Fundraising website CharityGiving shut down

Fundraising website CharityGiving shut down as £250,000 goes missing. As many as 10,000 individuals' donations to worthy causes may be lost.

On Monday 15 July an article appeared in The Telegraph newspaper with the headline: Fundraising website CharityGiving shut down as £250,000 goes missing. Herewith the link to the full article.

The Dove Trust which runs the CharityGiving portal is now under investigation by the Charity Commission. The Commission has said funds donated on or after July 12 should be automatically directed back to the donor through the banking system but has warned donors to "check their bank accounts to ensure this has happened".

SCI has been fundraising through the site since 2010 and has received over a thousand donations totalling £61,774.49.  CharityGiving offered SCI supporters a more cost-effective means of fundraising than JustGiving, which charges 5% plus VAT on all donations received. Recently BT launched MyDonate which offers similar conditions to Charity Giving, though not quite as favourable.  In an effort to offer our supporters the most cost-effective vehicle through which to run a fundraising event we, along with thousands of other charities, recommended CharityGiving.

This week CharityGiving published the following on its website: "We can confirm that the Charity Commission has opened a statutory inquiry into The Dove Trust, who operate the online donations portal www.charitygiving.co.uk. Pesh Framjee, partner at Crowe Clark Whitehill, has been appointed by the Charity Commission as interim manager to take full control of the management of The Dove Trust".  There is an email address on the Charity Giving website for enquiries: DoveTrustInterimManager@crowecw.co.uk.  They continue by stating: "We are currently working with the Charity Commission to consider as a matter of urgency the next steps in order to protect existing funds the public has donated, and any future donations. We recognise this will cause concern among the charities and donors using the website. Please note the facility to create fundraising pages or receive funds has been suspended until further notice."

SCI urges all its generous and loyal donors who have set up monthly payments to SCI through CharityGiving to please check with your bank that your recurring payment has been stopped!  At SCI we are trawling through all the paperwork to identify exactly how much money that has been donated to SCI through the CharityGiving website has not been received.  This is an awful situation and we are taking all steps available to ensure that we receive all the funds that have been donated by SCI's generous and loyal supporters.

Unfortunately there are thousands of charities and millions of generous supporters who will be touched by this awful news. We hope this will not stop you from continuing to support the work SCI is doing across sub-Saharan Africa to tackle neglected tropical diseases.  Please refer to the SCI 'Donate' page for information about other methods of supporting our work. For supporters who wish to set up a recurring gift to SCI and previously used Charity Giving, we recommend using British Telecom's MyDonate facility. Click here for the SCI MyDonate page.