Reply to: Sistah Space under investigation

[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

[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]

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.

[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.

[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....

[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.

[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.

[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

[edison]

A lot of small charities aren't well run. Mostly it's not because of any intentional wrong doing, it's just that people kick off something that's important to them but actually lack the skills to properly run the financial side. I think if local/national governments are to fund charities in lieu of providing the services themselves then they ought to do due diligence on them and offer support if they need help with best practice governance.

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.

[NotAllThere]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...legations.html

Dunno about anyone else but this was the first thing I thought would happen as soon as the story broke. Had a look around and other articles and it appears over 40% of small charities are not submitting their finances for one reason and another and the Charities Commission investigation pages make for some grim reading. I'm sure looking at the murky end of all this gives me a rather jaded view and I'm not focussing on the good that a decent charity could do but this type of story seems to crop up all too often along with all the investigations that don't hit the news.

Is this not a surprise to anyone else or is it just me that's bitter and twisted?

It's not a surprise and you're bitter and twisted.

[BlasterBates]

Just to note it's only a Daily Mail investigation not an official one:

The watchdog has not announced an official investigation or inquiry into Sistah Space.

[SueEllen]

So, Sistahs are doing it for themselves?

Bit odd that they get the royal family in trouble and immediately come under heavy scrutiny. Almost like there could be a link.

Captain Sir Tom Moore's charity got in trouble almost immediately after they were set up due to it's high profile.

Basically if you are high profile keep your nose clean if you are setting up or running a charity.

[northernladuk]

So, Sistahs are doing it for themselves?

Bit odd that they get the royal family in trouble and immediately come under heavy scrutiny. Almost like there could be a link.

Hee hee. Yeah you could think that but I'm sure there isn't. Just another (possibly) poorly run charity that's been coasting along because the CC haven't the resources to look at them all and now they've hit the news the facts, which were probably already out there, get more scrutiny.

It's like the Kids Company. Many people didn't a clue about all this until a sensational story came out about abuse within the org and the focus naturally came round to their finances for which there was a lot of noise/suspicion out there already. I'll bet you could throw the head of many of these micro charities in to the limelight and the can of worms would get opened.

It's a good story that you piss of the royalty and 3 weeks later you are in trouble though, just like the good old days of yore but not in this case.

[d000hg]

So, Sistahs are doing it for themselves?

Bit odd that they get the royal family in trouble and immediately come under heavy scrutiny. Almost like there could be a link.

[Dark Black]

So... where are they really from?