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Bid to stop 'bogus' charities
Howard Lake | 10 December 2007 | News
A charity umbrella organisation in the Irish Republic has made a submission to plug a gap in the proposed new charity legislation. The Wheel wants the legislation, which will regulate genuine charities, to address organisations that say they are charities or charitable but are in fact private bodies.
According the the Wheel, Section 41 of the Bill would seem to have limited effect in that it will only apply to bodies holding themselves out as registered charities by using words such as charity or registered charity in describing themselves. Very often, organizations use other words such as clothing appeal, or emergency appeal that suggest charitable activities in circumstances where the organization itself is a for-profit organization.
Such for-profit organisations would not be required to comply with the legislation says the Wheel. They want to make it an offence to effectively dupe or con the public into believing they are donating for charitable purposes, when in fact that is not the case. The nature of the prohibition must be generic in it application, says the Wheel, because to single out one form of activity, such as clothing collections or the abuse of Mass Card money, would simply drive these unscrupulous people to other areas of activity.
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Support for the Wheel’s suggested amendment to the legislation has come from Deputies Bobby Aylward and Pat Carey who specifically mentioned the practice of private companies collecting clothes and selling mass cards.
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About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.