The Fundraising Regulator has found a libraries charity breached its code by failing to have a complaints policy after investigating a concern raised regarding a high-profile £7.5m donation it received in 2021.
The Friends of the Nations’ Libraries accepted a donation of £7.5m in November 2021 from the Blavatnik Family Foundation, founded by Ukrainian-born, British-American businessman and philanthropist Leonard Blavatnik.
The charity had been carrying out a fundraising campaign aiming to raise £15m in order to buy a valuable collection of historically significant books and manuscripts from prominent British authors, including Jane Austen.
As part of its campaign, the charity had contacted the Blavatnik Family Foundation, which had agreed to donate half the money, and subsequently named the collection the Blavatnik Honresfield Library.
The Fundraising Regulator reported that the complainant first contacted the Friends of the Nation’s Libraries in March 2022 to express concern over the £7.5m donation.
It said the complainant urged the charity to refuse the gift, only to be informed that the donation had already been accepted around three months earlier and the collection had already been purchased.
The charity said that it had carried out due diligence on all large donations. When the complainant asked for more information on these checks, they received no reply, which led to the complainant contacting the regulator.
Concerns had been raised publicly in 2022 over Leonard Blavatnik’s alleged links to sanctioned Russian oligarchs.
A spokesperson for Blavatnik, who was knighted in 2017, told the Guardian at the time that his “personal and commercial activities are not, and have never been, involved with Putin, Russian politics, or the Russian government”.
One breach of the code found
After investigating, the Fundraising Regulator found that while the charity was unable to provide any note or record of the due diligence performed before accepting the donation, this failure did not constitute a code breach due to the highly public nature of the donation.
However, the regulator did identify one breach of the code by the charity, as it uncovered that the charity had no complaints policy.
The charity said this was because it had no staff resources and no permanent employees, relying largely on volunteers, and does not often carry out fundraising.
The Friends of the Nation’s Libraries has since set up an ethics committee to review any donations worth more than £20,000, the regulator said.
The Friends of the Nation’s Libraries has been contacted for comment.
