Workplace Giving UK, another company in the troubled Fundraising Initiatives Group, closed its doors earlier this month.

The company, which provided payroll giving services, has made 25 redundancies. Staff were made redundant on 4 December and have been paid until the end of November.

It is the sixth company in the group of eight to cease trading this year. The largest of them, Fundraising Initiatives Ltd, which claimed to employ 300 people, closed early last month.

WGUK is not yet listed as having filed for liquidation with Companies House but Peter O'Hara, its managing director, confirmed to Civil Society News that it was “with great sadness” that the company is being placed in liquidation.

He blamed Workplace Giving UK’s collapse on the “pressure of the group finances”.

O’Hara said that he wanted to reassure charities and employers that any money that has been donated will get to the right place.

“I really want to thank all my team who have been with me for over ten years and have worked incredibly hard," he said. "We have done everything we can."

Letters were sent out to clients last night.

Before placing it in liquidation directors had attempted to sell the company and had listed it with Lambert Smith Hampton, which sells business assets.

O’Hara set up Workplace Giving UK in 2004 and since then it has been owned by the Fundraising Initiatives Group. 

Fundraising Initiatives Ltd and Person to Person Direct, both owned by the group, were placed in administration in November. Earlier in the year R Fundraising, a telephone agency that had only been acquired by Fundraising Initiatives this year, was placed in administration with the loss of another 100 jobs.

Two other companies - Fundraising Initiatives International and Premier Contact - are no longer responding to any contact, although they have not yet filed for liquidation.

Workplace Giving UK is overdue filing its accounts with Companies House.

Its most up-to-date accounts for the year-end December 2013 show the company made an operating loss of £50,000 with turnover of £776,000. It had assets of £96,000.

WGUK's parent company, Fundraising Initiatives (Holdings), is also late filing accounts, but is not believed to be in administration.

Another company, Rapidata, which is 74 per cent owned by Fundraising Initiatives (Holdings), has said it is still operating, and expects to continue as normal.

Additional reporting by Kirsty Brown