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Welcome to the latest edition of the Get to Know Philanthropy (GTKP) newsletter which covers all aspects of our Pro Bono activities and the work of the Company's Charitable Fund. In this edition you can read about Mentoring, a pro bono case study, and developments in the Charitable Fund. But first, Bob Harris reports.....
The Livery Impact Report 2025
The Livery Impact Report 2025 was launched by the Lord Mayor Alderman Alastair King in his opening remarks at the dinner to meet Masters at the Mansion House at the end of March. The report can be found here or by scanning the QR code on the bookmark in the left-hand margin.
In her introduction to the report, the Chair of the Livery Committee Julia Sibley said: “Alongside the findings from the fourth Survey of Philanthropic Giving by Livery Companies undertaken in 2024, the report describes a number of the great Livery initiatives and stories, highlighting the depth, breadth and quality of these projects and the far reaching impact they are having for so many beneficiaries. The report also highlights the power of collaboration and a number of examples where our 113 Livery Companies and their 45,000 members have worked together and pooled their resource, time, skill and experience for the benefit of shared philanthropic endeavour”.
Liveryman Bob Harris, who joined the Livery Committee last year to lead the 2024 survey, commented as follows:
“The survey revealed that aggregate philanthropic giving by the livery had increased by 10% over the 2021 figure to £81m.
Whilst much of this derives from investment returns on historical endowments, it is also encouraging to note that in-year giving and fundraising per member (ie liverymen and freemen) increased by 73% over the same period to £221pa. Our own Company reported a figure of £256pa per member – with donations averaging £169pa augmented by gift aid and fundraising. A further finding was that the value of reported pro-bono activity had increased by over 30% to more than £4.5m pa. Our Company led the way at £815k, with 12 further Livery Companies reporting pro-bono activity valued at over £100k pa in comparison to just three in 2021. While some of this increase may be due to better reporting, it is also an encouraging sign of the effectiveness of the Pan-Livery Pro-Bono Interest Group in which Company members including Steve Cant, Patrick Chapman and David Glassman are playing an active role alongside my own involvement”.
Thank you to our ProBono Volunteers
(PM Patrick Chapman writes) it was with a little trepidation that we advertised seven opportunities back in early March. Between them they covered a range of challenges from strategic planning and management development to income development and operational efficiencies. Twelve members stepped forwards – some for more than one opportunity; for example five offered to support OffWestEnd! Clearly we have a yearning to support the Arts…..
Our ProBono work sets us apart from most other Livery Companies and we are continuing to develop our existing and some new channels to market. We are doing our best to ensure there is a reasonable number of opportunities, but this is not guaranteed – although the current economic turmoil should help us. Watch this space.
So thank you: Tom Jenkins, Frank Brown, Collette Stone, Julie Linsdell, Jim Foster, James Markham, Mark Doughty, Andrew Miskin, Paul Kelly, Hugh Tinsley, Chris Sutton and Lin Wong. I am sorry that we couldn’t get you all involved just yet.....
And with this in mind, since drafting the newsletter, we have had three further requests for support – we will be emailing details as soon as we have qualified the opportunities.
If you are thinking about offering to help, check out our prospectus.
Charitable Fund Update
At the April meeting of the Trustees of the Charitable Fund, a number of aspects of the Fund’s growth strategy were discussed and it was agreed to summarise them here. Trustee Jim Foster sets things out here;
- Our plan is to make an annual donation to three partner organisations that meet the objective of “transforming young lives” and to make one off donations to other organisations that meet this objective and our other funding criteria (see here).
- Two of the three partner organisations have been identified: Sea Cadets and XLP
- The third partner or organisation is likely to be a school
- We would like to provide more one off funding but currently are receiving very few requests
- The intention is to donate £10,000 per year for a fixed number of years (probably three) to each of the three partner organisations
- This requires raising additional funds each year to fund the £30,000 to be provided to the partner organisations each year and the one off donations to other organisations
- We invite Members to identify charities which we should consider donating to
- We will ask The Court of Assistants to consider increasing the recommended amount for voluntary donations by Members to the Charitable Fund and asking retired Members to think about leaving a legacy to the Fund
- We are also looking at options for reducing the cost of managing the Charitable Fund
Mentoring
David Glassman and Jeff Herman ran the latest mentoring workshop recently…
Our Company offered another Master Mentors' Workshop on 26th March and the presenters, David Glassman and Court Assistant Jeff Herman, were delighted to welcome members of the WCoMC and guests from the Tax Advisers and the Chartered Secretaries and Administrators. The latter came through the links the Company has established within the Pan-Livery Pro Bono Group.
The full-day programme offered tips, tools and templates to those who were new to mentoring - or even contemplating it - and drew on the wisdom and collective experiences of everyone in the room. The backgrounds, professional activities and pro bono involvements of the participants were diverse and the contributions from all generated rich discussion and the valuable insights that peer groups are noted for. The case study role-plays enabled the morning's learnings to be put into play with the level of engagement shown in the accompanying photographs, kindly taken by Professor Mark Fox.
Our learned Clerk, Julie Fox, provided much-appreciated hospitality and catering, and liaised with the Worshipful Company of Plaisterers, whose hall we felt privileged to use.
Written feedback after the workshop included, "I really enjoyed it and learnt a lot from it." and "Thanks for an enjoyable and worthwhile workshop". The next workshop will be in the autumn and enquiries will be welcomed now and your presence then.
Pro bono Case Study: Helping the public find their voice
Public Voice is a community interest company based in Tottenham with a mission to “improve public services and neighbourhoods through user engagement”. In 2023 they approached us requesting help on two related areas: the acquisition of a Healthwatch organisation and working with them to package up their core methodology – the Co-production Framework – to enable it to be deployed more effectively for future acquisitions.
Nick Bush had previous experience of Healthwatch organisations as a result of working with Healthwatch Greenwich. Having established that they were not the acquisition target, Nick picked up the Healthwatch brief and Janell Dudley received her first taste of pro bono work with the Co-production task.
Both projects progressed over the summer of 2023 and the Healthwatch acquisition went ahead smoothly. Nick ran a lessons learned workshop to close this brief assignment and Janell completed her coaching role with the Public Voice manager responsible for packaging up their methodology.
Following this satisfactory completion, all went quiet for a few months until Dan Rogers, Public Voice CEO contacted us again to see if we would be interested in supporting one of their projects for the Haringey Community Collaborative. This strangely named entity provides comprehensive support to the voluntary and community sector (VCS) in the borough to strengthen their governance, grow fundraising and increase impact. Their “shopping list” of requirements includes many of the areas that WCoMC members can support and so our follow up conversation was along the lines of “yes please, just let us know when you want specific support”.
This was followed up with a further request for support for Public Voice’s leadership team at a training day and Cosette Reczek and Sarah Jo Loveday put together a highly effective leadership session in October which was very well received.
This session has spawned a request for further training sessions to be run on a quarterly basis and we now have a small pool of experts from the Company lined up to support these.
The VCS requirement took a little longer to realise but in early April, Nick Bush delivered a training session on business planning with some grassroots organisations. Since this also went down well, we expect further requirements to emerge which will lead to requests for support from members in due course.
Public Voice is a great organisation to have as a client – open to learning and, as you might expect from the nature of their work, very enthusiastic about empowering people to make their voices heard on all sorts of local matters. And since their requests for support are quite varied, they provide a great opportunity to involve a wide range of Company members in pro bono work.
We are all Camino
PM Chris Sutton reports:
"Inspired by Third Warden Jim Foster who did this last year (and is going to do it all over again this year!) I will be walking 111km of the Camino de Santiago in Spain from 4-8 May, together with my daughter Anna. I am taking the opportunity to fund raise for a charity that I chair, All We Can. Please go to my Just Giving page if you are interested in supporting me. Many thanks."
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As ever, many thanks for reading this far and to all the contributors of content for this GTKP Newsletter.
And here is that Livery Impact Code one more time:
Steve Cant
Editor
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