This chapter tells the story of the summer 2015 collapse of Kids Company, the charity for disadvantaged young people, ostensibly situated in South London, but with smaller units in Bristol and Liverpool. Despite its relatively small geographic coverage, Kids Company received L46 million from central government between 2000 and 2015, at one time receiving over one-fifth of the Department for Education's grant budget (NAO, 2015: 13, 7). Much of the charity's reach was determined by the passion and talent of its founder and Chief Executive, Camila Batmanghelidjh. Batmanghelidjh was close to politicians from all parties, and hugely successful in encouraging politicians to keep Kids Company funded, a need made greater by her strategic and moral choice to allow children to self-refer themselves and to never turn a child she deemed in trouble away. The charity spent a great deal of public funds on some cases later deemed to be undeserving or at least not high priorities. Its collapse revealed Kids Company's over-reliance on its closeness to people at the top of government, symbolic power, and the charismatic authority of its founder rather than good governance and strategic planning. It challenged (some would say bullied) those who would talk it down, and used its access to Prime Ministers in order get special treatment. In the internet age, symbolic resonance can be disrupted in an instant. The decline of Kids Company was swift, showing how thin the veil of presentation can be. The collapse also reveals a story about the government's need for a narrative of social innovation, but the risks of losing control. By focusing in-depth on this case I want to demonstrate how symbolic power works in practice, through the prism of charismatic leadership, and through interview data reflect on how a sector comprising thousands of organisations felt about one charity causing so many problematic headlines for the field as a whole. It is a highly topical and charged case study, perhaps the most highprofile collapse of charity in recent times, and yet, barring a few short examinations (Foster, 2016; Macmillan, 2016; Molina, 2018), it has received scant attention academically.