Captain Tom Foundation spent more on costs than causes

[KerryWeaver]

This is a disappointing read.

"More than £240,000 of the registered charity’s expenditure went on the costs, while four grants totalling £160,000 were paid out to good causes. Of the foundation’s costs, £125,000, almost one-tenth of its income, went on fundraising consultancy fees, including to a firm run by Captain Tom’s daughter."

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/captain-tom-foundation-spent-more-on-costs-than-causes-z3b9vw0fh

@prh47bridge

I see this has turned into an anti-charity thread with falsehoods about charities being peddled (70-80% profit margins, for example).

I don't doubt that some charities are corrupt and some have corrupt people involved. However, the law is clear.

A charity may not distribute its profits. Any excess of income over expenditure must be retained by the charity and used for its charitable purposes.

The trustees (who are the people in charge) may not be paid for acting as trustees.

Where a trustee is paid as an employee or for providing goods or services to the charity, they may not vote on any decisions relating to this payment and the trustees must be able to show that the payment is in the charity's best interests and reasonable for what the charity is getting.

If any trustees are employed or providing goods or services, they must be a minority of the trustees, so if a charity has, say, six trustees, no more than 2 of them can be employed or paid for providing goods or services.

The rules about payment include payments by companies owned by the charity. A payment to a company or person associated with a trustee is treated as a payment to the trustee.

As I understand it from the reports in the press, the Captain Tom Foundation is being investigated because it appears to have broken the law on payments to trustees, in that, since two of the four trustees were husband and wife, payments were being made to a company associated with 50% of the trustees. There are also questions as to whether the payments were reasonable and in the Trust's best interests.

The 70-80% profit margin comment was meant to show how efficient charities are in comparison to businesses. The 70-80% 'profit' charities make is invested back into their services. Businesses will more likely spend 70-80% of turnover on costs.

Given that it was originally in response to a post claiming that charity bosses make a fortune and that charities aren't really charities, they are businesses with a different funding model, that isn't how I interpreted it. It looks to me like it and the post to which it was responding are both anti-charity.

And that's the reason I never gave a cent. It was almost inevitable that it was never going to be properly managed. I only give to proper charities that I know by DD each month. So many of these charities that pop up seem to gave issues, sad. He would no doubt, be annoyed.

I also didn't like it from the start. He caught the public mood and that is all. I don't think he did anything particularly remarkable.

@CeleriacOfTheNight me neither. I found the clinging on to the military title after 80 years a bit odd. And captain isn't a high rank.

The Captain thing was to feed into the feeling of war time nostalgia at the time of lockdown . This 'blitz spirit' stuff.

I reserve judgement on the family and payments as I can see charities cost alot to set up. People need to be paid. But, I found the whole idea of a charity for the NHS highly questionable at the time.

@Ozanj completely agree. He was awesome!

I think the money he raised was largely wasted on water bottles and medals but that my opinion.

@Seema1234

The Captain thing was to feed into the feeling of war time nostalgia at the time of lockdown . This 'blitz spirit' stuff.

I reserve judgement on the family and payments as I can see charities cost alot to set up. People need to be paid. But, I found the whole idea of a charity for the NHS highly questionable at the time.

NHS Trusts have had charitable arms for decades. This was just a conglomerate of them under the NHS Charities banner.

Yes Great Ormond Street has always sought charitable donations and bequests.

Yes but I think there was some deliberately misleading information about what the money was for.

NHS charities don't fund life saving treatment or equipment. I'm not sure people would have been as keen to donate had they known the money would be spent on water bottles/lanyards/medals etc rather than ventilators or more nurses.

The Captain thing was to feed into the feeling of war time nostalgia at the time of lockdown. This 'blitz spirit' stuff.

Fine PR stunt indeed.

It was the 75th anniversary of VE Day in 2020.

@Grenlei

I expressed my misgivings about the publicity machine behind Captain Tom (and the motivation) long ago on here but was roundly shouted down. The amount of trading the entire family has done on the name (especially the grandson on Celebs Go Dating) is pretty grim. I'm not in the least surprised the charity has a lot of admin costs to Hannah Moore's PR firm.

As for the utter carcrash that is the Azaylia foundation, anyone who thinks that money is not being skimmed from that is living in Dreamland. (C)Ashley Cain only played pro football for a couple of years, almost a decade ago. Anything he earned from that is long gone and certainly isn't financing his current lifestyle nor Safiyas plastic surgery.

I was also shouted down on here when I expressed misgivings. She has always made me uneasy. Poor old boy, I hope he enjoyed his last year anyway.

My SIL works for a large very well known charitable organisation and the running costs (including VERY high wages for senior employees) are astronomical.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if this family have paid themselves handsomely to run the charity. A local charity near me has gone the same way. It started off small and now employs many staff who are all paid a wage. They are run like businesses.

Poor old boy, I hope he enjoyed his last year anyway.
I would agree that many old folk become more frail & vulnerable as they age but I’ll never agree that age automatically makes a person a sweet old lady or a dear old man.
We don’t know the man or his family.
All we know is what the newspaper editors have decided to print.

All I know is that with a massive PR machine behind them, the family still filled me with unease.

It wouldn’t surprise me at all if this family have paid themselves handsomely to run the charity

This is one of the reasons they are being investigated. Two of the four trustees were family members (his daughter and her husband) and it appears money was being paid to a company associated with one of them. If that is the case, they have broken the law.

@JesusMaryAndJosephAndTheWeeDon

Yes but I think there was some deliberately misleading information about what the money was for.

NHS charities don't fund life saving treatment or equipment. I'm not sure people would have been as keen to donate had they known the money would be spent on water bottles/lanyards/medals etc rather than ventilators or more nurses.

Why didn't they let him do his walks and leave it at that? I am not sure where it could have been spent, but water bottles seem a bit stupid . They should have asked where what was needed and bought the items. The daughter jumped on the bandwagon and now the whole thing is tarnished. It should have ended with the last walk

@stairway

Tbh I was not impressed with his daughter after the decision to holiday in the Caribbean was made. Though I’ve always seen Captain Tom as genuine the daughter seemed like an opportunist.

Yes, she seemed to enjoy basking in his reflected glory, and I got the impression that she was probably behind the whole idea of him doing the sponsored laps of his garden. He was probably in the habit of taking a daily walk to keep fit. He was lucky to have a lovely large, flat garden to walk in - much better than the uneven, crowded pavements that many elderly people had to struggle with during lockdown. He seemed like a nice chap, but basically he just carried on his normal routine while others made out it was something super heroic to do.

She saw an opportunity and probably had her own agenda all along.

"A charity set up in the name of Captain Sir Tom Moore tried to appoint the fundraiser’s daughter as its CEO on a six-figure salary before a watchdog intervened to block the move, The Independent understands"

@SmellinOfTroy

"A charity set up in the name of Captain Sir Tom Moore tried to appoint the fundraiser’s daughter as its CEO on a six-figure salary before a watchdog intervened to block the move, The Independent understands"

Thank you for posting this info. The daughter is a grabby cf

Here's a link to the article in the Independent
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/captain-tom-foundation-charity-daughter-b2018320.html

The proposed salary was more than 10% of the first year's income. I just can't see how they could have justified that.

It’s all coming home to roost now isn’t it?

The Independent certainly did some digging and what they turned up is not good. The wold moves on and this will probably be a bit of an overlooked thing (unless there is a slow news week) I get no pleasure from saying that it supports my misgivings about the family, but it should come home to roost. I think that Tom Moore deserved rather better.