Fashion for Relief raised money through celebrity fashion events.
The events were held in places such as London and Cannes. They attracted major brands, wealthy donors and public attention.
The organisation said the money would support humanitarian and charitable causes.
But when the UK Charity Commission investigated the charity, it found that the financial records did not support a well-controlled organisation.
Almost £4.8 million had been raised between April 2016 and July 2022.
The charity spent almost £4.6 million during the same period.
Only £389,173 was paid out as charitable grants.
That was 8.5% of its total expenditure.
The problem was not simply that fundraising events were expensive.
The deeper problem was that trustees could not show that they had properly assessed those costs, recorded their decisions or ensured that money raised for partner charities reached them as agreed.
The charity produced events.
It raised funds.
It had trustees and professional advisers.
But it did not maintain a clear enough route from money raised to money spent, approved and passed on.
This article is part of the Process Failure Case Studies series.
Who this guide is for
This guide is for: Teams responsible for evidence, reporting, governance, monitoring and review workflows.
What was Fashion for Relief?
Fashion for Relief was founded by Naomi Campbell in 2005.
It later became a registered charity in England and Wales.
Its model was based on fundraising events. Fashion shows, auctions and other events would raise money for humanitarian causes and partner charities.
These partners included Save the Children and the Mayor’s Fund for London.
The model depended on trust.
People attended events, donated goods, bought auction items and contributed money because they expected the proceeds to support the stated cause.
Fashion for Relief was responsible for collecting the money, paying the event costs and passing the remaining funds to the relevant charity.
That sounds simple.
In practice, the records were poor, the events were expensive and some partner payments were not made when they should have been.
What did the inquiry find?
The Charity Commission opened a formal inquiry in November 2021.
Its final report was published in September 2024.
The regulator concluded that Fashion for Relief had been poorly governed and had inadequate financial management.
The charity had raised £4,779,789 and spent £4,579,272 over the period examined.
More than £2.75 million went towards event charges.
A further £1.53 million was recorded as other expenditure.
Only £389,173 went towards charitable grants.
There is no fixed legal rule stating how much a charity must spend on fundraising.
Some events are expensive to run. A large event may still be worthwhile if it raises enough money and supports the organisation’s purpose.
The regulator’s concern was that it found no evidence that the trustees had properly reviewed the model.
There was no clear record showing that they had tested whether the costs remained reasonable compared with the money being generated for charity.
That is a process failure.
The problem was not only the final percentage.
It was the lack of evidence showing that trustees had noticed the percentage, questioned it and made an informed decision to continue.
The spending that attracted attention
The inquiry examined spending linked to a Fashion for Relief event in Cannes in 2018.
The charity paid €14,800 for a flight from London to Nice. Trustees said the flight was used to transport art and jewellery worth more than €1.5 million to the fundraising event.
The regulator accepted that transporting valuable auction items could cost money.
However, the charity had kept no records, other than the invoice, explaining why this option was reasonable compared with other ways of moving the items.
The charity also paid €9,400 for three nights of accommodation for one trustee.
This was much more expensive than the accommodation provided to other trustees and volunteers.
Trustees told the inquiry that a donor would usually cover these hotel costs.
The inquiry could not find a matching payment from the donor in the charity’s financial records.
Further hotel charges totalled €7,939.75.
They included spa treatments, room service, cigarettes and hotel products.
Some of the stay took place after the fundraising event.
The Commission found that not all these expenses were reasonable costs for the charity to pay.
The important issue is not that charities may never pay for travel or accommodation.
Staff and trustees sometimes need to travel to run events, visit programmes or meet donors.
The organisation still needs to show why the cost was necessary, what part related to charity work and who approved it.
Fashion for Relief often could not do that.
One trustee received unauthorised payments
The inquiry found that trustee Bianka Hellmich received £290,572 in consultancy fees between 2018 and 2020.
These payments were not permitted under the charity’s constitution.
The trustees later produced a letter that attempted to authorise the payments.
The regulator found that the trustees could not approve the payments themselves in this way. They also could not authorise them retrospectively.
Hellmich eventually repaid the full amount to the charity in April 2023.
This is another example of why an approval field is not enough.
A document can say that a payment was approved.
The organisation still needs to check whether the person giving approval had the authority to do so.
The rule must come first.
The approval record shows that the rule was followed.
The charity did not control its own bank account properly
Fashion for Relief had difficulty opening and operating a bank account in its own name.
Its funds were instead held and managed by external solicitors and accountants.
Using professional advisers is not automatically a problem.
The trustees were still responsible for the money.
They needed to know what was being paid, why it was being paid and whether the transaction supported the charity’s purpose.
The inquiry found that trustees could not explain some historic transactions.
They did not have written records showing how those payments had been approved.
After the Commission investigated the transactions, one professional advisory firm repaid about £54,000 to the charity.
The regulator said this money might not have been recovered without the inquiry.
The lesson is simple.
Outsourcing the payment process does not outsource responsibility.
Trustees cannot assume that a solicitor, accountant or external provider is checking every decision on their behalf.
Save the Children was still owed money
Fashion for Relief held fundraising events in Cannes in 2017 and 2018 for Save the Children.
The inquiry later found that Save the Children was still owed £147,000 from funds raised for its benefit.
The payment was eventually made in January 2023 by interim managers appointed by the Charity Commission.
The Mayor’s Fund for London also complained about money raised through events held in its support.
The charity had not maintained a formal agreement for some of this work.
The interim managers later paid £50,000 to the Mayor’s Fund because donors would reasonably have expected the money raised at those events to support it.
These are not small administrative details.
The public attended events believing they were supporting named charities.
Fashion for Relief needed to know how much had been raised, what costs could be deducted, how much was owed and when the partner would be paid.
That information should have been visible throughout the process.
It should not have required a regulator and interim managers to reconstruct the position years later.
The records were often missing
The inquiry found that the charity had not maintained proper records of trustee decision-making.
It lacked documents such as:
- meeting minutes;
- invoices and receipts;
- partnership agreements;
- conflict-of-interest records;
- and due-diligence checks.
The charity also repeatedly filed its accounts and annual returns late.
One set of accounts was filed 235 days late.
Others were late by 121 days, 62 days and six days.
Late reporting does not prove that money has been misused.
It is still a warning.
When an organisation repeatedly misses reporting deadlines, it may suggest that the underlying records are incomplete, responsibilities are unclear or financial information is difficult to assemble.
The final report is often late because the workflow before the report is weak.
Why this matters for donor reporting
Donor reporting is often treated as a document-production task.
The deadline approaches.
The programme team asks finance for totals.
Staff collect photographs and beneficiary stories.
Someone writes a narrative explaining what happened.
The team then sends the report to the funder.
That process is too late.
A trustworthy donor report starts when the money is received.
Each funding promise should be recorded.
Each cost should be linked to the correct event, programme or partner.
Each unusual expense should have an explanation.
Each approval should be recorded by someone with the authority to give it.
Each payment owed to a partner should remain visible until it has been made.
The report should be generated from those records.
It should not be a separate story created after the money has already moved.
The problem was not only expensive events
It would be easy to reduce this case to luxury hotels and spa treatments.
Those details attract attention.
They are not the full problem.
The wider process included expensive fundraising events, weak records, late filings, unclear approvals and poorly managed relationships with partner charities.
An expensive event is not automatically a misuse of funds.
A cheap event is not automatically well managed.
The real questions are:
Did the trustees know what the event would cost?
Did they compare the cost with the likely charitable return?
Did they approve a budget?
Did they track costs as they grew?
Did they know how much was owed to the partner charity?
Could they explain each material expense?
Could donors see what their contributions ultimately supported?
The inquiry found too little evidence that these questions had been properly answered.
The wrong lesson is to publish a cleaner annual report
A polished annual report would not have fixed this.
Neither would a more attractive donor dashboard.
The charity did not mainly suffer from poor presentation.
It suffered from weak control over the records behind the presentation.
A report can show that £100,000 was raised.
That number is not enough.
The organisation also needs to know:
How much did the event cost?
Which costs were agreed in advance?
Which costs were unusual?
Who approved them?
How much remains for the beneficiary charity?
Has that payment been made?
Is there a signed agreement confirming what the partner should receive?
Can the full amount be reconciled to the bank record?
A report becomes trustworthy when those questions can be answered.
What a better fundraising workflow would have looked like
Before an event, the charity should have agreed a clear budget.
The budget should have shown the expected income, approved event costs, partner share and payment deadline.
The partner agreement should have been signed before fundraising began.
It should have explained whether the partner would receive a fixed amount, a percentage or the remaining income after approved costs.
During the event, costs should have been captured against the approved budget.
A large or unusual expense should have required a separate review.
After the event, income should have been reconciled against ticket sales, donations, auctions and sponsorships.
Costs should have been reconciled against invoices and bank payments.
The amount owed to the partner should then have been calculated and recorded as a liability until it was paid.
Trustees should have received a short event close-out report.
That report should have shown what was raised, what was spent, what was owed and what remained unresolved.
The process did not need to be technically complicated.
It needed clear ownership and proper records.
Human oversight was missing
Fashion for Relief had trustees.
But the inquiry found little evidence of collective trustee decision-making.
Trustees did not keep proper meeting minutes.
They could not explain some transactions.
They did not properly manage conflicts or payments to trustees.
This shows the difference between having trustees and having oversight.
A trustee’s name on a registration record is not the control.
Oversight happens when trustees:
- receive the information;
- question unusual figures;
- record decisions;
- declare conflicts;
- refuse payments that break the rules;
- follow up on money owed;
- and make sure reports are filed.
A system can help prepare the information.
It cannot make passive trustees active.
What trustees should have been seeing
The trustees should have received a regular view of the charity’s finances.
It did not need to be a large report.
A useful monthly view could have shown current cash, event income, event costs, money owed to partners, trustee expenses and missing documents.
It should also have highlighted late filings, payments outside the approved budget and costs with no clear business purpose.
A trustee should not need to search across emails, invoices and old bank files to understand the position.
The important exceptions should be visible.
Why partner agreements matter
The disputes with Save the Children and the Mayor’s Fund were partly reporting problems.
Fashion for Relief needed a clear record of what each event promised.
Without a proper agreement, the organisation could not easily show:
- which income belonged to the partnership;
- which costs could be deducted;
- how the final amount would be calculated;
- when payment was due;
- and who was responsible for confirming it.
A partner name on an event poster is not an agreement.
A public promise needs an internal record.
Otherwise, donors may believe they are supporting one organisation while the money remains elsewhere.
Could a better system have prevented this?
Not by itself.
The Charity Commission found failures by the trustees.
A reporting system cannot force trustees to take responsibility.
It can still make poor decisions harder to hide.
A controlled system could have shown that only a small share of expenditure was reaching partner charities.
It could have flagged large hotel charges and unauthorised trustee payments.
It could have kept the £147,000 owed to Save the Children visible.
It could have reminded the trustees that accounts were late.
It could also have shown that important documents were missing.
The system provides the warning.
People must act on it.
Naomi Campbell’s response and appeal
The Commission disqualified Naomi Campbell from acting as a charity trustee for five years.
Bianka Hellmich was disqualified for nine years. Veronica Chou was disqualified for four years.
Campbell later acknowledged that she had not been as involved in the day-to-day running of the charity as she should have been.
She denied engaging in financial misconduct or using the charity for personal gain.
In 2025, she was granted permission to appeal her disqualification.
She argued that she had been kept in the dark and that a false email account had been used to impersonate her in communications.
Hellmich denied those allegations.
The latest public reporting I found did not confirm a final outcome to the appeal.
That legal dispute does not change the wider reporting lesson.
A trustee can delegate work.
A trustee cannot delegate responsibility for understanding how the charity is being run.
Where my work fits
I would not position this as a problem that a reporting consultant could have solved alone.
Charity law, statutory accounting, audits, trustee duties and investigations require the relevant qualified professionals.
My work sits around the information workflow.
It can help a nonprofit or donor-funded team maintain a clearer record from funding through to expenditure, delivery and reporting.
Data Collection & Intake Systems
A Data Collection & Intake System can help a team collect the right information when a donation, expense or partner activity is recorded.
This might include the funding source, restriction, programme, event, supplier, business purpose, receipt, requester and approver.
It can also keep partner agreements, payment dates and reporting deadlines visible.
The aim is to avoid reconstructing the record months later.
Traceable Evidence Workflow Support
Traceable Evidence Workflow Support can connect a financial figure or programme claim to the source record behind it.
A reported event total could link to income records.
An expense could link to an invoice and approval.
A partner payment could link to the fundraising agreement.
A board decision could link to the papers reviewed and the meeting record.
The Source Traceability Risk Checker can help teams identify where those links are weak.
Data Use, Reporting & Communication Systems
A Data Use, Reporting & Communication System can turn these records into donor reports, trustee packs and budget-to-actual views.
It can show what was raised, what was spent, what remains owed and which costs still need explanation.
It can also separate confirmed figures from unresolved items.
A clean total should not hide an incomplete record.
A practical donor-reporting example
The UNICEF Zambia evidence-workflow case study dealt with research evidence rather than charity finances.
The underlying principle was similar.
The final reporting claims needed to remain connected to the original case studies, quotations and review records.
The report writer was not asked to trust a summary simply because it appeared in a spreadsheet.
The route back to the evidence remained visible.
A donor-funded financial process should work in the same way.
A cost should link back to the expense record.
A programme result should link back to delivery evidence.
A partner payment should link back to the agreement and bank transaction.
What nonprofits should learn from this case
Fashion for Relief did raise money.
It did make some grants.
The failure was that the organisation could not show that it was being governed and managed with the level of care expected from a charity.
The reporting did not stay close enough to the underlying decisions.
The records were incomplete.
The costs were not properly tested.
The agreements were not managed.
The trustees did not maintain clear oversight.
The result was an organisation that could run high-profile fundraising events but could not reliably explain the full route from donation to charitable use.
That is the lesson.
Donor trust is not protected by a good event, a famous founder or a polished report.
It is protected by records that show what happened, people who check them and trustees who take responsibility.
FAQ
What happened to Fashion for Relief?
The UK Charity Commission investigated the charity and found serious governance and financial-management failures.
Fashion for Relief was removed from the Register of Charities in March 2024.
Three former trustees were disqualified from trusteeship for different periods.
How much money did Fashion for Relief raise?
The charity reported almost £4.8 million in income between April 2016 and July 2022.
It spent almost £4.6 million over that period.
How much was spent on charitable grants?
The inquiry found that £389,173 was spent on charitable grants.
This represented 8.5% of the charity’s overall expenditure during the period examined.
There is no fixed legal percentage that every charity must spend on grants. The regulator’s concern was that trustees had not shown that they reviewed whether the expensive fundraising model remained in the charity’s interests.
Was Naomi Campbell found guilty of fraud?
No criminal fraud conviction is covered by the Charity Commission report.
The regulator made findings of misconduct and mismanagement in the administration of the charity and disqualified Campbell from trusteeship.
Campbell denied personal financial misconduct and appealed the disqualification.
Why were the hotel costs a problem?
Charities may pay reasonable travel and accommodation costs when they support genuine charity work.
The problem was that Fashion for Relief could not provide enough evidence explaining why the costs were reasonable, which costs related to the event and whether a donor had reimbursed the charity as claimed.
What money was owed to Save the Children?
The interim managers found that Save the Children was owed £147,000 from money raised for its benefit.
The payment was eventually made in January 2023.
Why is late reporting a warning sign?
Late reporting does not prove misconduct.
It may show that records are incomplete, responsibilities are unclear or the organisation cannot assemble its financial information properly.
Repeated late filing should prompt closer review.
Would better donor-reporting software have solved the problem?
No.
A better system could have made missing records, unusual costs and unpaid partner balances more visible.
Trustees still needed to review the information, question decisions and fulfil their legal responsibilities.
A useful next step
A donor report should not begin with a blank document.
It should come from a working record of what the organisation promised, received, spent, delivered and still owes.
Start with the route:
- Funds raised
- approved costs
- partner obligation
- payment
- delivery evidence
- trustee review
- donor report
Then check where that route becomes unclear.
Can the organisation explain every material cost?
Can it show who approved it?
Can it see what is still owed to a partner?
Can trustees access the information without relying on one person’s summary?
Can the final report be rebuilt from the source records?
When the answer is no, the reporting problem started long before the report was due.
If your nonprofit or donor-funded team needs a clearer route from programme and financial records to review-ready reporting, you can send me a short project brief.
Sources
Data Collection & Intake Systems
Collect useful, traceable data from the start through forms, fieldwork tools, public submission portals, partner reporting systems, calculators, and intake workflows.