FakeCharity

A FakeCharity is generally considered to describe any organisation that calls itself a charity (in that its funds should come from people voluntarily providing contributions) and is generally registered with - in the UK - the Charities Commission or the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator, that obtains some, most or all of its funds from sources to which taxpayers (involuntarily) contribute, or in some cases, blackmailed from businesses for fear of said businesses suffering bad publicity of some sort.

While there is no one-true-definition of what differentiates a FakeCharity from a real charity, the prevailing definitions are

• "derives more than 10% of its income—and/or more than £1 million—from the government, while also lobbying the government" when describing UK charitiees
• any registered charity that accepts any form of tax-payer funding (either direct from government, or via grants from government funded organisations such as the NHS)
• organisations that obtain funds by what can only be called blackmail, for example Drinkaware obtains nearly all its contributions from businesses that would not normally contribute to such an organisation, but do so for fear of being seen as a business that "doesn't care" because they aren't 'donating'. Extortion is another word people use for this behaviour.

The main point being that these organisations are receiving money that was not voluntarily given, and it accounts for a significant amount of their funding.

Another form of FakeCharity exists - those that aren't registered, and are created with the express intention of defrauding the public who give money - this meaning is generally not the one meant when the term is used on this site.

Another thing that fake charities seem to have in common is that they bend the truth in order to further their own ideas

I’ve noticed recently that some lobbyists are prepared to simply lie – or give no value at all to the truth – in pursuit of their apparent aims.

[...]

The thing about the article which immediately struck me is that Alcohol Concern, a ‘good cause’ lobbying organisation who say in their website they want to ‘make sense of alcohol’, was quoted as follows;

“It’s disappointing that Parliament isn’t leading by example, instead alcohol consumption continues to increase."

I wrote to Alcohol Concern and asked why it had given such a weird quote claiming increased consumption when it seems patently untrue – certainly un-evidenced. ‘Interim Chief Executive’ Eric Appleby, who’d been given as the source, wrote back. His reply, didn’t make much sense and included this classic of its genre:

“the niceties as to whether a 10% increase in spending represents an equivalent rise in consumption is frankly irrelevant”.