TerracingTomas wrote:Go to the Scottish Charity Regulators website Porcupine and search the Register. Type in Blameless on the enquiry form and you get the Blameless page. The accounts for 2021 have yet to be published as the charity missed the 9 month deadline
but the 20 accounts are there. £79,000 income, £20,000 of which was spent on charitable income and a whopping 52k on salaries. Something not right
https://www.oscr.org.uk/charities/searc ... 53#results
I was having a look at the Blameless and Accies Community Trust returns on the OSCR website at the weekend myself. First thing that struck me was how little money passes through Blameless. The way Mr McGowan goes on about it, you would think it was as big as The Hunter Foundation.
I too thought the % of outgoings on salaries looked a bit fishy but for comparison I looked at the accounts and annual report of a children's charity that a family member works for, let's call it Charity X. Charity X has a similar % of outgoings spent on salaries as Blameless but that is justified given that the nature of the work they do is people intensive; providing theraputic support to children and training professionals engaged with children in similar circumstances to those being supported directly.
If Blameless are paying for staff that are out on the front line, delivering talks to children and educating teachers, youth leaders etc. as well as someone organising the kids outings and activities, the outgoings on salaries could be justified too. The problem is, we don't know as they don't publish a report detailing what they do. They don't even have a website as they have allowed their web domain to expire in October although you can find an archive copy at
https://web.archive.org/web/20210419221246/https://blamelessuk.co.uk/Charity X is a lot larger than Blameless in terms of income and expenditure and being organised as a limited company, there is far more transparency of their affairs compared to Blameless which is an SCIO. I actually learned a lot about Charity X so have a pretty good understanding of my relative's work life now!
From recent press and McGowancasts, in addition to McGowan himself, other trustees are likely to be:
Alex McGrath of Prosigns and former Hope CBD Director
Niall Fraser of Hope CBD and former candidate for George Galloway's All For Unity party
Is anyone brave enough to contact Mr McGowan to request a full list of trustees and more information on Blameless?