Sistah Space under investigation

[quackhandle]

The old dear who upset the boss of Sistah Space apologised and resigned her official title and the boss should have really of left it at that, however maybe the grifter in her came out and she seemed to be on every single media/news channel, day after day and pushing the issue more and more.

And lo and behold look what happens. Play with matches you gonna get burned.

qh

[hobnob]

It's difficult to find volunteers to work in finance roles for example.

Some of the issues reported in those Twitter threads are similar to forum posts here. E.g. the charity was still using cash basis accounting when their income exceeded £250,000/year (at which point they should have switched to accruals accounts); they claim that this was innocent mistake, and they didn't know better because they were doing the accounts themselves, but they've now hired an accountant. They should have been paying an accountant long before that, just like we do, rather than asking for volunteers.

[hobnob]

More generally, the issue of scrutiny reminds me of the Log4j issues last year. The "Log4Shell" vulnerability had been around since 2013, but it wasn't discovered until Nov 2021. Log4j (the library) is open source, so in theory anyone could have reviewed the code on GitHub during those 8 years, but apparently nobody had looked closely enough. However, after that vulnerability was announced (CVSS 10.0), a lot of people started inspecting the source code, so there were 4 new releases in the space of a month (Dec 2021), fixing various other issues that had also gone undiscovered. In that example, I don't think anyone was being malicious. Realistically, nobody has time to review the full source code for every application they use, and there was no particular reason to focus on Log4j before it got all the publicity.

In this case, I'm sure that some people would like to dig up dirt on Sistah Space, to punish them for recent actions. However, I think there are other people who've never heard of the charity before, took a closer look out of curiousity, then discovered a huge can of worms.

[SueEllen]

Some of the issues reported in those Twitter threads are similar to forum posts here. E.g. the charity was still using cash basis accounting when their income exceeded £250,000/year (at which point they should have switched to accruals accounts); they claim that this was innocent mistake, and they didn't know better because they were doing the accounts themselves, but they've now hired an accountant. They should have been paying an accountant long before that, just like we do, rather than asking for volunteers.

50% of people are thicker than average.

Some of those 50% will set up a charitee or a small business....

[SueEllen]

This is often the case with charities in the early days. It's difficult to find volunteers to work in finance roles for example. A friend of mine set up a small charity initially backed by a wealthy individual benefactor. She had all sorts of challenges in the early days as she was left to run a lot of their operations without enough support.

They need to pay someone.

They also need to pay for things like legal advice, running their website, etc.

Private schools are charities and they pay people.

[northernladuk]

The old dear who upset the boss of Sistah Space apologised and resigned her official title and the boss should have really of left it at that, however maybe the grifter in her came out and she seemed to be on every single media/news channel, day after day and pushing the issue more and more.

And lo and behold look what happens. Play with matches you gonna get burned.

qh

I'm very confused about her appearances as well. I mean, Lady Hussey was in the wrong asking so many times, no argument about that, but it just seems odd to me that in an argument about 'where she is from' she appears in full Caribbean dress with national colours on everything inc her ear rings and necklance. I thought it was South Afican colous but she said Caribbean didn't she so could be Guyana so even though I know how the conversation went I'm still intrigued by her heritage of which she is clearly very proud and good for her. Just seems a bit odd to over do the colours in an interview about a storm over where you are from. Lots of lovely caribbean clothing that doesn't have national flag colours all over it would have suited her cause much better?

To be fair I think the news channels were pushing her to be on rather than her seeking the limelight but she has rather indulged them.

But anway, off topic and old news now.

[vetran]

Looking up their accounts on the charities commission pages is hardly heavy scrutiny, strangely I don't interview with anyone with overdue or dodgy looking accounts on Companies House. Probably the Lady was inappropriate but there was a want to point a finger, I doubt the intent to harm was there.

There was a post earlier in the year about this, having worked for a partial charity, I had a peek, a lot of charities have overdue and dicey accounts, they should process them the same as dodgy companies 1->2->3 strike off company & prosecute & bar directors. I suspect many are not honest.

[northernladuk]

Looking up their accounts on the charities commission pages is hardly heavy scrutiny, strangely I don't interview with anyone with overdue or dodgy looking accounts on Companies House. Probably the Lady was inappropriate but there was a want to point a finger, I doubt the intent to harm was there.

There was a post earlier in the year about this, having worked for a partial charity, I had a peek, a lot of charities have overdue and dicey accounts, they should process them the same as dodgy companies 1->2->3 strike off company & prosecute & bar directors. I suspect many are not honest.

To be fair there is a lot of information and guidance but I mean a lot. It's helpful but I would imagine needs a lot of focus to understand and follow to the letter. Lost the page now but jesus there were a lot of links

It does appear they have a strikes rule. This investigation mentions it
https://www.gov.uk/government/public...-animal-rescue

On 19 November 2018, the charity was placed into the Double Defaulter Class Inquiry (‘the class inquiry’) which investigates charities which have defaulted on their statutory filing obligations with the Commission on two or more occasions in the last 5 years. The charity was included in the class inquiry because it had failed to submit its annual accounts and returns (‘the financial information’) for the years ended 26 August 2016 and 26 August 2017 to the Commission. The financial information was subsequently submitted, but the charity again failed to file the financial information for the year ended 26 August 2018 on time.

Some interesting reading in the CC's case reports. Lots of very shady goings on with them. Granted the are the arse end of the whole system so am sure there a thousands more that are OK (or not investigated)
https://www.gov.uk/government/collec...ity-commission

even more in the live cases
https://www.gov.uk/government/collec...ity-commission