Pesh Framjee, the Dove Trust's interim manager installed by the Charity Commission, has distanced himself from an excluded trustee who implied that an organisation could soon be coming in to salvage the charity's suspended online giving website, CharityGiving.

Keith Colman, also the Dove Trust's founder, had told users of its CharityGiving portal that “a meeting has been arranged for Monday morning (15 July) between the interim manager and a large charity who could salvage this situation and ensure that all charities and good causes who have raised funds via CharityGiving do not lose out at all”.

Framjee suspended the website on Friday.

But Framjee has since told civilsociety.co.uk: “Saying another charitable organisation will step up to the plate is premature and raises false expectations.

“All the Dove Trust is doing is putting it [a full investigation of the charity] off, and that’s what it has been doing up to now.”

Framjee, the head of Crowe Clark Whitehill’s non-profit unit, also revealed that he has asked the trustees to resist from making anymore “false statements”, and that at this point it’s still unclear how much affected charities will get back.

Yesterday the Commission's head of investigations and enforcement Michelle Russell stated that the missing funds are likely to be in excess of £250,000.

Framjee said that the shortfall comes both from liquid cash and assets. The Dove Trust's last full accounts, from April 2009, show debts that include nearly £48,000 due from Colman's own company, Keith Colman FS Ltd.

Monday meeting was with web providers

Framjee insisted that despite Colman’s words, Monday’s meeting was in fact to meet with alternate web giving providers to see if any could take on the portal.

“No one has come forward to buy the website or anything of that kind at the moment,” he stressed. “So it would be premature to tell any charity how much they will get back, or that there’s going to be no shortfall at all because someone is going to come in.

“If there is a white knight somewhere, I’d be very pleased to meet them.”

Framjee met a number of unnamed online donation site operators on Monday. “They’re all concerned about liablities from the past, so we’ve got to find a way of ring-fencing that so they’re not made responsible for any past shortfall,” he said.

Framjee is encouraging charities affected by the Dove Trust saga who want to get in touch with him to email, rather than call, using [email protected].

Although he did add: “Given the volume of enquires that we are receiving - I dealt with hundreds over the weekend - we are not able to answer requests about specific fundraising pages’ balances whilst we continue our enquiries.”

Shortfall came from ‘new money paying off old money’

Framjee also explained in more detail the events that led to the Dove Trust finally being suspended on Friday.

“The distributable assets held by the Dove Trust are less than the amounts payable to the charities that should be receiving funds,” he said. “This means that at any one point in time income received for a charity was being used to make payments to another charity which had earlier receipts that could not be met from existing funds.  

“For example, receipts for charity ‘A’ were funding payments made to charity ‘B’ as charity ‘B’s income had been used to pay charity ‘C’. This is not acceptable and it is therefore important that the amounts owing and available are reconciled before any further payments can be made."

He summarised: “Effectively, the new money has been paying off old money.”

Framjee also disclosed two contrasting points of view affected organisations have expressed to him.

“Some charities have asked us ‘Why have you stopped taking payments?’ They want to continue to receive money because if they don’t it’s bouncing back to their donors.

“Others have asked ‘Why didn’t the Commission stop taking payments a long time ago, then my money wouldn’t have gone in?’

“So it’s a case of ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’.”

Priorities going forward

As interim manager, Framjee said he has two immediate priorities.

The first is to ascertain the correct amount owing to the different charities and to consider what assets are available to repay them.

The second is to identify and set up “proper mechanisms that will enable charities to resume fundraising as soon as possible in a way that ensures  that funds raised after the 12 July are ringfenced appropriately” – hence Monday’s meeting.

“Some charities and fundraisers are already using multiple providers and have redirected their income to other alternatives,” Framjee added.

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