I was having a trawl through some old posts - it's a fine way to spend a Sunday afternoon, and I found this interesting:
"The Wired In to Recovery Community is a CIC (went for this rather than a charity as it is more flexible in terms of our aims)." - Michaela Jones - 9/11/2010
http://wiredin.org.uk/blogs/entry/9353/wired-in-an-abundance-of-riches-but
...and then a mere fortnight later...
"just so you know we are a charity with all the governance that this involves." - Michaela Jones - 24/11/2010 http://wiredin.org.uk/blogs/entry/9491/proposal
"We set up a CIC, a community interest company, together but this has not been used." David Clark - 19/4/11 http://wiredin.org.uk/member/blog/13/entry/10823/an-important-statement/
Which of these is true? Neither - Wired In is exclusively owned by the Company Wired in Ltd.
5 comments:
oh dear!
I've done some digging, too.
November 2010 - Tony A's blog "Proposal" suggested people who use the community could donate. A post from Andrea suggested registering for GiftAid so donations would be exempt from tax, and Kyril suggested clearly displaying the charity number. These ideas weren't followed up, but the PayPal button appeared very quickly. Donations go to "Wired In To Recovery" which is the CIC, but Clark stated clearly that "this has never been used". Indications are that it has been used to take donations via PayPal. We don't know how much.
December 2010 - Michaela's blog "An alternative to PayPal" offers the suggestion that those who don't have credit/debit cards or don't want to use PayPal can email her and she will provide the sort code and account number of the "wiredin account" (but it isn't specified which bit of wiredin this account relates to) so people can go to the bank and bung in the cash. Again, we don't know how much has been donated. Most bank paying-in slips ask for an account name as well - wouldn't it be interesting to find out which name is on this account?
Full sponsors pay £5,000 pa, there are 7 of them; and associates who pay £1,000 pa, and there are 4 of them. That's £39,000 pa income from sponsorship.
We don't know where those sponsorship monies go - whether it's the charity Wired International Ltd or the CIC Wired In To Recovery. But as the NTA, a full sponsor, is a government department, we can ask to see their accounts under The Freedom of Information Act.
The charity's accounts have a history of being overdue, and though accounts were registered in February this year, the full returns haven't been done. The information on the Charity Commission's website shows that in May 2008, Wired International Ltd. had a credit balance of over £42,000.
In the absence of any obvious progress on the site, it's hard to see where all this money is going. I don't know how long the sponsors have been sponsoring wiredin, so let's be charitable (ha, ha) and say it's only been a year each. With the balance in May 2008 and just one year's sponsorship, that's well over £80,000 in just 3 years. If there's been full sponsorship for longer, it's a fair bit more - and Clark's put his "own money" in as well, apparently. This could all come to six figures.
All the work involved is done for free by Clark and Michaela Jones, as we keep being told - we don't know if moderators or other helpers get paid.
Does it really need all that dosh to keep going? Someone somewhere is either making serious money out of this (not necessarily Clark)or I'm a Dutchman.
I'm a girl and was born in England.
Hey AnonAlky
I've been going down the same routes and have written to all the state-run bodies and asked for relevant information under the FIA. I have had some initial information back from one respondent - they tell me that they had only made one donation in 2009/10 and there hadn't been one since. I don't know how this was for but it would probably only be £1k.
I will find out who payments are made to but (and this is a big but) I suspect that the figures aren't anywhere near as large as but the FIA requests will help explain this in terms of statutory bodies.
But in truth we just don't know - and the lack of transparency and accountability is an issue.
Some people will have needed to be paid - the website developers, hosting services, and a few other people. I would be intrigued to know (for example) if Mr Clark's last trip back to the UK (meeting family etc and Wired In compadres) was a work-related expense and paid for out of Wired In funds.
The longer that this drags on without a clear explanation the more convinced I am that things do not smell right.
Keep digging. The truth is down there.
More digging, and I'm not buried yet!
David Clark's blog archive includes many pleas for sponsorship money, and many complaints that none is forthcoming.
This starts from the beginning of wiredin, pretty much.
In my last post, I worked out that wiredin has (only) had in excess of or a£80,000 in 3 years, and probably more as that's based on just one year.
But there's more!
January 2009 - Clark's blog "Unsuccessful fundraising efforts" contains a post from theruthisout saying there was NTA sponsorship of £100,000 "last year" ie. 2008, for Daily Dose. Did it really cost that much to run it for a year?
January 2010 - Peapod's blog "Something missing from this pretty picture" has posts from Simon Morton referring to another £50,000 for Daily Dose (and a few difficulties in the running of it)
Very odd. Not as much as it needed the year before.
March 2010 - Daily Dose is closed down.
There were concerns that DD had become a vehicle for promoting wiredin, and there were complaints that the editor (Clark) was putting too many wiredin blogs on DD.
November 2010 - Clark's blog "Google analytics and thinking funding" looks at various imaginary figures and deduces from this that the community is "worth" at least £400,000. He says that if wiredin were to "receive" this level of money there would be much more that could be done, though he doesn't say what.
All the articles/content/blogs are given freely - that we know. All the time and work is given freely - or is it?
If Clark and Jones are taking a salary, nobody would have an issue with that if the charity's accounts (or the CIC's, or the businesses, whatever) were up to date and open to scrutiny.
But they continue to state they get no remuneration for all this work.
Daily Dose may be a separate issue, though I know some have questioned the
"closeness" of all the people involved, and some of those people are now trustees of wiredin.
So we have to wonder - just where has all the wiredin money gone?
I'm feeling a bit sick, actually.
Hello late night digger!
It's hard to fathom the "there was NTA sponsorship of £100,000"last year" ie. 2008, for Daily Dose.
looking at the Charity commission website there wasn't a year when Wired international had that much income... it was close to £70,000 in 2007 and £80,000 in 2008.
So unless the £100,000 represented £50,0000 in the financial year 2007-08 and the same in 2008-09, I can't account for it.
Some of the money went on I-Phones but even so there must have been some left overs.
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