Welcome to the third monthly Good Grift Watch update, promised when I launched Good Grift Watch on this blog in June. This update covers August 2023.

Update #1, covering June 2023, is here, and update #2, covering July 2023, is here.

From now on, I plan to produce these updates on a bi-monthly or quarterly basis. So the next update will appear in early November, or early December.

August 2023 in brief:

• The GLP found £40,560 of crowdfunded donations down the back of their sofa when changing the format of the ‘donate’ button on their in-house crowdfunders
• The total sum raised from crowdfunders by the GLP since 2017 passed £5 million
• One new crowdfunder launched by the GLP, and one closed crowdfunder re-opened
• Still no update to Louise Raw’s December 2022 crowdfunder in support of legal action against Jeremy Clarkson and The Sun newspaper
• GLP’s crowdfunded income in August (including the £40,560 of donations they found down the back of their sofa): £82,744
• GLP’s crowdfunded income in 2023/24 to date (7/12 months): £383,489

Chart of the month

Revision of the GLP’s in-house crowdfunders

On 4 August, the GLP changed the format of each of their then eight in-house crowdfunders, adding a selection of ‘donation amount’ buttons and other details, including an option to cover a “transaction fee” of up to 4.5% of the donation. And, in each case, this cosmetic change was accompanied by a significant, one-off revision of the total sum raised by each crowdfunder.

For example, between 8am and 6pm on 4 August the total sum raised by the Trans healthcare appeal crowdfunder jumped from £60,075 to £70,588, despite an update to the crowdfunder stating that it had closed on 31 July (when the appeal was dismissed by the Court of Appeal). And the total sum raised by the NHS data crowdfunder jumped from £34,609 to £42,842.

Similarly, between 8am and 6pm on 4 August the total sum raised by the Private equity crowdfunder, which had not received any donations since 8 July, jumped from £12,944 to £15,091. And the total sum raised by the Climate change protesters crowdfunder, which had received only £40 of donations in June and just £20 in July, jumped from £41,827 to £51,190.

Together, these unexplained, one-off revisions of the total sum raised by each of the then eight in-house crowdfunders totalled £40,560. There were no such revisions to any of the five GLP crowdfunders then open on Crowdjustice.

The GLP’s crowdfunded income in 2023/24

In 2023/24 to date (i.e. in the seven months since 1 February 2023), the GLP have launched ten new crowdfunders – one more than in the whole of 2022/23 – and received donations totalling £383,489 via 18 crowdfunders. This compares with a total of some £1.86 million in 2021/22, and some £661K in 2022/23. Almost two-thirds (63%) of this £383,489 was donated via five crowdfunders:

Trans Healthcare Appeal: (£70,588), Climate Change Protesters (£51,378), NHS data (£47,124), Asylum Seeking Children (£36,308), and Sewage Dumping (£36,130).

As of 1 September, the GLP has 11 open crowdfunders (four on Crowdjustice, seven in-house).

Upcoming events

Judgment is awaited in the GLP’s Sewage Dumping case, which was heard by the High Court on 5-6 July, and in their Manchester Ship Canal case, which was heard by the Supreme Court in early March. A hearing is awaited in the GLP’s new Ffos-y-Fran coal extraction case (the judicial review claim, seeking a hearing “on the first available date after 20 August 2023” was filed on 10 August). And the GLP could publish their annual report and accounts for 2022/23 (i.e. up to 31 January 2023) at any time – last year, they published their annual report and accounts for 2021/22 in late May.

Updated Table of Failure and Futility (TOFF)

This table shows the sum raised by and outcome to date of the GLP’s 63 crowdfunders since March 2017. Dark orange = court defeat; light orange = other negative/unproductive outcome; dark green = court win; light green = other positive outcome; grey = in progress/unresolved/other.