Monday 21 September 2009

Let's round off the evening with a nice little fakecharity ...

Reason alerts us (in the comments here) to the existence of a "charity" called Eaves Housing For Women Limited.

A quick squizz at Notes 3a to 3d on pages 20 and 21 of their 2008 accounts confirms that about ninety per cent of their total income of £5,220,603 is from various other government departments - most notably £1,200,000 from The Home Office - and local councils, with a smidge of investment income, truly voluntary donations and grants from private charities.

If that's all too technical for a Monday evening, their website gives it away as they use the classic fakecharity template, with tabs for Home, Support Us, Resources, Press Office, Vacancies, Volunteers, About Us and Contact Us.

Well spotted, Reason!

5 comments:

Pavlov's Cat said...

Perhaps you should pass their details over to Iain Dale they may be able to give hima ew tips

How Do We Find Housing For Ex Service Personnel?

Their cause is certainly the more just.

Sue said...

It says "supported housing" as the Home Office income then? You have to have a code book for some of these "charitable" accounts.

I do look at some of the accounts that I think may be from fake charities but if they don't actually name the government department as a fund source it's very difficult to work out where the money does come from.

Mark Wadsworth said...

PC, pass it on.

Sue, the rules are:

1. Do the BBC get a quote from them?
2. Does a govt spokesperson then say that they are going to "respond to the concerns raised by etc"?
3. Does the website have the official fc template (tabs as mentioned in original post)? Does it have an extra tab for "our partners" or similar? If so read the list.
4. Then download accounts and skim read the whole thing - sometimes the sources are explained in the opening blurb, sometimes in the notes, sometimes in the cash flow statement and sometimes in a "list of partners" at the back.
5. Beware! Sometimes it is in fact an industry lobbying association (usually funded by Big Pharma or the food industry/retailers)
6. Now that bloggers are on the scent, they are going to be a lot less blatant about it and they use 'cascade' organisations so that you have to trace back from the front 'charity' to their funders, and from those funders back to the government (I found one with four or five levels).

Obviously, I've been doing this for over a year so I know straight away what to look for, but it won't doesn't take more than a week to learn how to spot the telltale signs.

James Higham said...

I'm not going to start on feminist PCism.

Rob said...

Why is the government funding a 'charity' which deliberately excludes half of the population on gender alone?