Something else which you notice when you delve into the murky nether world of fakecharities is that most of them don't seem to do anything apart from act as conduits for each other, until all the money has been spent on administration, legal and consultancy fees.
Let's start with the Big Society Fund which we looked at earlier. The BBC says that it has agreed investments in three sub-fakecharities.
The first one mentioned doesn't seem to have a website yet, but the second one, called Franchising Works does. FW in turn is funded by four other organisations (besides the BSF):
* Royal Bank of Scotland (state-owned/controlled),
* NESTA,
* The Association of Greater Manchester Authorities (self-explanatory), and
* New Economy
How is NESTA funded?
Nesta receives funds from The Nesta Trust, which received the National Lottery endowment from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts... We don't receive any ongoing general government funds to support our work.
The National Lottery endowment is general government funds, FFS.
What is New Economy?
New Economy’s purpose is to create economic growth and prosperity for Manchester... We are one of the six Association of Manchester Authorities (AGMA) commissions which were established in 2009. We work with the wider AGMA family of public sector organisations, businesses and universities across Manchester...
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We could do a similar exercise with the third fakecharity in which the BSF plans to invest, The Community Generation Fund, and we'd probably find that all roads lead back to the government honey-pot with that one as well. I remember doing one of these exercise a couple of years ago and I found two fakecharities who donated money to each other.
Wednesday, 4 April 2012
More FakeCharity Fun
My latest blogpost: More FakeCharity FunTweet this! Posted by Mark Wadsworth at 12:29
Labels: Corruption, Quangocracy, Waste
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6 comments:
To think that only 10 years ago we though that George Costanza's (from "Seinfeld) "The Human Fund" was a stupidly named, wishy washy fake charity....
My first thought on hearing this drivel on R4 was "WTF can't the money go straight from the Big Society Bank to the recipients?" Of course my next thought was "Otherwise Dave's mates wouldn't be able to skim off a percentage for doing f**k all". Then I went back to sleep.
This sort of thing needs graphical representation...
JB, I must admit I didn't watch Seinfeld much.
B, yup, the 'expert' from NPC explained that the BSF needs intermediaries (such as his own august organisation) to identify good opportunities.
F, it goes round in circles. According to the FT, the RBS has had to chip in £50 million to the BSF, and the BSF pays money to FW, but RBS already pays money directly to FW, who in turn also receive money from AGMA directly and indirectly via AGMA's offshoot NE. And so on.
It's a bit like aid to third world countries - most of it sticks to the sides.
Fraggle, it should be one of those "tree" diagrams with the width of the "trunk" and the "branches" proportional to the amount of money being transferred, so you can see how much sticks to the sides and which sides it sticks to.
If we need a No 10 dinner register and a parachutee register, we also need a fake charity register.
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