Trustees of international aid charity Global Aid Trust were today accused of “failing in their duties to protect the charity” and “failing to adequately manage their own employees” in a Charity Commission inquiry report.
The regulator began an investigation into the charity in February last year, after completing a compliance visit to review the charity’s management of its events and speakers.
The charity featured in an ITV documentary the same month called Charities Behaving Badly, which featured preacher Dawah Man discussing jihad in Syria and reportedly making an antisemitic speech during a charity event.
It also featured a Global Aid Trust employee – who has since been fired by the charity - saying he admired US-born hate preacher Anwar al-Awlaki.
The Charity Commission inquiry report published today, said the charity and its reputation “were exposed to undue risk, which the trustees did not manage” – including “inappropriate and unacceptable” comments made at an event.
“The trustees did not exercise sufficient oversight over employees/volunteers and external speakers at events and did not put in place adequate measures to ensure extremism and hate is not promoted in the charity’s events,” the regulator said.
The regulator also accused the charity of failing to follow its own guidance prior to the opening of the inquiry, calling for its trustees to “take steps to better evidence their own decision making”.
A statement from Global Aid Trust this morning said it “accepted shortcomings in the management of one of its fundraising events”.
“GAT is a small charity that relies on limited staff and volunteers to carry out its work. We accept the findings of both our own Investigation and the Charity Commission in relation to shortcomings in speaker oversight, especially at one fundraising event,” the statement said.
“Once we became aware of the ITV documentary, the trustees acted promptly to deal with the issues it raised by dealing with weaknesses in delegated responsibility for speaker due diligence; carrying out our own investigation of the allegations made in the documentary; seeking legal advice in relation to any alleged breaches of laws shown by the documentary.”
The charity confirmed it has since tightened its policies and procedures in relation of events, speakers and volunteer recruitment and was making efforts to “take oversight of events where there are speakers”, as well as improved trustee training including in relation to equality and racism.
“As a result of the ITV documentary and the resulting formal investigation, our banking services were withdrawn, and we have been unable to secure our own bank account. However with our partners and advisers, we have been able to make an alternative banking arrangement.
“In the current climate where banking services have sometimes been withdrawn from charities on the basis of negative publicity, we believe there should be a guaranteed right to a bank account for charities.”
