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The voice of Scotland’s vibrant voluntary sector

Published by Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations

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Scots charities lost thousands after collapse of fundraising agency

This news post is almost 8 years old
 

​Documents show exactly how much charities were left out of pocket after fundraiser went bust

Sense Scotland and Quarriers lost thousands of pounds after the collapse of a private fundraising business.

Documents show that Fundraising Initiatives Limited (FIL), which went into liquidation last year, owed a raft of charities a total of £360,000.

Sense Scotland lost nearly £45,000 while Quarriers had to shoulder a loss of just over £38,000.

A sister company, Person to Person Direct, which operated teams of chuggers also went bust at the same time.

Both companies were owned by Cathy Sullivan Bauso.

A statement of FIL’s company affairs shows that when it went bust, it owed £71,308 to Action for Children, £43,055 to Battersea Dogs & Cats Home, £39,123 to the RSPCA, £37,145 to Blue Cross, £37,390 to British Red Cross, £15,922 to Centrepoint, £38,014 to Quarriers, £12,710 to British Heart Foundation, £4,949 to Marie Curie, £2,860 to Macmillan Cancer Support, £4,759 to SeeAbility, and £44,821 to Sense Scotland.

When public confidence in face-to-face fundraising fell after a series of public controversies, FIL and its sister company saw “donor acquisition levels dropping and this, coupled with the increased financial pressure resulted in the company’s deteriorating cashflow position”, say administrators.

The company was put into administration last November.

Papers also show HMRC was owed more than £600,000 in VAT, income tax and national insurance contributions.