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Published on Intelligent Giving (http://www.intelligentgiving.com)

Rich donkeys?

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    Sarah, the sleuthing hound

"The Donkey Sanctuary is sitting on a massive pile of cash"

FALSE: SEVERAL PEOPLE HAVE TOLD us that the Donkey Sanctuary has been sitting on a big pile of cash for some years. This aroused our suspicions, so we opened up their annual report - and found that they had over £38m sitting in the bank. This is an awful lot of money, especially since they spend only £14m a year.

This might not have been so worrying if it the Sanctuary had a concrete idea of where this money was going to be spent - but apparently they didn't. As far as we knew, they were saving up for a donkey health spa, or an extra-large donkey Christmas party. They could spend this money any way they liked, and, as potential donors, that worried us.

So we went to a quiet place and took another look at their report. After some head-scratching, we discovered that they were, inexplicably, counting everything they owned as part of the cash they had to spend. If this sounds strange, then you'd be right: it's like protesting to the bank that it isn't counting the value of your house in the balance of your current account.

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  • Our animal charities overview [0]
What was the Sanctuary playing at? We spoke to their finance director, John Carroll, in an attempt to find out. Refreshingly, he admitted there was a problem with how they were presenting the figures at the moment, and told us that next year's figures would be a lot clearer, even going so far as to tell us what they were going to spend on specific projects. This is great news - but, for the moment, it's all too easy to think that the Donkey Sanctuary is a fat-cat charity, after your money to enrich itself. Which, it turns out, it isn't.
Source URL:
http://www.intelligentgiving.com/truth_and_lies/watchdog/rich_donkeys