We R Blighty C.I.C. now has its own subreddit

Edit: 26 June 2025 - Veterans fundraising firm We R Blighty guilty of unlawful cash collections (26 June 2025) The iPaper, following a 'hearing at City of London Magistrates’ Court earlier this month.'

I've not actually encountered We R Blighty C.I.C. (14349080), a Community Interest Company (CIC), which is unusual as they seem to be everywhere in London and in other cities raising funds to support homeless veterans. Their record on Companies House says that their next accounts are due on 30 June 2025.

They came to my attention solely because of news articles, and later information on Reddit, expressing concerns about the organisation. Having never met them I've no particular beef with them but am currently making a note of the various CICs that operate at London's stations.

There has been a bit of a proliferation of these CICs and I've encountered Uplifterz, Atoma Union / Youtth Works Union and Safehaven Initiative (new kid on the block, one of the two Savehaven CICs having been incorporated only on 2 June 2025). I've also encountered Inside Success at Stratford and Mile End.

We R Blighty personnel

• Benjamin William Mills - active (2 appointments, We R Blighty C.I.C. and Veterans in Need Ltd, 14955871)
• Danielle Jane Vidler - active (3 appointments)
• Benjamin Mills - resigned (1 appointment) and 
• Sally Ann Mills - resigned (1 appointment).

 

Further reading

We R Blighty subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/werblighty/

Do those ‘We R Blighty’ fundraisers outside stations really deserve your cash? (22 May 2025) The Londoner

Revealed: Armed forces fundraiser We R Blighty that collects thousands to 'get veterans off the street' is subject of TWO investigations by police and watchdog over its conduct (9 November 2024) Daily Mail 

Cash collections for homeless veterans probed by police (8 November 2024) The iPaper

We R Blighty - Forces Charity Scam (27 May 2023) Walter Mitty Hunters' Club HQ

Trying to get my head around "Inside Success" (station magazine sellers) and their various companies

Inside Success is a Community Interest Company (CIC) which has attracted a lot of attention for both the way some staff have behaved towards the public and the way in which staff have been treated by the company. They have been investigated twice by the Fundraising Regulator in March 2023 (1) and January 2024 (2) for pressurised fundraising and for not having the relevant licence to accept donations. ITV did a piece on them (3) which indicated that some of their staff had not been paid. Barking Council (2019) and Manchester City Council (2023) fined them for collecting money without a permit (4) and the Daily Mail drew attention to the large sums of money being collected (5).

As far as I'm aware CICs can ask for donations publicly if they have been given a permit to do so by Metropolitan Police (in London) or the local council. That doesn't appear to be the case here. (Companies don't actually have to be registered with the Fundraising Regulator to fundraise however; registration is voluntary).

I think that without such collecting permits in place they are only allowed to sell magazines.  

There are a lot of different companies operating in a similar way in London and elsewhere and I've itemised the ones I know about here (6).

How many Inside Success companies are there?
I think it's four; two active, two dissolved.

Active
Inside Success Union C.I.C. (10174759) is the one investigated by the Fundraising Regulator. It was incorporated on 11 May 2016 (previously known as Inside Success Union Ltd) and its accounts are currently delayed (should have been published in February 2025). The company is run by Darren Olawale and David Sonowo. 

There's also Inside Success Ltd (15932606) which is not a CIC but a private limited company. It was incorporated on 3 September 2024, its accounts aren't due until next year and it's run by Darren Olawale.

Dissolved
Inside Success LLP (OC357911), a limited liability partnership, was incorporated on 15 September 2010 and dissolved on 26 February 2013. It was also run by Darren Olawale and David Sonowo.

Inside Success UK CIC (08237681) was incorporated on 2 October 2012, dissolved on 20 December 2016 - five months after it was supposed to have submitted its accounts. It was run by Darren Olawale, David Sonowo and Cecil Hugh Quartey.

David Sonowo also had three other companies, with 'U Got Jokes' in the name (all dissolved), two of which he shared with Darren Olawale. Mr Sonowo spoke, on 29 July 2020, on Day Two of the BBC's CDX [Creative Diversity] festival, in the 'U Got Jokes' session with a few others.

How many correspondence addresses?
All of these companies have different company addresses (perfectly reasonable!) which also means that the officers and directors etc also have different addresses and consequently different appointments records. This does make it a bit harder to keep track of things and as far as I can tell there are four records for Darren and three for David (there may be others).

Darren Olawale has one appointment here (for the dissolved Inside Success UK CIC [08237681]), seven appointments here (for Inside Success Ltd (15932606) active, Inside Success Union C.I.C. (10174759) active and, Inside Success LLP (OC357911) dissolved), and several unrelated companies - see more in reference (7). 

There's also a Darren Ola who has one appointment for an unrelated company. I think it's the same person because the other officers for the company are David Sonowo (and Anthony Sinclair Greenidge). I also found a record for a Darren Olawalw (typo) with one appointment for another unrelated company. The company's correspondence address was changed from an WC2H address to an SW8 one in 2021; both of those addresses are used by other companies Mr Olawale runs too.

David Sonowo has three appointments here (for the two dissolved Inside Success companies and an unrelated company), five appointments listed here (for Inside Success Union C.I.C. and four unrelated companies) and one appointment here (unrelated to Inside Success companies). There's reference here to another U Got Jokes company starting in 2005 but I cant find it on Companies House.

When did Inside Success begin?
The first Inside Success company (Inside Success LLP) was incorporated on 15 September 2010 but this tweet from November 2009 made me wonder if there might have been an earlier company (if so I can't find it on Companies House).

http://pic.gd/20adf9 Delighted to meet Darren Olawale & David of Inside Success (http://bit.ly/11LfMw) for interview, out January 2010

— King of Shaves (@KingofShaves) November 17, 2009

The links don't work now but point to an earlier version of the Inside Success website which exists on the Wayback Machine - the pic•gd link goes nowhere but the bitly one points to (dead) https://ww1.insidesuccess.co.uk/lander whereas their current website has the insidesuccessuk format.

References

(1) Investigation summary: Inside Success Union CIC (March 2023) Fundraising Regulator
Registered company no. 10174759.

Code themes examined: Pressurised fundraising, dealing with vulnerable donors, fundraising licenses, causing an obstruction.
Code breach? Yes

(2) Investigation summary: Inside Success Union CIC (January 2024) Fundraising Regulator
Registered company no. 10174759.

Code themes examined: Pressurised fundraising, misleading fundraising, fundraising licenses, causing an obstruction, wearing appropriate identification when engaged in street fundraising, complaint handling and learning from complaints.
Code breach? Yes

(3) Anti-knife crime group Inside Success Union accused of harassing public to raise cash (1 August 2023) ITV

(4a) Bosses of magazine Inside Success Union are fined for selling in Barking without a licence (4 February 2019) Barking and Dagenham Post

(4b) Company who illegally 'pressured people into donating' to them on streets of Manchester fined (3 November 2023) Manchester Evening News 

(5) Exposed: Where the £3million we hand over to anti-knife 'charities'' pushy High Street collectors REALLY ends up (25 May 2024) Daily Mail

I hope the writer of this Reddit post, about the company fundraising in Bristol, won't mind me excerpting a bit of their comment as I think it's important - "It's worth noting that a section of the racist arsehole press in the UK (the Daily Mail and GB News) is down on this organisation because it is predominantly run by people of colour. Racists and racism can of course fuck off, this is Bristol after all, but ... I'd encourage everyone to respectfully engage with each of them [IS staff collecting at stations] and encourage them to do something better with their lives..."

(6) Community Interest Companies (CICs) selling magazines, collecting donations ('chugging') at many of London's stations (9 June 2025) Brodiesnotes: Stuff that occurs to me (this blog)

(7) Companies listed are: Inside Success Ltd (15932606) active, My Sounds Global Ltd (15096639) active, U Got Jokes Comedy Ltd (14290194) dissolved, Inside Success Union C.I.C. (10174759) active, Inside Success LLP (OC357911) dissolved, U Got Jokes Limited (07163628) dissolved, Kick Up Academy Limited (10052282) dissolved.

Edit 17 July 2025: Why can't anyone stop the fundraisers outside London stations? from LondonCentric https://www.londoncentric.media/p/inside-success-fundraisers-chuggers-london-railway-stations

Community Interest Companies (CICs) selling magazines, collecting donations ('chugging') at many of London's stations

The term 'chugger' means 'charity mugger' and refers to people who are either paid by a charity directly to do face to face fundraising or, more commonly, are paid by a third company to which this has been outsourced. There are plenty of complaints to be had about the methods used by chuggers, some of whom even call at people's homes, but they are at least fundraising for a genuine purpose even if they annoy lots of people while doing so.

Community Interest Companies (CICs) are different but have followed a similar pattern. They are not regulated by the Charity Commission and have much less oversight on them. Consequently there are one or two that are or have been under investigation for raising money without a permit or for harrassing members of the public to give them money. They also fall between several regulatory gaps which makes it harder for authorities to do much about them.

Here are some of the CICs I've encountered or heard about.

• Inside Success Ltd Private limited Company 15932606

• Inside Success Union C.I.C. Community Interest Company 10174759 Accounts and Confirmation statement overdue - the Fundraising Regulator investigated people working for this one (in January 2024, and March 2023, they've also featured on ITV news and in the Daily Mail about how they spend their 3 million turnover; Manchester fined them for fundraising without a licence)

• Uplifterz CIC Community Interest Company 15835071- there's also Uplifters Agency Ltd (16102520) run by the same person.
  

• Uplifterz Union C.I.C. Community Interest Company 15944885 (this is run by a different person from Uplifterz C.I.C., but from the same business address or virtual office)
  

• Atoma Union C.I.C. Community Interest Company 15686104
  Atoma Union's website says "We are currently undergoing a name change from Atoma Union to Youth Works Union. This is to clear any misunderstanding if you see a representative of ours using a different logo . We are just currently in a transition period." though if it's the same Atoma Union as the one above they have different officers (but who share the same correspondence address).

• Atoma C.I.C. Community Interest Company 12773310 Accounts and Confirmation statement overdue

• Empoweryou Enterprise CIC Community Interest Company 15336620 Confirmation statement overdue
  

• Mentor Point Youth CIC Community Interest Company 14795768
  

• Youthworksunion C.I.C. Community Interest Company 15790735
  

• We R Blighty C.I.C. Community Interest Company 14349080 (Kent Police were looking into them for financial irregularities). One of the directors of this also runs Veterans in Need Ltd. Blighty's company records due on 30 June 2025. Edit: 16 July 2025: On 26 June this news story was published Veterans fundraising firm We R Blighty guilty of unlawful cash collections iNews.
  

• Safehaven Initiative CIC (16061849) / Safehaven Initiative Union CIC (16490068) I met these today at Farringdon station. I had a pleasant chat with the guy who was not trying to sell me a magazine (only wanted donations) but there was was no pressure. SI CIC was founded in Nov 2024 and SIU CIC onl last week, on 2nd June (!) so I'm not sure yet if this is a new thing that's genuine or just more of the same.

• Attentive Management Ltd (14610982) - 1 negative and 2 glowing reviews on Indeed. Overheard one at Woolwich using the phrase 'for my confidence' in his opening gambit which is something I've heard the people at Farringdon say, as in 'can I ask you something for my confidence?', practising public speaking or something like that. [Edit: added on 16 July 2025]
  

Plus at least one which has been dissolved.

• Inside Success UK CIC Community Interest Company 08237681

Edit 17 July 2025: Why can't anyone stop the fundraisers outside London stations? from LondonCentric https://www.londoncentric.media/p/inside-success-fundraisers-chuggers-london-railway-stations

How to avoid chuggers (aka "charity muggers" or face to face fundraisers)

Updated 30 October 2024 to take account of Community Interest Companies (CICs) like Inside Success or Uplifterz - those are not charities and will sell you magazines or ask for donations. Registered charities will usually try and get you to sign up for Direct Debits. CICs are not subject to the Charity Commission.

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This post is not intended to be snarky to everyone who works to raise money for charity by face to face engagement and fundraising. I'm sure many of them are nice people doing a worthwhile job that is actually successful at raising money. Good luck to them. Many of the people doing this job are... less pleasant to encounter.

I'm still not a fan of even the nicest ones though (I find being interrupted while out shopping very annoying) and while I can fairly easily brush off anyone who wants to chat to me in the street I'm aware that others find it harder.

They used to be a lot more persistent (late 90s / early 2000s) and would follow you down the street but they seem to have stopped doing that at least. I've been inspired by reading Dr Vicky Forster's thread about a recent annoying encounter she had, some of the replies too - eech.

There's rarely* a good reason to be actively rude to face to face fundraisers, they are just doing a job and you can say no - but in the unlikely event that they up the ante a bit here are some things you might like to have tucked away in your bag of ready-made responses. 

*OK if they become a bit too persistent then I might get a bit snippy. I was also pretty blunt to (and reported him) the one who told me to cheer up. (I'm not planning on being particularly polite to the newer CICs who are known to try and intimidate commuters).

If a firm "no, thank you" or "I'm not interested, thanks" doesn't suffice, feel free to be creative. Here are some suggestions which can be adapted to suit, depending on how irritated you're feeling.

• "I never hand over my bank details to strangers" (what happens if their clipboard or tablet is mislaid or stolen, why can't they give me their charity's bank details)? 

• "I never hand over money to strangers" / "I never make unplanned purchases"

• "I don't do direct debits" (this is really true for me, I don't)

• "I'd need to take some information so that I can do my 'due diligence'" - that means finding out how much is the CEO paid, if it is a charity what proportion of income is spent on research etc, checking their page on the charity commission website or Companies House, view their filings and reports (are they up to date?), see what ITV or Mail on Sunday have said about them - see below. If a CIC then I'm going to be a LOT more wary about them.

• "I'm recovering from an illness and really need / want to keep moving"

• "I have not been authorised to discuss [charitable giving] with you" or "I am not at liberty to discuss the matter" - worth a shot ;)

• "I'd need to check with my [partner]" (imaginary or otherwise) - not everyone is in a position to donate money and may want to check with someone first

• "I'd need to discuss with my [accountant / financial advisor] whether this is an effective / appropriate way for me to donate"

In some cases I may be happy for the chugger to give me the charity's bank details and if I want to set up a donation I could do that quite easily myself as a one-off or a standing order. I would be very unlikely to get involved with donating to the CICs as I'm not sure how they're regulated.

Further reading
ITV did a story on Inside Success / Inside Success Union in 2023 (here's a 3min summary video).

There's also this Mail on Sunday story about Inside Success CIC "Exposed: Where the £3million we hand over to anti-knife 'charities'' pushy High Street collectors REALLY ends up" from 25 May 2024.

I think Uplifterz CIC (incorporated July 2024) and Uplifterz Union C.I.C. (incorporated September 2024) are too new to have been written about, other than in this Mumsnet thread.