The Charity Commission has opened a statutory inquiry into Plymouth Islamic Education Trust (PIETY). 

The charity works, amongst other things, to advance the faith of Islam in Plymouth and the counties of Devon and Cornwall. 

The Charity Commission’s engagement with PIETY began in 2014, when the charity had repeatedly failed to comply with statutory reporting requirements.

Prior to the opening of this inquiry, PIETY had, on two separate occasions, been placed in the Commission’s ‘double defaulter’ inquiry for charities that have failed to file their annual documents for two or more years in the last five years. 

Despite significant regulatory engagement on this matter by the Commission, the trustees have consistently demonstrated that they are either unwilling or unable to comply with their legal duties. 

The inquiry will examine the extent to which the trustees are complying with their legal duties in respect of the administration, governance, and management of the Charity and in particular:  

1. The trustees’ compliance with their legal obligations for the content, preparation and filing of the Charity’s accounts and annual returns.
2. The extent to which the trustees have complied with previously issued regulatory guidance.
3. To identify if there has been any misconduct and/or mismanagement in the administration of the Charity.

The scope of the inquiry may be extended if additional regulatory issues emerge during the Commission’s investigation. 

Read the full article by clicking here.

 A corporate donor has launched a “first-of-its-kind” £50,000 grantmaking scheme, in which charities that receive funding choose the next recipients of a donation. 

The Benefact Group, which includes insurance firm Ecclesiastical and investment company EdenTree, will give an unrestricted £2,000 grant to five charities across the UK and Ireland. It will then ask the first fundees to “pay it forward” by choosing five more charities to receive the next £2,000 each, with the scheme continuing until 25 charities are funded. 

The first five charities in the chain are Kindness Homeless Street Team Glasgow, baby charity TinyLife in Northern Ireland, Autism Assistance Dogs Ireland, Welsh youth cancer charity Giddo’s Gift, and Perranporth Surf Life Saving Club in Cornwall. 

The initial five charities were chosen as they had been nominated by the Benefact Group’s Movement for Good programme over multiple years but had never won, a spokesperson of the company told Civil Society. 

Its Movement for Good programme invites the public to nominate charities throughout the year for the chance to receive a £1,000 grant. 

A new charity in the chain will be revealed every two weeks, and all participating charities will be announced by 9 June. 

Read the full article by clicking here.

It’s 10am on Sunday, and people are already starting to filter through the doors of Harbour Church. Sun streams through the windows – there’s an air of anticipation as congregation members greet each other and catch up on the week just gone. Soon, the room is filling up, the sound of gentle chatter swelling as the throng grows and people take their seats. The five-piece worship band strikes up; the crowd gets to its feet; the air vibrates as more than a hundred voices sing praises to God.

There’s no special occasion to pin the numbers on – it’s not Christmas or Easter on this particular Sunday, nor is there a wedding dress, christening gown or coffin in sight. It’s just a regular, run-of-the-mill service at this church in Folkestone, Kent.

It was a different story 25 years ago when church leaders Sarah and Gareth arrived. Back then, 15 people would show up on a Sunday morning; these days, there are somewhere between 150 and 180 attendees every single week. This, in itself, feels a miraculous feat amid a wider trend that has seen Christianity in modern Britain stuck on a constant downward trajectory. But perhaps the most surprising thing of all is the number of young people who are going against the secular grain. Looking around on a Sunday morning, the demographics are wildly different from the expected cluster of silver-haired worshippers – instead, there’s a diverse spectrum comprised of teenagers, young adults and extended families with toddlers and kids zooming around, as well as people in their thirties, forties and every decade beyond.

Read the full article by clicking here.