The Mo Farah Foundation has reportedly closed after The Sun found that it had spent more money on marketing and events than on delivering charitable aid to children in Africa and the UK.
The Sun reported that the trustees of the charity – set up in 2011 by Olympic runner Mo Farah, and run by his sister-in-law Diana Nell – “agreed it could no longer deliver what it promised” and have since agreed to close the charity, despite still having “nearly £400,000 in its coffers”.
The Sun accused the charity of spending more on events, fundraising and marketing, including a “glitzy fundraising bash at the Hurlingham Club”. The foundation’s annual accounts for the year ending 31 March 2015- which were published 43 days late, according to the charity register – showed it spent £105,876 on “generating voluntary income”.
According to its accounts the Foundation had total spending in 2015 of £267,326, £81,726 of which was spent on its charity ball, compared with £12,260 on the same event in 2014. Meanwhile it spent £91,901 on charitable projects in the Horn of Africa and a further £24,659 on projects in the UK.
The majority of its other spending went to staff costs, which accounted for £137,470, a £15,553 increase on costs from the previous year. Despite the increase in staff costs, the number of full time equivalent staff nearly halved between 2014 and 2015, from 14.6 to 7.9.
Its accounts do not say how much Diana Nell, or any other of staff members, were paid but said that “no staff member was paid over £60,000 a year”.
The Sun claims that Eastleigh Primary School in Nairobi, Kenya, one of the ventures that the Foundation supports by providing “vitamin health pack provision” had actually received little from the charity but “50 pairs of 20p socks to share among 900 kids, medicine and wristbands”.
It also quotes a teacher as saying that “Mo never visited”, and that the charity “wasted our time. At the beginning, we were expecting something good but they brought us socks which are not even school uniform”.
The Sun said that the money left over in the foundation will be passed on to another charity.
A Charity Commission spokesman said: “Charity trustees have responsibility for governing a charity and directing how it is managed and run, including decisions on expenditure and making any decision to close.
"The Commission is assessing the information provided about the charity’s activities before deciding what regulatory action, if any, may be required”.
Civil Society News has approached the Mo Farah Foundation for a comment.
