Hannah Ingram Moore. AIBU Not To Be Surprised At Charity Commission Findings?

[Curtainqueen]

After the bulldozing of her luxury spa I really am unsurprised at the findings that her and her husband did after all benefit significantly from the charity and repeatedly had their hand in the till. Did she honestly believe this would never come out?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c86qdq67dd5o

To be honest I am beginning to wonder if she also had a finger in that pie too.

This is exactly it.

Every time there is s thread about charity shops or other charity efforts people are desperate to pile in with their ideas about over-inflated salaries, volunteers stealing stock in charity shops, pigs with snouts in the trough and how small charities are so much better. Because of actions of people like this woman and her husband who were wholly unsuited for running in a charity in the first place.

It's probably worth pointing out though that the Charity Commission found out what was going on, and stopped it. That is their JOB. The charity sector has so much more oversight than other sectors which is why we know all the ins and outs of what was raised and how it was spent. Also, this was in the grand scheme of things a small charity, large charities have bigger boards and more oversight than this one, which was run by a couple, and a third trustee.

The Moores saw their chance for a feel-good story at the start of the pandemic, the old guy's daughter was skilled in PR and once the BBC was on board with the updates it just went crazy. Will never forgive Michael Ball for the record though.

Are you for real?

Totally agree. I do hope people who let themselves get whipped up into a frenzy have reflected on how susceptible they were to manipulation.

There was so much madness around at that time. People criticising anyone who didn't stand on the doorstep and clap. People timing their neighbours walks or scrutinising how many visitors they had or what they put in their shopping trolley.

It was horrible to watch.

People on Mumsnet were shouted down if they dared to suggest any unease about Hannah Ingram Moore.

YY to the above.

There was such a weird febrile atmosphere at the time. If you tried to question anything, you were "mean" or not approaching things with the right spirit. This kind of thing does not help when it comes to ensuring accountability.

Why are the CC making it seem like a £85,000 salary was extraordinary?

I think the problem here is that people are having problems disentangling the initial fundraising efforts for NHS Charities and the Foundation. The initial £38 million never passed through their bank accounts, it was donated straight into the NHS bank accounts and managed by the NHS.

They then set up a Foundation to sell the book and other merch which was much smaller. Yes if you're running a huge charity like Save the Children or Cancer Research you can command a 6-figure salary. Not so much for this size of small charity.

it was given to NHS charities together who have a grant process organised around themes. The process for applying is online. It’s got an oversight by the trustees and actually some of the meeting documents can be found online.

then they report on how the money has been spent in their annual report, here’s one.

https://nhscharitiestogether.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/NHS_Charities_AR_2022_AW1.pdf

On page 10 onwards there’s a breakdown of the grant areas, region and then hospitals. So hospital trusts (themselves charities often) will have applied for specific things, maybe “joy to the wards” is what they applied for (as assume that’s what gift baskets come under) but you’ll see it’s actually a tiny proportion of the overall grants.

And NHS charities together isn’t for building of new hospitals, it’s to strengthen the existing network. So even if they wanted to build another hospital for £38m they can’t. Because it’s a membership so using all that would mean it’s not fair on other members.

you don’t understand charity spending but sure tell everyone it’s wasted. When actually it’s probably more open to public scrutiny than water companies and plenty of other examples.

What gets me is, her and her husband show no shame whatsoever. They say they have been treated unfairly and and unjustly, their names have been tarnished etc etc
Thank goodness they are banned from holding any charity position for 10 years because something tells me they would do it all again if they got the chance

£38m could have built a hospital ward but the cash went on dribs and drabs like fruit baskets for nurses and snack stands for other NHS staff.
That’s charity spending for you - a worse scandal than anything his daughter could have done.

This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what the initial fundraising was for, which is part of the problem.

Professional victims.

I agree. I seem to recall initially people thought the money was going to the NHS per se, and it wasn’t clarified until after money started pouring in that it was going to NHS charities. Most people probably didn’t understand the distinction between the two at the time such was the frenzy with a cuddly old man trundling up and down his driveway on a zimmer frame with his Worthers Original in his pocket.

However I think some of the blame has to be laid at everyone who completely lost their minds during the whole “Blitz spirit of COVID, keep calm and carry on” nonsense. It was a tremendous over reaction and many of us thought so at the time. I remember how mad people were going for Tom and I thought it’s just an old bloke who caught someone’s attention, but people were deifying him at ridiculous levels. I remember thinking “do people equate a WW2 veteran with themselves having to heroically stay indoors for a bit, is that why he’s so popular?”. Penguin sensed there was enough hysteria from the very start to warrant three books, because people who aren’t especially bright are whipped up into a frenzy over what is actually a fairly pedestrian story. People who enable these ridiculous fads about humans maybe wanna have a word with themselves. They overly worshipped an ordinary man and his family reaped the glory and then some

Absolutely agree. I would really hope that people remember this the next time there is some silly, mawkish fad for an individual person.

@Curtainqueen nearly every hospital has a Trust, which pays for things central government and indeed devolved government doesn’t. So it did benefit the NHS, that £38m was administered correctly.

Captain Tom’s foundation could have said we’re raising money to build a new hospital or to pay nurses, or we’ll give each Trust £50k or be quite specific but I think actually NHS charities together was set up to resolve precisely the issue of how best to decide where to give the donation across the NHS. It’s based on the Trusts themselves applying and saying what they need.

Unfortunately all this means that it’ll likely be confused in public minds and the funding will dwindle over time, which is a real shame for Trusts under more pressure and who’ve probably come to rely on that income.

TRUSTEES DO NOT GET PAID, THEY DO IT FOR FREE.

I could work through this post and question/put right much of what you have said in your support of them but I can't be bothered. However one thing that is important to say as you are unfairly misleading people which could damage other charities. Charity Trustees are almost never salaried. They don't get paid a single penny. Please do not publicly tarnish charities with your ill-informed twaddle.

38 million wouldn't build a hospital ward. I'm not sure we even need more hospital building in many cases. The shortage issues are to do with staffing and equipping the wards we have. The money raised for NHS charities doesn't go towards running hospitals.

But in any case I think people underestimate the huge cost to run the NHS. 38 million is a drop in the ocean. It costs approximately 4 times that to run the NHS for a single day.

I appreciate mumsnet cannot monitor every post but there is so much bullshit and misunderstanding about how charities are run in here. It is so damaging to charities as people read things like 'it was spent badly' or 'Trustees get paid a fortune' and are put off donating in the future. There needs to be much better moderation to wheedle out the idiots and stop the smear campaign some of the great British public seem to be pursuing against the truly amazing world that is the charity sector.

I never agreed with any of it. Raising money "for the NHS" sounded not very specific, and an old man with poor mobility having to walk round his garden to fund public services. We shouldn't need to rely on charity to fund them.

Once the tabloids got hold of it, the whole thing was a circus.

That’s hardly surprising when they have laundry managers on a greater annual salary than the Prime Minister really.

Yes there were people at the time who expressed concern on MN and were shouted down as granny killers or some such nonsense

I think the money donated by the public when he did the walk did actually all go to the charity. And it was millions. This seems to be about money from his memoirs being used by the family. Not great, but maybe he wanted them to get some benefit?

I also agree that there is lots of sneering about charity in general. I'm not sure what motivates those sorts of posters. It's either resentment that people are earning money (albeit in many cases minimum wage) for working in charity shops or providing services and they think it should be done for free, or just that people are ignorant about what charities do and what their mission statement is, and can't be arsed to find out.

I do think though that in the initial covid hysteria, this fundraising was marketed as "for the NHS" and even though press/tv mentioned the NHS CHarities Together, a lot of people had no idea what that was and just assumed it was to buy PPE or pay salaries.

Totally agree. I volunteer for a charity that does amazing work and has one clerk (paid a very modest wage).and everything else is run by volunteers. As trustees we get no payment, no perks, we do it because believe it is a great cause.

Rich retired Tory salesman "Captain Tom" wasn't as 'innocent' in all this as posters (who write about his 'reputation' now being tarnished by the actions of his daughter) believe.
He was a soldier during WW2, along with millions of other people. He was conscripted, and didn't do anything especially heroic, just managed not to get killed.
No other military veterans would refer to themselves as 'Captain X' 70+ years later. The etiquette is that you only use your military title if you had reached the rank of Major or above while you were in the forces.
If he had any ethics at all, he would have told her not to market his sponsored walk using the 'Captain' name, but just refer to his name and age.
Grifters, the lot of them.

He specifically said in the foreward to the book/books he was writing it to add to the charity. And the Trustees have asked the Ingrams twice to give a donation from the millions they made from that, and twice they have refused.

And let's not forget the gin, beer, and other tat they marketed, and they kept most of the money. The special edition Gin was £100 ! (and some fools bought it)

And let's not forget Hannah IM took him off to Barbados, fully paid for by BA, when none of us could travel like that. He tested positive for Covid on his return and then caught pneumonia and died.

Obviously the daughter didn't want to pass up the chance of free first class to Barbados for herself, husband and children.