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Intelligent Giving lodges first complaint with Commission

Fundraising | Gemma Ware | 1 Dec 2007

The online charity watchdog Intelligent Giving has made its first complaint to the Charity Commission about a rugby charity it alleges spent only 35 per cent of its income last year on good causes. 

Intelligent Giving’s analysis of the latest accounts from the Wooden Spoon Society received national press attention this week, with an article in The Guardian highlighting that one fundraising event – a golf marathon in Iceland – lost money and had to be subsidised by other donations. The event has since been axed from the charity’s calendar.

According to the latest accounts from Wooden Spoon, which gives grants to help disadvantaged children and young people and has Princess Anne as its patron, only £1.7m of the £4.4m raised last year was spent on its charitable causes.

This is the first time Intelligent Giving has submitted a complaint to the Commission about a charity. However, Adam Rothwell, features editor at the site, said the move did not signal a move towards a more proactive role.

“We’ve always realised that the option has been open to complain but this is just the first time we’ve thought it would be a reasonable thing to do,” he said. “If the situation arose again in the future we’d do the same thing.”

Rothwell said Intelligent Giving recognised that its whistle-blowing could affect public trust and confidence in charities, but said it was important to flag up when charities behaved badly because they should deserve and work for their continued public trust.

“It’s really important, I think, that where charities are behaving in a way which isn’t acceptable, that they’re called to account for that.”

In a statement posted today on its website, Wooden Spoon said it “totally refuted” any allegations of mismanagement or extravagance.

It said the charity’s head office was extremely judicious in its governance and the management of all overheads, with only 6p in every £1 going on the administration of the charity. It said it had raised £13m for disadvantaged children in 24 years, £7m in the last six years alone.

Chris Gill, Wooden Spoon’s interim chief executive, added that the Commission had never expressed any concerns about its fundraising model, which is based on running events such as dinners, golf days and challenges such as the Four Peaks Challenge.

Gill said Intelligent Giving only used one model to gauge efficient fundraising but that in relation to Wooden Spoon’s activities this amounted to “apples and oranges comparisons”, and showed a lack of understanding by what he stressed was a self-appointed charity watchdog.

A spokesman from the Commission said: “We are aware of concerns raised in the press in relation to this charity, and we have subsequently received a complaint raising similar concerns.”

He said the Commission was considering the issues that had been raised by both Intelligent Giving and the press to see if it needed to take any action.

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