The Daisy Chain Trust, staffed solely by volunteers, aims to tackle the negative public perception that exists about charities following the debacle over the running of a Scottish breast cancer charity earlier this year, which saw less than 10 per cent of its funds go to good causes, and the suspension of the directors of a Scottish-based children's cancer charity.

Operating with no staff, no office premises and no overheads, Daisy Chain is run by a small board of Trustees and a number of operational teams, all of whom are volunteers who donate not only their time but also cover most of their own expenses. Meetings are held in volunteers' offices or homes and much of the communication between event organisers is done electronically.
 
Marketing and design support is given free of charge while legal and auditing fees and printing and production costs for promotional materials are negotiated at cost.

The charity was conceived by Lady Kirkwood who has a long history of fund-raising for good causes in Scotland. She has spent nearly 30 years working for various Scottish children's charities before deciding to launch the Daisy Chain Trust: "While the vast majority of charities in this country do excellent work, I think that some have become a law unto themselves and are over-burdened with bureaucracy, politics and administration which ultimately waters down the amount of funds that they can put toward good causes. The time was right to get set up a new style of charity that puts all its efforts into fund-raising and puts those funds directly into good causes with no middlemen," she commented. "It is also vital that everyone who is involved in charity work looks at new ways of maintaining public confidence in fund-raising given some of the very serious allegations about misuse of funds."We call ourselves a virtual charity as we have almost zero overheads and because of this, virtually every penny will go to help children in the Edinburgh,  Lothians and Borders area." 
  

For further information please contact daisychaintrust@aol.com or Bill Shaw, Catchline Communications Group on (01592) 643200 or (07974) 720669.