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Sunday 24 March 2013

"Champions Club Community" / championsclubcommunity.com spam

Why these people bother sending me unsolicited email is a mystery... but in fact the so-called "Champions Club Community" is a bit of a mystery too..

From:     Simon Phillips - Champions Club [news@championsclubcommunity.com]
Reply-To:     contactus2@championsclubcommunity.com
Date:     24 March 2013 15:56
Subject:     March 2013 Newsletter

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Hello and Welcome to this first newsletter from the revamped, overhauled and thoroughly revised Champions Club Community.

Our Vision hasn’t changed, we’re still here to help create One Global Family but, based on lots of feedback from our Community Ambassadors, our Purpose has been refined to “Inspiring and Enabling all people to make a difference in their lives and the lives of others.”  Or, to put it even more simply, we’re all here to “Go MAD”, where MAD stands for Make A Difference.

This month, our focus is on Homelessness with a number of articles and features highlighting this desperately sad and avoidable problem.

    Dianna Moylan asks – Homelesseness: Can we deal with it?
    Co-founder of CCC, Mark Insull reveals – I was Homeless, I know how it feels
    A Report on – Stop Homelessness, Sleep Easy Event

All of these are presented to inspire you to join in our campaign to end homelessness in the UK and Sign our e-Petition here.

Also featured in the magazine this month:

    This month’s Celebrated Do-Gooder – James Dyson
    Calling all Future Leaders – 5 x £10k bursaries available to all applicants.  If you think you have what it takes to lead our Community one day (or you know someone that does), then Read this Article and get in touch.
    Why I joined Champions Club Community – a series of four tales from our Ambassadors, three of whom have just recently joined us!  Welcome Chris, Kevin and Debs.

What’s Happening?  Some insights into what is going on inside CCC to keep you up to date.  Any questions / thoughts or ideas on how you might be able to help, please contact simon.phillips@championsclubcommunity.com

    Update from the MD including the imminent launch of our youth development programme, called The Leader In Me with Downside Fisher Youth Club.
    We partner with Virgin Giving to setup our £1 a month campaign.
    Work continues on the two major technical projects and Anne Cooper gives us a quick update – The GNB and the £1 a month campaign.

Well, that’s all we’ve got time for this time, there is a whole lot more inside the magazine.  Enjoy the read and do join in if you have a story to tell that will inspire others to Make A Difference!

Kind regards,

Simon

Simon Phillips – MD, Champions Club Community

Champions Club Community
Registered Office: 70 Royal Hill, London SE10 8RF
First of all let's be clear - I have never solicited any communications from these people, but they have been sending me spam since at least 2010.

So the Champions Club Community is a charity? Actually, it is.. registered as charity 1145253. What does this charity actually do? Because it is a registered charity, we can check out its activities on the Charities Commission website here. So, how much did it contribute to charity in 2012?

From an awesome income of £150, this so-called charity expended.. well, let's not beat about the bush here. Fuck all. Not a penny. Nothing. OK, to be fair I haven't received a spam from them since 2011, so perhaps they have been keeping a low profile.

Let's have a a quick look at the web site traffic. According to Alexa (not the most reliable thing but bear with me), the website championsclubcommunity.com is the 1,710,736th most popular site in the world, reaching out to 0.000053% of the world's internet population. By comparison, even a humble low-traffic site like dynamoo.com is ranked 596,722nd with the giddy heights of 0.00031% of the world visiting it. That's about six times the traffic for a blog that is basically about spam.

There's also an associated limited company called Champions Club Community (Trading) Ltd (company number 06243285, formerly called T.S.G.M. Ltd), set up by the charity's founders, Mark Insull and Guy Insull. According to the financial records I have seen, this company has struggled to stay afloat.

So, if like me you are staring at this spam wondering if it's a scam or not.. well, it seems to be genuine. But as a charity the Champions Club Community looks like an abject failure. If you are feeling charitable, then why not try the DEC instead.. at least that actually makes donations to those in need.

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