Just had a fella in my shop.. comes in often collecting for disabled children.

I quiered his charity.. He gave me the charity number ‘The Disabled Childrens Trust’ and slipped out the door.. It’s not a charity but a limited company with ‘nominal’ accounts submitted for the past few years.

Is this allowed??

Without looking through the Charity Commission‘s guidance I can’t tell you if it’s legal or not, but it sounds pretty dodgy and could even be considered fraud (obtaining money by deception?)

I wouldn’t let him in next time. If you want to do something for charity, there are plenty of legit ones that submit accounts and reports that show their finances and impact.

For what it’s worth, there are some ‘charities’ that are actually limited companies to avoid the restrictions on political activity that comes from being a registered charity, Greenpeace for example.

I take the view that any ‘charity’ that can constantly push plastic clothing sacks through my letterbox is rich enough not to need donations. My old clothes? I’M WEARING THEM! The sacks make good garden waste bags if not overfilled.

I take the view that any ‘charity’ that can constantly push plastic clothing sacks through my letterbox is rich enough not to need donations.

Those bags never come from the charities.

If you examine them in more detail they are private companies that just collect your clothes to send off to one of those “Cash For Clothes” companies that pay by the kilo.
They donate a token amount of money to the charity on the bag and take the rest as profit.

Some of the bags I get are bona-fide, many arn’t. All go into the greenhouse to be reused.

The charities sell the stuff to the same companies and ship it out to africa for resale.

Give old clothes away, you must be joking, have you see how much bags of rags for the garage cost??!! 🙂

The bags come in handy for rubbish..

It annoys me that poppy collectors aren’t allowed to even rattle their tins when we get idiots dressed as batman coming in our shop asking for money for whatever charity or knocking on my door.

The Disabled Children’s Trust is a non profit making organisation (recognised by the charities commission as a small charity), run, managed and staffed by trustees and volunteers who do not receive a wage, remuneration or commission therefore allowing over 90 pence of every £1 donated to go directly to helping disabled and handicapped children. The trust is also registered at Companies House as a Charity under the number 6933058.

Only the result of a quick Google but seems legit to me.

It’s not a charity but a limited company

They aren’t mutually exclusive. I work for a charity. It’s also a limited company. It’s pretty normal. Doesn’t mean it’s run for profit, does mean the liabiity on trustees is limited if it goes belly up.

Depending on how small this one is, it might not be able to register with the Charity Commission – you have to have an income over a certain level before they let you register.

Doesn’t mean that it isn’t dodgy, there’s been lots and lots of small (and some larger) fraudulent charities over the years but for a small charity not to have a registered charity number doesn’t make it so, and being limited liability definitely doesn’t.

As for abbreviated accounts being filed, yes, there’s exemptions to various reporting requirements for different sized charities (as there is for businesses) and there’s nothing suspicious about one taking advantage of that. Bear in mind that most small charities don’t employ an accountant, and it’s likely that the accounts are prepared by one of the trustees in their own time, who may well not be a trained accountant either.

I have no knowledge of this particular one though, so I’m not offering an opinion on it’s legitimacy either way. Quick look at its website gives no information on its trustees, its governance arrangements, links to annual reports detailing specifics on where the money’s been spent so, for me, I’d probably want to know some more before I gave them any of my hard-earned, but a sloppy website might just tell you that they prioritise spending their dosh on their beneficiaries over “back office” costs, which is hardly a bad thing.

They aren’t mutually exclusive. I work for a charity. It’s also a limited company. It’s pretty normal.

Yep fair enough – what I’m trying to say is that when you get “charity” bag through the door for the “Starving Orphan Seal Pup Appeal” then if you examine it more closely you’ll find that it is actually from “Dave’s Dodgy Dealing Inc”.

Dave will take your bag, flog it to the cash-per-kilo clothes place.
Make himself a tidy profit and then send a token amount to “SOSPA”.

The charity would be far better off if you skipped Dave and instead sold to the cash-per-kilo place yourself and made a donation direct to SOSPA. They’d get a lot more money and you could even claim Gift Aid on it.

GrahamS My reply was re. the OP – agree that the bags-through-the-door business is a different beast indeed. I’ve even seen a sneaky variation on the “registered charity” bit, where the organisation was a registered charity…. registered in Ghana though!

Terrible isn’t it?

The worst thing is, as you are no doubt aware, these parasites undermine confidence in genuine charities. As may be the case in the OP.

They donate a token amount of money to the charity on the bag and take the rest as profit.

Most of them don’t even do that, they just pocket the money. For every genuine charity clothing collection bag, we get about 10 for companies pretending to be a charity, but who just keep the money (which is made clear on the small print of their leaflet).

Graham

Totally, legitimate charity bag operations have been hit with the double whammy of people nicking the bags from the kerbside before they can be uplifted and the scam bags themselves, estimated to cost the sector £15M per annum directly, plus the loss of goodwill and trust from potential donors who are put off from donating at all.

Sadly, it’s also all but killing the totally legitimate arrangements some charities have had for years with commercial partners who collected and processed bags for them with a fair, reasonable divvy up of the proceeds – people see the arrangement disclosed on the bag and assume it’s a scam.

The number of scam bags we get in Cambridge is quite incredible, the same company puts a leaflet / bag through at least very fortnight all year round!