Britishfundraisers.com raises ‚€20 online so far
Howard Lake | 31 March 2004 | News
The Guardian’s consumer champion Anna Tims today reports on Britishfundraisers.com which says that it raises funds for charities and handles donations for them, but whose Web site has only handled ‚€20 so far.
As a result of Anna Tims contact with Malaga-based Britishfundraisers.com six months ago, the Charity Commission investigated the site and the company behind it. Several of the charities listed as beneficiaries on the site had not heard of the company.
Ms Tims contacted Max Diamond, who also runs Costa Business Bureau, the company behind the site, from his home in Spain. He told her that “Britishfundraisers is a non-profit organisation that aims to pass 50% of the money it raises to the charities in question.”
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Following up more recently, Ms Tims found that none of the UK charities listed on the site had heard anything further from Britishfundraisers.com. Diamond admitted that the site had only received on ‚€20 so far. Although he added that £15,000 had been pledged to sponsored events planned via the site, none of the events had yet taken place.
The site lists a contract that charities must sign “in accordance with Charity Commission rulings” when they register on the site.
The Britishfundraisers.com site is therefore an odd mix of openness, poor track record, empty pages (there is still nothing on its news page for example), some naming errors (such as the “UK Charity Commission)), and ill-informed assertions. For example, Max Diamond himself claims that “it is widely known by governing bodies, that some charities and charitable organisations, after very high administration costs (high salaries for their bosses and staff, expensive offices, expense accounts, vehicles, television marketing campaigns, etc, etc!), they are only able to give around 5% of the amount donated by the general public, towards their actual objectives.” As such, the site does not inspire confidence.
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.