Fakecharity Fun

From The Daily Mail (almost exactly five years ago):

Brown's £400m smash and grab on dormant bank accounts... More than £400 million in so-called dormant bank accounts is to be raided by the Government to fund charities, youth clubs, sports and community centres.

From The BBC (this morning):

A new financial institution set up by the UK government to finance charities and community groups has been launched.

Big Society Capital has £600m, of which the majority comes from unused cash in bank accounts that had been dormant for more than 15 years. The fund will back social enterprises that prove they can repay an investment through the income they generate...

Venture capitalist Sir Ronald Cohen, who is Big Society Capital's chairman, told the BBC that the fund's aim was to create a "thriving market for social investment"...

The fund has already agreed investments worth £3.6m in five separate schemes, including:

* Think Forward Social Impact, which helps young people into work and education

* Franchising Works, which trains the unemployed how to run a franchise business

* the Community Generation Fund, which supports the development of renewable energy infrastructure, such as solar panels and biomass boilers, for local communities.

According to Radio 4, the fund is going to be run by New Philanthropy Capital, yet another [privately owned] 'consultancy and think tank' which has the usual partners.

I have a particular grudge against NPC because I said something scathing about them on this 'blog a few years ago and promptly received an angry email denial which merely confirmed what I suspected*. At a guess, I'd say this is a front organisation for Goldman Sachs or similar. The UK branch of NCP was set up by a US 'fund' called Friends of New Philanthropy Capital, which as you can see received $1.4 million in funds back in 2007, passed the whole lot on to NCP in the UK to get it going, and has done practically nothing since.

* I have - inevitably - sometimes maligned people undeservedly. If people send me an email to set things straight, I am always happy to delete or amend the original post. But sometimes people make things worse for themselves.