really starting to get to me.