From their website...
Failure to acquire the mountain:
fundraising has been conducted on very clear terms: in the event that the mountain cannot be acquired, all funds in excess of £10 donations will be returned to the donor. A database has been compiled with all relevant details to facilitate this taking place. Second, in the case of donations of less than £10, the trustees have publicised the fact that these donations are too small to return. It has been made clear that those sums will be donated to a range of other charities. The selection will be within the discretion of the trustee directors but they have indicated that they are more than prepared to consider suggestions from the public who have made donations
I don't think this is right. Unfortunately, Friends of Blencathra publish on their website and on Facebook and the two are often not in sync. I attach below a text of their Facebook entry.
"December 2016 Update
It has been determined that we will have to include all donations that can be identified in the refund process including those for £10 or less.
We are now in the process of estimating the additional costs that this will entail and whether we have the resources to manage the potentially substantial increase in the workload this could invoke. We also need to agree how administration costs will be allocated. The Trustees will agree the best course of action and submit a proposal to the Charity Commission next week for approval. Once this is agreed we will initiate the three month claim period for the return of donations.
.
We have been considering the potential destinations for unclaimed, disclaimed or for any residual funds following the advice from both our solicitors and the commission, however we will not be able to specify which Charities this could include until we have submitted a cy pres scheme made under s67 (in particular sub-section (3)) for agreement with the commission. The timescale for submission of a cy pres scheme is following the three months from the start of the claim period in order to permit decisions to be made after it is clear what sort of amounts remain unclaimed, and available for allocation by the scheme.
The application will need to reflect the use of funds specifically for “recreational and landscape conservation purposes which are both charitable and specifically within the Lake District”. This would rule out the Air Ambulance services and the National Trust for instance, as the remit could not be confined to the Lake District.
We therefore feel that it would be inappropriate to discuss the allocation of residual funds until after the initial claim period has expired. We will however be discussing potential donations with relevant charities in order to establish specific fundable projects that would have the potential to match the criteria agreed.
.
Further details will be posted after we have a response from the commission.
Dave Wheeler
On behalf of Friends of Blencathra Ltd"