Our weekly round-up of interesting and outlandish information, collected from the corners of the charity sector.

We did nothing wrong. Except squander £3m, obviously

Getting interviewed by a select committee is a distressing thing to do, particularly if you have screwed up in some fantastic way.

Step forward Oliver Letwin, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and most senior minister of the Cabinet Office, who handed over £3m of public money to Kids Company in the face of public objections from his officials, only to see the charity collapse days later with all the grace of a wet soufflé.

Obviously the worst performance of recent times before a select committee was that of Camila Batmanghelidjh, chief executive of collapsed charity Kids Company, whose response to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee was characterised by a level of haplessness, obfuscation and self-delusion rarely seen by mortal man.

But Letwin is a long-term devotee of Batmanghelidjh and spent well over an hour trying to emulate his hero, producing a performance at times so baffling and obtuse that you could see Paul Flynn, legendary Labour MP for Newport West, grow actually incandescent with rage.

Nor was he alone. By the end of the session Bernard Jenkin, chair of the committee and Conservative MP for Harwich and North Essex, seemed to have developed an involuntary twitch. You could see him aching for the time when people would finally stop talking cobblers so he could get to the serious business of penning an excoriating report.

How many grants did you give the charity, the committee asked.

One, said Letwin.

But you gave them more than £4m, and then a couple of weeks later you gave them £3m.

Yes, I did.

But that’s two grants.

No it’s not, said Letwin, straightfacedly, as if he couldn’t believe they were being so silly.

Was it a good idea to give a grant to Kids Company, then, the committee asked.

Oh yes, said Letwin.

But they went bust days later.

That’s true, said Letwin, but they might not have done.

But they didn’t, did they? You effectively poured public money straight down the drain.

Yeah, said Letwin, that’s true, but it doesn’t mean it was a bad idea.

Hadn’t he shown favouritism?

Of course not, said Letwin. What gives you that idea?

Well, other charities don’t have a direct line to the Duchy of Lancaster, pointed out Jenkin. The charity wouldn’t have got the funding if she hadn’t been your hero.

Nonsense, said Letwin. It was pure coincidence that I’m a long-term supporter who’s already lent his name to all sorts of other failed campaigns. It could have been anyone getting this cash and I would have behaved the same way.

It’s an interesting acronym

Much talk this week about digital innovation, both at our own Charity Technology Conference, yesterday, and the Fundraising Innovation Conference, run by the Institute of Fundraising.

There are two pretty cool things about tech conferences. The first is all the cool stuff you can do with technology to make life better. The second is that if you’re minded to, you can get up a damn fine game of buzzword bingo. Agile, user focus, transformation, minimum viable product. You get the idea.

Two further things, though, occur to Diary about digital innovation conferences. First, don’t hold them in Kingston, unless you want to deal with an unpalatable acronym. And second, it’s disappointing how rarely people, when leaving, greet each other with the phrase “See you later, innovator”.

Anyway, that's enough from Diary.

In a while, technophile.

Oh, hi Harrison

And finally. You think you got a good digital marketing campaign. How about this?