Welcome to Fake Charities, the site that tracks just how much of your money the government is giving to “charities”—and at this time of The Big Society, Fake Charities is more relevant than ever.
We define a Fake Charity as any organisation registered as a UK charity that derives more than 10% of its income—and/or more than £1 million—from the government, while also lobbying the government. That lobbying can take the form of calling for new policies, changes to the law or increases in (their own) funding.
Some of these organisations spend a large amount of their time lobbying the state to curtail our freedoms and not all charities are upfront about the amount of money they receive from the state.
When an ‘independent’ charity takes a political stand or attempts to sway public opinion on matters of policy, we think you have a right to know whether they are being funded by the generosity of the public or by the largesse of the state. We think you have the right to know whether you’re listening to a genuine grass-roots charity or are being fed PR from an astro-turfed lobby group. This site exists to help you make up your own mind about who these campaigners are really working for.
We are just assembling some data—we need to start afresh—and then we’ll start posting! You can use this form to submit a charity for inclusion…
WELCOME! What a great idea.
this one will the new way to find out who is take our money.
Is this the new version of the site that used to be run by ‘devils kitchen’?
Maybe able to help if you are transferring data from old system to new – also, I saw a site the other day that just listed the salaries of directors of charities, I cant find it now, but came here thinking you may have a link.
Regards
Yes, it is the new version of that site, and thanks for your offer of help. As far as I know the old data was somehow lost (but I could be wrong). I haven’t come across a site that lists charity directors’ salaries. If you do find it again, please let us know and it can go on the resources page.
I found this – I may have mis-remembered that it was a discussion rather than a site.
http://www.home-education.biz/forum/general-discussion/10684-charity-home-truths.html
All the best!
I think ASH are probably the worst, getting next to nothing from voluntary contributions.
I have written about some fakecharities, e.g.:
Bookstart – http://www.realstreet.co.uk/2010/12/fakecharity-to-keep-its-13-million-funding/
Marie Stopes – http://www.realstreet.co.uk/2010/05/abortion-ads-during-game-shows-3/
The Intercom Trust and ASH – http://www.realstreet.co.uk/2010/04/a-tale-of-two-charities-the-intercom-trust-and-ash/
ASH – http://www.realstreet.co.uk/2010/02/smoked-out-locked-up/
Stonewall – http://www.realstreet.co.uk/2010/01/so-much-for-free-speech-on-guardian-co-uk/
…and here is my “how to” guide!
Want to influence the government and make money? Start a fake charity
(A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE FOR SOCIAL ENGINEERS)
http://www.realstreet.co.uk/2009/06/fake-charities/
I don’t know how much time I can give but if I come across something that smells fishy I’ll pass it on for consideration.
One obvious name for the list given the furore before Christmas is of course Booktrust, the ‘charity’ behind the Bookstart scheme. We should have been able to cross it off but Gove proved to be spineless and stayed the execution.
The formatting on the submission form leaves something to be desired – I’m sure I had left some blank lines in mine:
http://fakecharities.org/database/?unverified
Do you mean charities who receive money from their national government (eg. England, Scotland, Wales)?
And from local government (eg. county council, district council, borough council)?
AND from very very local government (eg. town council, parish council)?
And from the NHS, in its many guises?
I mean, I know what you are getting at, and I am extremely sympathetic as to WHY you are concerned,. But I think you do need to refine your parameters. And modernise your outlook, maybe. (OK, it’s your site, I know you can make all the rules.)
For example, a local scout group, self-supporting for 40 years, may get a once-off capital grant from their parish council in one financial year to upgrade their premises. This will quite properly show in their annual accounts lodged with the Charity Commission. This may well put them over your 10% threshold and damn them to hell as a “fake charity”. That would be unfair, in my view, and probably yours.
To be honest, although I do personally support the idea of this “fake charities” site – and so do a large number of “real charities” I know – your parameters need substantial refining and fine tuning in the light of what is now quite a complex charity world.
There are people out here who could give you advice: supporting your aims but preventing you making a fool of yourself. The uk is not America, and our charity laws (which date back to 1603) in the uk are precise and quaint – not to say odd on occasions.
There are several categories of charity. There are “real “ ones. There are historical ones that would be looked at askance nowadays, but nevertheless are legally charities: Eton College, for example. There are quirky legal provisions that mean, eg., you can set up a charity to build a bridge – provided nowadays that it proves “public benefit”.
What you DON’T seem to be looking at in all this fake charities stuff is WHO OWNS THE CHARITY, WHO THE TRUSTEES ARE, WHERE THEY ARE EXPECTED TO SPEND/ HAVE SPENT THEIR MONEY and HOW THEY ARE APPOINTED.
You should. It would take a little more intelligent work than simply looking at the published accounts on the Charity Commission website, but it’s a lot more informative in terms of outing “fake charities”. I give you the “10:10 Trust”, just as an example….try a bit of serious company research. You have to follow the names and any links to other companies though…is it a real charity, or a fake one? You tell me. A test exercise. Have fun.
And let’s have a percentage figure for each charity’s administration costs
Lysistrata it seems quite clear to me. If an organisation calls itself a charity and it receives more than 10% of its income, or more than £1m from government, local or national, it is NOT a charity. The donors did not choose to ‘donate’. Simples.
A charity school is still a charity if more than 90% of its income comes from voluntary payments, albeit to pay fees. There is no compulsion involved.
Glad to see you back. I don’t think I have the expertise to help in a practical way, but I will do all I can to support the site, such as here. I just resent having my money taken from me so that I can be told what to think by people who consider themselves my betters.
Just to get you started: the British Liver Trust (accounts for year to 31 March 2010 here
http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/SHOWCHARITY/RegisterOfCharities/DocumentList.aspx?RegisteredCharityNumber=298858&SubsidiaryNumber=0&DocType=AccountList )
In 2009/2010 18% (£120,000) of total income (£657,000) was taxpayer funded. £614,000 of that total income is described as “voluntary” on the BLT page of the Charity Commission website here
http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/
Would it be possible to provide a “preview” feature in your comments thread.
Alcohol concern. From their accounts last year.
GRANTS RECEIVABLE Unrestricted Restricted 2010 2009
Department of Health
Annual Grant £400,000
Practice Hub Grant £ 95,000
HEI Grant £47,000
SMART Recovery Grant £50,000
Out of a total of £ 1,086,389
http://www.alcoholconcern.org.uk/about-us/who-we-are/annual-report
I am nowhere near experienced enough for all this, but I did have a look at a random charity from the old homestead (Wiltshire Wildlife Trust), and a good deal of their income is via ‘landfill tax’ arrangements. Not technically a government grant, but it ain’t voluntary either. Nicely hidden…
Dont forget the EU gives money to charities and voluntary groups as well .
I think your 10% govt funding threshold is setting the bar awfully high (or low, depending how you look at it). Why not start with 50% and see how you get on? That must still account for hundreds, if not thousands, of “charities”
Great stuff! My view on charities and the people who collect for them and work for them have been well publicised on my blog, so I will be happy to add this one to the blogroll.
Any chance I could start one called “The Dioclese Society for the Enrichment of Bloggers” perhaps?
Unfortunately the above proposals are not going to get you anywhere. In fact, they’re nonsense, I’m sorry to say, and I strongly recommend you read my paper at Pro-Choice Smoking Doctor which covers many of these issues in depth otherwise you’re going to continue spouting this rubbish ad infinitum.
See: “Taking the Bull by the Horns”
http://pro-choicesmokingdoctor.blogspot.com/2010/11/taking-bull-by-horns.html
It’s a.pdf and you may download it easily.
Please start a campaign against the exemption of charities from the FOI Act. For example, I contacted ASH UK, requesting the exact wording of its series of YOUGOV opinion polls, which it claimed showed that 80% of the public agreed with the smoking ban and which it uses to support and influence Government policy. ASH UK refused my request. The Dept of Health, for example, would be forced to divulge this information. Some charities, for example CRUK, always publish details of their opinion polls (See YOUGOV website).
Great to see you back!
May I humbly suggest “livening up” each of the entries with a small pie chart showing the proportion of state funding?
Hi,
Just stumbleupon your site.
Really interesting.
I’m a student journalist based in Cardiff and I’d like to do an article on ASHWales…
Will you contact me on the included email so we can chat about it?
Thanks,
Adam
It would be really great if your published/made available some spreadsheets with just the name, grant income, total income and percentage (and maybe also, percent of total income spent on salaries and PR).
A spreadsheet would allow sorting and other tests and would be a very condensed package (suitable for forwarding to your MP for instance).
@Dyspeptic Curmudgeon
Do your own fecking research on the Charity Commission website. Read their freely available published accounts. Read charities’ reports of what they do with the money. Then make a moral judgment about whether you, dear DC, think what they do is worthwhile. Do your own fecking spreadsheet and share it here, and you send it to your own MP.
If you think that would be so “really great”.
But that would mean actually using some of your own skills and time. And making intelligent and informed judgements about charities.
I suspect you are capable of doing neither.
I know for a fact lot’s of these charities do good work and I support them100%. So what if they get support from the government to aid them in their mutually beneficial work. That’s what civilisation is all about.
You sound like a sad, mean-spirited, Thatcherite wanker to me.
Well said Max! I have just been signposted to this sad little website by a supporter of one of the charities listed here – of which I work for… It takes money to to run such substantial organisations and although on paper the figures may look damning to the uneducated, the work that is done for the recepients is usually priceless – and unavailable through strategic Government initiatives…. Perhaps some of the readers on here could donate some of their ‘worthwhile’ time to their local community instead of trawling the internet looking to berate others whom actually try to help people…?
Great site!! Thanks for doing this.
Seems to me one of the largest fake charity sectors is eco-activism. Where government funds charities to lobby government to increase energy prices and taxes under the guise of “fighting climate change”. Governments always happy for an excuse to raise taxes of course.
Just one of many such examples is Global Action Plan.
A quick frisk of their accounts (see page 16 here http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk/ScannedAccounts/Ends48%5C0001026148_ac_20100331_e_c.pdf )
reveals at least 36% of their funding comes direct from government (eg. £0.5M from DEFRA) the rest coming mostly from Bank of America (£0.85M) and EDF (£0.1M) with their clear vested interests in Carbon Trading and energy price hikes respectively.
Max, getting funding from Government’s not the problem if it is mutually beneficial work. But where the funding is for campaigning on a given political point, we, the taxpayer, should not be paying for this emotional blackmail.
Saw this great quote on Guido’s site:
“A charity that relies in the main part on taxes is no more a charity than a prostitute is your girlfriend.”
http://order-order.com/2011/02/08/big-society-v-big-government/
The Guido quote should be on your masthead. Bang on target.
Broken:
http://fakecharities.org/2011/02/charity-261017/
This just turns into this:
data:text/xml;base64,PHN…
Which doesn’t work in my browser.
Something going wrong there?
Oh, Internet Exploder doesn’t like the charts? Sorry about that. Perhaps they will work in IE9.
IE is 50% of web browsers.
So what are you doing – exposing fake charities or fighting the browser wars?
Great idea, and good luck with the site. Its decades overdue. Better late than never.
Re Oxfams car park (under their Swiss HQ)
Already filmed by a TV doco crew years ago.
Before security threw them out. 3rd Merc on the left looked very tasty.
twat
Our government has just bailed out some major financial institutions with our precious taxes, and was forced to because of greed and wrecklessness on the part of individuals. I find it very difficult to believe and indeed stomach the fact that people would object to a paltry amount, by comparison, being spent on organisations that are set up to do good and necessary work. I am not saying there is no waste in the charity world, but I am saying this kind of cynicism makes me sick, quite frankly.
think that the issue is not where the funding may always come from, but what the charity does with it and why.
some director of the board sitting in a brand new merc each year from everyones donations – that is not good.
a charity lobbying to get more protection for 11 year old rape victims? that is good.
so, rather than provide a partial picture with fake claims relating to if the charity is fake or not and totally misleading people… go and research properly.
find out what the charity is lobbying for, where the funding comes from, how much actually goes into the charities main function and then make a decision. which will be more accurate than one based on a third of the picture.
i think this site is maybe well intended (i have my doubts though), but its conclusions and judgments are based on a total lack of information.
really do hope that this website does not effect the donations of some people to some charities.
i know there are charities out there where only a very small % of money actually goes into the cause they “fight for”… so go and research properly and thoroughly and target those instead.
Age Concern & Help the Aged – now Age UK.
Getting out of Day Care while increasing their executive base and associated overhead costs in preparation for going ‘commercial’. Example, selling insurances and care services under the governments latest euphemism for elderly care.
Largely funded by councils as quasi quango service providers. Claim to lobby government when in fact they are lobbied by government.
A position vindicated by the fact they have achieved nothing that is of direct benefit to the pensioners they supposedly serve by fighting for increased pensions or against cuts such as the recent cuts to the winter fuel allowance.
This is all very well, but these charities you slate so wildly at least by law, have to publish their business doings – including where they get their money, who they are etc. Something that is cospicuously absent from this website! so before you “sad, mean-spirited, Thatcherite wanker ” start throwing stones, how about fronting up your lobbying with some details on who you are and why you have an axe to grind?
I have no doubt that some of the charities you target are trying (and succeeding) to “pull the wool), but many are not, and were set-up, and continue to do, valuable work in lobbying for, or researching, or paying others to research, their chosen field. If, in order to do so, they bid for government provided money, they do so as any other organisation would have to do, in accordance with government tendering rules in an open transparent and legal manner. Are you suggesting that the government, of whatever colour, is favouring, or ignoring or bending its own rules in favour of charities? If so this is a giovernment-topling scoop. However, I suggest it is not widely so, and your central tenet is based on small-minded, easy, anonymous prejudice. I further suggest that you have no idea about the real world of working or volunteering for a charity, and how many decent people pursue, low-paid, but highly skilled careers in these organisations (when they could quite easily be paid much more and take less shit in private industry) because they think there is more to life in a civilised society that total self interest. I include in this last people who bitch constantly at so-called “tax-wastage”. May be you should consider that taxes are a payment to belong to a civilised society – and what it would be like to live in one where everyone only paid for their own well-being – waste collection, health, education, security, policing, clean water, environmental protection, food, roads, rail. If the government or charities don’t provide this, will you?
How do I report a charity based in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland has a separate Charities Commission.
What are the charities spending their money on, I think this is the important part. Some companies make more than 10% of their income from the public sector, are they ‘fake’ too?
Haven’t been here for a while – *GREAT* new look.
However it did take a while to notice the ‘fake’, ‘genuine’ tags – saw a list of charities on front page and at first assume they were all fake…
Good work!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14105065
Immigration Advisory Service has shut.
Another fake charity, this time funded by the legal aid bill
I don’t know if this is within your terms of reference, but have you included the £18million of taxpayers’ money given by Labour to various trade unions, allegedly for “training” before the last election? What makes it slightly doubtful that purpose of the above largess was to promote training is that those same unions then gave about £11million to the Labour Party.
Ralph Musgrave has hit one nail squarely on the head. I believe that the Labour arrangement with the trade unions was called “The Warwick Agreement”.
Is there any source for charities which receive substantial EU funding and what is the status of the various Monnet professorships and foundations at universities?
So which right wing wingnut conspiracy think tank is funding this then? Nothing should be funded and Government is always right so long as it is right, right?