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

Agreed particularly ahead of Christmas appeals which many charities rely on. And the charity sector needs to find an additional £1.6bn for national insurance as well as the minimum wage increase so it’s been a very tough few years with many brilliant charities laying off staff and some smaller ones closing. All I’d say is if you want to know how a particular charity you want to support spends money then search their annual report. Decide for yourself. Don’t listen to the tired old narratives about fat cat CEOs and admin costs. Well run charities cost money to run. They have to hold back money for lean years. It’s complicated.

Trustees don’t get paid but are allowed claim reasonable expenses, what constitutes a reasonable expense is set out in the policy document. But many trustees don’t claim small expenses. But they have to be allowed claim because otherwise only well off people would/could be a Trustee.

@BustingBaoBun Ahh I didn't realise that. No that's awful!

Read this elsewhere and - ouch:

The book deals were negotiated and signed in April 2020, before the charity was even set up. It appears Hannah and Colin immediately set up a private company to cash-in.

Penguin random house ultimately gave them £1.47m as an advance. First we've heard of this amount that I can recall, I don't think it's been made public and PRH only provided that figure when compelled. PRH offered to donate this directly to the NHS Together fundraising effort (still ongoing at that time) "but that offer was rejected". PRH didn't know who they were dealing with and blithely assumed Hannah and Colin were in it for the charity work.

Instead, the pair asked for the money to be paid to themselves directly so they could set up their own charity. Details become hazy here because they (intentionally?) documented fuck all, but basically everyone was under the impression H&C would get a personal cheque for £1.47m then use (some? Most? All of?) the proceeds to start the charity that would become the captain Tom foundation.

If you've read the charity's financial books as I have, you'll know no such payment ever came. In fact the charity commission wrote to them, twice, last year before they went on piers morgan's thing, presented the evidence they'd gathered, and offered them a chance to make a donation to clear it all up. They refused both times and kept the money. They forgot to mention this amount to piers who will no doubt be upset.

With the £800k in sales (also directed to club nook) I make that £2.3m they've profited off the books without the charity seeing a penny.

It always seemed a very contrived thing, but the start of Covid was a funny old time. People latched onto an old person walking around a garden, and it became huge.

A shame it’s ended up like this. But, not that surprising. 🤷‍♀️

I was gobsmacked at the Piers Morgan interview. I can't stand the man, but he did try to hold them to account. They were absolutely shameless, refused to accept any responsibility for anything, turned on the tears, wheeled out the children to gain sympathy... it was absolutely shocking.

One of their kids is still at school, right? I'm sure today is going to be a fun day for her.

...though you know, and I know, that that is not going to happen... 😏

I do feel sorry for the kids, what a horrible association for them and the sister

I could see it for the grift it was from the outset but I was amazed that the holiday (I think funded by Virgin/Branson) did not peak more people. His family said going to Barbados or wherever was his ultimate dream and then he and the IMs gurned away in the holiday photos.
And then the holiday effectively killed him...

In a statement released on the news just a moment ago, Hannah Ingram Moore says there's never been any misappropriation of funds. Of course we believe every word she says don't we.....

I agree with others about the family. It must be mortifying for the IM children. I also feel for Tom's (I'm not prepared to call him Captain as that's incorrect) other daughter. I'm sure there is no love lost there.

I don't know, I am sure they are grabby NOW but I do wonder if it started like that and after donating so much it kept coming and she thought "I might be onto something here".
Maybe she is a mastermind who planned the whole thing or maybe she was corrupted as it grew?
Either way its good its come out now

I would really like to hear the other sister's take on all of this. After all she is Tom's daughter too. And she has never said a word. Don't blame her, she probably doesn't get on with her sister with all of this.
I would be so hurt that my father's memory had been muddied in this way.

I said this exact same thing to people at the time.Captain is never used.(Father was a Sqn Ldr).Grifters is putting it nicely.

There are a lot of judgemental people on here.

They didn't do anything illegal by keeping the book advance. If you had the opportunity to keep £1.5 million for a book your father had written, or to donate it to charity, would you honestly give it away? Honestly, I'm not sure I would. That sum of money is life changing.

Thank you especially to @Moonlightstars @AlexandraLeaving @DrZaraCarmichael and a couple of others for clarifying the role of Trustees and the fact that they do NOT receive salaries. I appreciate you making the point without rudeness! Also to the person who explained why accepting the Virgin money as personal funds was dishonest.

I at no point said that I feel these people are moral. I said their actions are not moral. But it's a funny world, and just as the road to hell can be paved with good intentions, so the highway to heaven can be paved with bad. The end result of their self-motivated interest was an initial lot of good. An astonishing amount of money raised incredibly quickly and given to an NHS which was not even looking for such a boon. Plus cynical or not, the entire stunt did help many struggling through Covid with it's positivity.

So without them there would have been no 38 million going to any NHS trusts with all the personal lives touched and no feel good television vibes for those who needed a bit of a mental lift would there? Sir Tom Moore wasn't exactly a social media whizz. His daughter managed it all. I expect she felt a bit hard done by not receiving anything for in fact, doing it all. She received zero acknowledgement.

So they have profited a bit..ok...but when I weigh it all up, I see that they did more good than bad and I don't feel massively upset or begrudge them a bit of cash. That is not the same as approving of their actions.

I do still feel they have received more than the ordinary amount of scrutiny because of their high profile and their proximity to Sir Tom. I do not believe all charities spend monies equitably. I do think the CC gave thrown their weight around a bit more here publicly, than they might otherwise have.

With regards to the charity building being demolished, I would like to hear what their justifications were for the Spa and Cinema. It's weird that a couple would require a large separately built home cinema if they're not intending it be available for others besides themselves... perhaps they were going to use it for the public in some way as well as themselves.

I remember Roald Dahl in "Boy," snarking about one of his former teachers (Captain Hardcastle if I remember rightly) for the same reason - that "captain" is not actually a very elevated title and a man using it in civilian life is therefore a rather odd choice.

I would keep it but I would make sure everyone who was buying the book knew what would happen to the money because lets face it it was hardly a great work and most people only bought it becasue they thought it was for charity

Maybe not illegal but extremely immoral and in very bad taste, that book was bought by people who were lead to believe it was fir charity.Big difference from your Dad just writing a book.

I'm sorry but that's ridiculous. They lived in a £2M house, they were not strapped for cash.
And the father specificially put in the forward of the books that he was pleased to write it so more funds could go to the charity.

But they kept it. If I had been so inclined (I wasn't because I had my suspicions from the start) and bought the book, I would not in a million years imagine I was lining the daughter's pockets. I would think I was giving to the Tom charity.

It's all about moral fibre. I could not bring myself to spend day after day on telly with my father plodding round the garden to raise money for the NHS, then cream off millions myself.

They were already a very wealthy family so probably not life changing for them, might have been if they'd been planning on paying for their own spa building instead of getting the charity to do it.

It's ok to be judgemental when people deserve judgement!

I just don’t understand why she continues to go down this path of assuming victimhood and poor treatment when the game is well and truly up. The Charities Commission have made their findings public. There’s nowhere for her to go with this now but she continues to deny deny deny. It’s almost painful to watch now. Have some dignity woman!

I’ve always been mystified at how people think he was an oblivious, gentle soul just walking around 🤣

This is from the foreword of the book
His prologue read: “Astonishingly at my age, with the offer to write this memoir I have also been given the chance to raise even more money for the charitable foundation now established in my name.”

If I were reading this in a bookshop I would think that by buying I was supporting the foundation. Which is why the charity commission has asked them to donate. There’s nothing wrong with writing a book or profiting from telling a story but that foreword is misleading,

And apparently everyone involved with producing the book was told there’d be a significant donation. They likely gave time at a reduced rate/free on this understanding.

So at the least they should have made some donation.

A more transparent way, which most charities would do is to have a commercial participatory agreement which would specify how much - e.g 15% of net sales or profits or £1 per each book or at least £10k which is within fundraising guidance and what most professional fundraisers would recommend as that way it’s not misleading the public which is at the heart of fundraising ethically.

When I was a young woman, practically every late 50s/early-mid 60s man (and a fair few of the women) had served in WW2. In our small office alone, we had men who had gone ashore at D-Day and Anzio respectively, 2 sailors who'd had their ships torpedoed from under them, a Far East POW and someone who'd been involved in literal house to house, hand to hand fighting while liberating a Dutch town. There were others.

I respect Tom Moore's service but it was no more remarkable than any of the above. The novelty value was in him outliving most of his generation, with the addition of shrewd marketing that appealed to the zeitgeist at a very weird time. It seemed clear to me from the start that H I-M was loving every moment of her new found fame and it was not surprising that this has descended into a sorry tale of grifting.

The lesson is about not turning people into National Pets, at least not without a great deal more discernment.