Karat Marketing, the fundraising agency which was formed after the collapse of R Fundraising in 2015, has gone into administration.
Civil Society News understands that Karat Marketing, based in Dunfermline Scotland, has gone into administration with up to 24 staff being made redundant. Its website has been deactivated, as has its listed contact number.
Lauren Semple, a director and shareholder at the agency was contactable via email. She told Civil Society News that Karat Marketing would make a press statement at 3pm this afternoon, and could say nothing further.
According to its last set of total exemption full accounts for the year ended 31 March 2017, Karat Marketing had net current assets of £41,913. It owed nearly £70,000 to debtors and a further £58,861 to creditors at the time, although Semple said at the time of its closure, Karat "had no overdraft or loans".
Its accounts also listed the number of staff employed by the agency last year as 24, although Semple subsequently confirmed that the number at the time of closure was 17.
Karat’s related party disclosures for 2017 showed it paid over £36,000 in consultancy fees to Alan Clayton Associates Ltd, and a further £34,325 to Danish company Rolin Developments.
Rolin Developments appears to be owned or part-owned by Jacob Rolin, who is listed on Companies House as having previosuly been director of Revolutionise Events Ltd, a company he co-directed alongside Clayton and Ken Burnett.
Alan Clayton Associates Ltd is the company owned and run by former Karat Marketing director Alan Clayton, who stepped down from the organisation’s board in February. Karat was incorporated as a business on 10 August 2015.
Karat opened in Dunfermline a few months after the closure of R Fundraising, which went into administration in the summer of 2015 with the loss of 99 jobs: 82 in Scotland, and a further 17 in Manchester.
Last week Dunfermline Press reported that the agency will enter administration with the loss of 17 jobs.
The newspaper reported that a former staff member had told it staff had been asked to take a pay cut of 33 per cent in February. Semple denies this claim.
She said: "The staff were not asked to take a pay cut in February - we were experiencing a downturn in work and I wanted to work with the staff to come up with solutions. They unanimously agreed to reduce their hours in line with the work booked to support the business. It was a 38 per cent reduction in hours they agreed to do in order to support the business."
Editor's note (06/06): This article has been amended to include comments made directly by Lauren Semple to Civil Society News after the article was originally published. A follow-up article will be published tomorrow (07/06) which will include Karat Marketing's full press-statement.
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