We’re Full Fact...

The UK’s independent, non-partisan, factchecking charity.

We need to raise a minimum of £30,000 to supply you with the facts and factchecking you need to make up your mind for the EU Referendum.

How are you different?

We're different because we don’t care how you vote.

Our work is entirely non-partisan. As a charity the law prevents us from taking sides. And we wouldn't even if we could. Our agenda is helping everyone have equal access to the facts.

Our articles don’t dumb down the issues or reduce everything to meaningless soundbites. We look at every side of the argument and present the facts so that you can make up your own mind.

We won't ask you to take our word for it either: all our factchecks have links to sources so you can judge the issue for yourself.

How we’ve changed things for the better

You can read three examples of the impact we’ve had here. Here’s an extract...

“At Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, Jeremy Corbyn and David Cameron went head to head on teacher shortages and school capacity. Mr Cameron claimed that 453 fewer schools were operating at or over capacity than in 2010. Full Fact got in touch with the Education Department to query the figure, which didn’t match the official data. Two days later, the Prime Minister issued an official correction in Hansard. Read our factcheck of the exchange.”

How will you spend the money?

Day to day we are only a team of 10. We regularly punch above our weight but as you can imagine, we're going to need some help for the referendum. The money you donate will go towards hiring factcheckers, experts on the EU, people who can communicate complex concepts with simplicity and flair and covering volunteers expenses. Everything needed to help Full Fact grow!

We want to supply you with world-class facts and factchecking, but to do that we need world-class people.

The experts we work with

For the EU Referendum, we're working with legal experts including professors from Cambridge, Durham, Oxford, Edinburgh, Queen Mary, Essex and York university. We're also working with top QCs from Monckton Chambers, immigration experts from Oxford University's Migration Observatory, health experts at the Nuffield Trust and other academics supported by the Economic and Social Research Council.

Everything we publish gets the Full Fact treatment. Everything is researched diligently, checked and double-checked. It's edited to be clear, concise and impartial.

Our Factchecking principles

When we check a claim, we...

are independent, impartial and neutral.

are transparent. We will always link to primary sources, so nobody has to take our word for what we say.

check the claim, not the person making it.

put equal importance on rebuttals as confirmations.

distinguish factual claims (which we check) from matters of opinion (which are none of our business).

present our findings clearly, to serve the widest possible audience, without dumbing it down.

Why do you factcheck?

76% of people think it’s extremely important that MPs tell the truth but only 26% of people trust them to do so. So even when they are telling the truth, many of us switch off.

Our votes matter more than that. We need to know what to trust and what not to trust — and who’s got time to check everything themselves?

We make it possible to make up your own mind, based on information you can trace. We’ve lost count of how many times we’ve been told “you’re the only ones asking” by a press office — but somebody has to be asking.

And then we go further, getting inaccurate claims corrected and confusing research clarified. When claims get repeated a lot they can do real damage, and that’s something we can stop.

How are you funded?

Full Fact is a charity, independent of the government and political parties. We rely on individual donations, and grants from charitable trusts. We don't accept funding from the government.

We are grateful for funding from all our donors, you can see a comprehensive list here.

How do you stay neutral?

We have rigorous safeguards in place at every level of our organisation to ensure our neutrality. These have been carefully constructed based on advice from our board and examples ranging from Amnesty International to the BBC. They include a cross-party board, fundraising safeguards, a conflict of interests policy, restrictions on staff political activity, feedback processes, operating guidelines, external reviews, and more. Most importantly, they include carefully recruiting staff who are sensitive to these issues.

Ultimately, it is for our audience to judge for themselves whether we succeed - we would encourage readers to judge our individual factchecks and our body of work as a whole. We provide links to all sources so that you can check what we’ve said for yourself.

By the way...

The logos at the bottom of this page are in no way affiliated with Full Fact, they belong to Crowdfunder, the host organisation that facilitates this crowdfunding campaign. We do not and will not take any funding from either the EU or the UK government. For more information on our funding and neutrality, read more here.

The rewards

Endorsements

“…..a beacon of accuracy and meticulousness in a world where half-truths and unsubstantiated assertions are all too common.” Chris Berthoud, BBC News digital impact

"the work carried out by Full Fact is extremely important and I am pleased to recognise that Full Fact can claim to be one of the organisations that does seek to ‘guard the guardians’.” Lord Justice Leveson in his report on press practices and ethics

"No longer can pressure groups, politicians or journalists get away with erroneous declarations" Royal Statistical Society's Statslife magazine

"that valuable organisation Full Fact" Peter Hitchens, The Mail on Sunday

"Full Fact is an organisation that specialises in checking the claims of politicians and the media. So the panel had better watch out. Maybe we should have Full Fact on all the time?" David Dimbleby, BBC Question Time

“Full Fact have systematically followed a number of policy debates and used existing machinery to try to hold politicians, civil servants and journalists to account…” The Jury of the Political Studies Association 2013. Transparency Award Winner.

"Without the confidence provided by Full Fact's analysis ITV News would not have been able to broadcast our investigation" Ed Campbell, Senior News Editor, ITV News

"I think I need you sitting beside me every time I interview a politician" Iain Dale, LBC radio

"the admirable Full Fact" Juliette Jowit, The Guardian

"The team at Full Fact proved an essential part of our online offering for one of the defining political events of the year. Their live blogging and instant scrutiny of the claims made by Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage provided an invaluable service for our audience and added real gravitas to our online offering." Tom Cheal, Political Editor, LBC Radio