Regulator contacts Oxfam about sexual harassment allegations

The Charity Commission has responded to an article in The Times that claimed a former Oxfam manager was sacked after making allegations of sexual assault against a senior colleague

The Charity Commission has contacted Oxfam after being made aware that the charity was dealing with a number of what the regulator called “concerning allegations” made against senior staff, including claims of sexual harassment.

The charity said it dealt with 87 allegations of sexual abuse by staff in 2016/17, of which 53 were reported to police and other services, 33 were investigated internally and one was still pending.

Of those investigated internally, three-quarters were upheld and resulted in disciplinary action, the charity said.

The commission is understood to have begun looking into the charity after The Times newspaper approached it for comment last week about claims that a former Oxfam manager was sacked after she made a complaint of sexual assault against a senior colleague.

Lesley Agams was dismissed as the charity’s country director for Nigeria in 2010, three months after she accused a senior manager of sexually assaulting her at a hotel during an Oxfam conference in Oxford, The Times reported.

The charity said today it had thoroughly investigated the case at the time but could not uncover enough evidence to substantiate it. But it said it was sorry for the distress that the handling of the case caused Agams and said it believed it would deal differently with the complaint today.

“Oxfam treats all complaints of misconduct very seriously and systems are in place to ensure they are handled properly,” said an Oxfam statement. “Our internal procedures were followed in this instance and Ms Agams was given support and advice once we were made aware of the allegations.

“Like many organisations, we continually seek to improve our procedures and practice on safeguarding. We have worked hard in recent years to raise awareness among all staff and have a confidential whistle-blowing helpline, a dedicated safeguarding team, and safeguarding focal or contact points within countries.”

The commission said today that it had been in contact with the charity to establish how its trustees were dealing with the individual allegations.

“We have become aware that Oxfam is dealing with a number of concerning allegations about both recent, and non-recent, safeguarding incidents involving senior staff, including allegations of sexual harassment,” the regulator’s statement said.

“We are in contact with the charity to establish both how the trustees are responding to the individual allegations, as well as to reassure ourselves that they are taking steps to ensure the charity is appropriately safeguarding all people who come into contact with it, including its staff and volunteers.”

The charity also said its work to inform staff about how they could make complaints in confidence had resulted in more people coming forward.

“Oxfam is not unique,” the charity’s statement said. “Sexual abuse is a serious problem in society. We all, including Oxfam, need to get better at preventing and dealing with sexual abuse but as an international organisation fighting for women’s rights we have a special responsibility to practice what we preach and protect our staff, volunteers and beneficiaries from sexual harassment and abuse.”

The commission said that that any incidents or allegations of abuse or harassment within charities risked undermining a charity’s reputation and public trust in charities generally, particularly if they were not properly handled.

“Trustees must be mindful of this and take steps to ensure their charity safeguards all people who come into contact with it, including its staff and volunteers,” the regulator’s statement said.

“They should foster a culture that promotes the wellbeing of their staff and must put in place robust safeguarding procedures and ensure these are followed in practice.

“Such procedures should cover how the charity responds to individual allegations of harassment or abuse, including by reporting them to the police where appropriate, and to consider reporting them to the commission as a serious incident.”

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Extra funding for regulator ‘should not come from charging charities’, Treasury told

Four sector umbrella bodies have written to the Treasury to say the Charity Commission badly needs more funding, but there should be no ‘charity tax’

Four charity umbrella bodies have called on the government to provide more funding for the Charity Commission, but said this should not come from the regulator charging charities for its services.

A letter from the chief executives of the Charity Finance Group, the charity leaders body Acevo, the local infrastructure body Navca and the Small Charities Coalition, sent on Friday to Liz Truss, the chief secretary to the Treasury, asks for an increase in the grant given to the Charity Commission.

The regulator’s funding has been reduced by about £8m on the figure it received in 2010, and has been frozen at £20.3m a year until 2020.

The letter says effective regulation is crucial to effective regulation and to public confidence in charities.

“Unfortunately, the government is currently putting at risk the billions raised by the public and tens of millions of volunteering hours, by drastically cutting the Charity Commission’s budget over recent years and now freezing it until the end of the decade,” the letter says.

“This is despite rising demand for its services and inflation eroding the real-terms value of the grant given by government.”

It says the solution to the problem of declining resources is not what the letter calls a “charity tax” that “forces charities to hand over donors’ money to subsidise the regulator and threaten its independence in the eyes of the public”.

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William Shawcross, chair of the Charity Commission, said in September 2015 that it was inevitable charities would have to make a financial contribution to the regulator’s services.

He subsequently said in an interview, published in January, that charities in England and Wales might have to pay a levy of up to £3,000 a year to fund the regulator, with a consultation on the subject due “in the near future”.

The consultation has still not been published, due in part to delays caused by the snap general election earlier this year.

The letter from the four charity umbrella bodies says increased funding for the commission should be spent on more public outreach so people have greater confidence in the regulation of charities and to ensure that trustees are supported in understanding their responsibilities.

“The sums involved in funding the regulator from the government’s perspective are modest,” it says. “But the contribution made by the charity sector is substantial.”

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Regulator finds ‘concerning lack of safeguarding practices’ at new military charities

From a random sample of 21 such organisations registered since 2007, the Charity Commission also found problems with fundraising and financial controls

There is a “concerning lack of safeguarding practices” and issues with fundraising practices at newly registered military charities, according to a Charity Commission report.

When surveying a random sample of 21 military charities registered with the regulator since 2007, the commission found a litany of problems involving fundraising, financial controls and the safeguarding of beneficiaries.

Its report says the commission decided to carry out the exercise after hearing concerns about fundraising practices and the adequacy of safeguarding procedures, particularly for veterans with physical and mental health needs, such as those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

The report says some of the military charities in the sample that used professional fundraisers did not have fundraising agreements in place, which is in breach of legal requirements.

It says that some of the charities could not demonstrate why using a professional fundraiser was in their best interests, and had not assessed or managed reputational risks associated with the fundraising methods they used.

Some had “not operated systems or controls to demonstrate sufficient monitoring which ensures the charity receives all of the funds raised by the fundraisers and people given permission to raise money on the charity’s behalf”, the report says.

The report also highlights concerns about safeguarding, particularly in charities dealing with veterans suffering from PTSD.

“The commission found a concerning lack of safeguarding policies and practices in some of the charities and a need to strengthen existing policies in a majority of the others,” the report says.

“From the evidence seen, this was due to the trustees not having considered their beneficiaries to be vulnerable.”

The commission says in the report that in many cases failures in safeguarding or fundraising policies were linked to other problems, such as insufficient controls over the charity’s finances or a lack of financial planning.

There were also concerns about complaint policies and the management of conflicts of interest at some of the charities included in the sample, the report says.

But it adds that the charities examined were generally set up with good intentions and a passion for helping military veterans, and the report highlights some good practice, including effective collaborative working to help beneficiaries and cooperation between trustees.

As a result of the commission’s work, one charity ceased to operate and another is in the process of closing down.

Michelle Russell, director of investigations, monitoring and enforcement at the Charity Commission, said: “My message to those thinking of setting up new military charities is to think carefully before doing so. There are other ways of supporting the armed forces community, including supporting with money or time an existing, established veterans charity. Setting up a new charity might not be the most effective way to help.”

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Regulator launches consultation on GDPR changes to fundraising code

The Fundraising Regulator has launched a consultation on the changes it plans to make to the Code of Fundraising Practice to include the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation.

The regulator is asking for views from charities, fundraisers and members of the public on an updated version of the code covering GDPR, stringent data protection laws due to come into force from March.

The consultation will run until 8 December and the new version of the code will be released in the spring, the regulator said in a statement today.

The regulator said the updated code would also address the issues raised by the fines levied by the Information Commissioner’s Office against 13 charities over data protection breaches in the past two years.

The new version of the code will ensure the regulator’s guidance and terminology is consistent with that used in the GDPR legislation and will signpost users to other guidance from the regulator and the ICO, the statement said.

The updated version of the code includes three new sections to explain areas where there have been calls for greater clarity and guidance on what the new rules mean.

One of the new sections explains what counts as processing someone’s personal data and when data protection rules apply. This section says data matching and wealth screening, two of the activities that led the ICO to issue fines to charities that had carried them out without donors’ knowledge, count as processing someone’s data. 

Another section focuses on consent, which will use the ICO’s draft GDPR guidance to explain how charities can obtain consent to process people’s data.

The final new section offers advice on legitimate interest, which allows organisations to process people’s data without obtaining consent.

The ICO has not yet published guidance on legitimate interest, so the information in the code will be drawn from the GDPR legislation itself and the recommendations of a working group on donor communications set up by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations.

The new code also warns charities must keep up to date with the latest guidance from the ICO.  

Suzanne McCarthy, chair of the Fundraising Regulator’s standards committee, said: “Protecting personal data is a fundamental part of meeting the key principles of legal, open, honest and respectful fundraising within the code.

“We welcome views on whether the changes proposed are clear in communicating fundraisers’ legal and ethical responsibilities on data.”

The consultation document is available here. 

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Regulator to update fundraising code to include standards for online giving platforms

It is one of the developments from a meeting last week involving the Fundraising Regulator, Charity Commission and major giving platforms

The Fundraising Regulator will update the Code of Fundraising Practice to include standards for online giving platforms, following a meeting between charity regulators and the platforms last week.

The Fundraising Regulator, the Charity Commission and representatives from 14 of the online giving platforms met last week to discuss issues such as how to tackle fraud on websites that allow people to set up fundraising pages.

In a joint statement published yesterday, attendees at the meeting said the code had been among the topics discussed.

The statement said: “The Fundraising Regulator is reviewing the Code of Fundraising Practice and wants to update and expand the standards for online fundraising set out in the code.

“Platforms will work with the Fundraising Regulator to contribute to the review of the code.”

The regulator last month announced a wider consultation on possible changes to the code, which is due to be launched later this month.

At the meeting, the platforms also committed to working with the regulators to review “their resilience to fraud and to create a new forum to share advice and intelligence about potential fraud threats”, the joint statement said.

And they have committed to offering advice and guidance to the individuals setting up fundraising pages about the choices available to them and their responsibilities.

Although all the platforms said they already had robust anti-fraud measures in place, the statement said: “More can be done, working collaboratively, to ensure clear and consistent advice across different platforms and generally to the public.

“It is critical to avoid confusion about, for example, accountability to the Charity Commission, eligibility for Gift Aid, and what happens in the event of a failed appeal.

“Platforms agree to work with the Charity Commission and Fundraising Regulator to agree and disseminate clear and consistent public advice about the choices available for donating.

The Charity Commission and the Fundraising Regulator will report back to Tracey Crouch, the Minister for Civil Society, on the progress of discussions and whether they think the current regulatory framework is adequate, the statement said.

It added that online fundraising platforms that had not attended the meeting were invited to join future discussions.

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Fundraising Regulator to consult on changes to code of practice

Stephen Service, policy manager at the regulator, tells Third Sector’s briefing on the General Data Protection Regulation that the consultation will begin next month and finish in December

The Fundraising Regulator will next month consult the sector on changes to the Code of Fundraising Practice to bring it in line with the General Data Protection Regulation.

Speaking at Third Sector’s GDPR briefing event in central London this morning, Stephen Service, policy manager at the Fundraising Regulator, said a consultation on the proposed changes would be launched next month and would last until mid-December.

He said the watchdog would remove and replace parts of the code that were inconsistent with the stringent new data-protection rules, which are due to come into force in May.

The key changes would then be finalised, put to the regulator’s board for approval in January and published from February 2018, before the implementation of the GDPR, said Service.

He said the consultation would “cover the proposed changes and the best way to ensure the changes are communicated effectively, because it is really important to make sure that the sector as a whole knows what’s expected of it”.

He said the regulator would ensure all terminology used in the new version of the code was consistent with the GDPR and the new version would contain definitions of key terms.

“We want to make the rules on data protection more accessible, bringing them into a single section in the code, rather than where it is at the moment – all mixed up and spread out throughout the code,” he said.

The section of the new version of the code focusing on data protection would contain three sub-sections, he said, on processing, consent and legitimate interests.

In July, Gerald Oppenheim, head of policy at the Fundraising Regulator, said the GDPR would require between 50 and 60 changes to the code in order to make it compliant.

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We haven’t been hacked, says Fundraising Regulator

The watchdog says its databases have not been broken into by scammers, after reports came in that a number of charities received invoices purporting to come from the regulator

The Fundraising Regulator has said there is no evidence that its databases have been hacked after charities were contacted by scammers posing as the regulator and requesting payment for the Fundraising Preference Service.

The regulator sent out a warning about the scam on Tuesday after several charities received a poorly written email suggesting that the charity was due to pay an invoice for the costs of the FPS.

The costs of the FPS, which enables people to block communication by post, telephone, email or text from specific charities, are being covered by the voluntary levy that has been paid by the majority of charities that spend more than £100,000 a year on fundraising.

A database manager at one of the charities that was targeted by the scam told Third Sector the email address that received the request for money was a personal one that was not publicly linked to their work at the charity.

The manager, who asked not to be named, said they thought it was likely that the email had also been sent to their work email address, but the charity’s spam filters had blocked it.

“I’m the primary contact for the Fundraising Regulator, and it seems strange to me that the scammers targeted exactly the right person and knew to send it to that account,” the person said.

Although the manager acknowledged that their personal email address was available in the public domain, they said it was never linked specifically with their role at the charity and did not appear on the charity’s website.

It might be possible for someone to piece together their job with the email address, the manager said, but this would require more time and research by the fraudsters than was typically seen in such scams, especially given the number of charities believed to have been contacted.

“There is a very narrow list of people who have that address in connection with my job,” the manager said. “But when you register with the Fundraising Regulator you have to give a second address, so they are on that list.”

But the regulator rejected the suggestion that the scammers had used its database to work out who to target.

A spokeswoman for the regulator said: “There is no evidence to suggest that the Fundraising Regulator has been hacked. All the email addresses used by the scammers are ones that are in the public domain.”

She said the regulator had not notified the Information Commissioner’s Office because there had been no breach.

The database manager said it was also possible that the Institute of Fundraising had the email address that was targeted.

A spokeswoman for the IoF said she did not believe there had been a data breach at the IoF, but was unable to confirm this in time for Third Sector’s deadline.

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Regulator probes broadcasting charity amid concerns of ‘significant unauthorised payments’

The Charity Commission opened a statutory inquiry into Fadak Media Broadcasts last month after receiving a serious incident report from the charity

The Charity Commission has opened a statutory inquiry into an Islamic broadcasting charity because of concerns about alleged significant unauthorised payments.

The regulator said in a statement today that it had opened an inquiry into Fadak Media Broadcasts last month after receiving a serious incident report from the charity with suspicions about “significant unauthorised payments from within the charity”. 

The commission said: “The report has raised serious regulatory concerns about the management and administration of the charity, and whether the trustees have sufficient oversight of the charity’s finances.”

The charity which broadcasts through its website and on YouTube, has objects to advance Islam, advance the education of the public in the Islamic religion and to promote religious harmony.

The charity was registered with the commission in January last year and has not yet been required to file any accounts with the regulator.

The commission said the inquiry would examine issues including whether the charity’s trustees had exercised sufficient control of the charity’s assets and whether there had been any misappropriation of those assets.

Third Sector was unable to speak to anybody at the charity using the telephone number listed on its website.

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Regulator probes Christian charity for accounts failures

Kingdom Life Ministries of north London failed to submit its accounts on time for three consecutive years

The Charity Commission has opened a statutory inquiry into a London-based Christian charity after it failed to submit its accounts on time for three consecutive years.

Kingdom Life Ministries, which is based in Tottenham, north London, and promotes Christianity, has been accused by the commission of showing evidence of mismanagement and of non-compliance with the regulator.

The charity was included in a class inquiry last year after failing to submit its accounts for the financial years ending 31 May 2014 and 2015.

KLM was later removed from the class inquiry, which included a group of charities that had repeatedly failed to file accounts on time, after it submitted the outstanding accounts in April this year.

But the charity filed its 2016 accounts 74 days late, the Charity Commission website shows, which prompted the new statutory inquiry.

The commission said that because the charity had been given regulatory advice and guidance, “it is of serious regulatory concern to the commission that the charity has continued to default on its statutory duties”.

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According to the Charity Commission website, the charity had an income of £870,411 and spent £860,563 in the year to 31 May 2016.

The website shows that the charity has filed each of the past five sets of accounts late, ranging from 15 days overdue to 489 days behind schedule.

The inquiry will examine the extent to which the trustees have complied with previous guidance and whether they are carrying out their legal obligations properly.

The charity did not respond to a request for comment before Third Sector’s deadline.

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