Tim
17 Jun 2009

As a humble charity beneficiary and member of the public, I would like to endorse Lucy and Andy's points. At the moment, charities seem to think that it's up to them what they are accountable for and how they should be accountable. That's just silly because it defeats the point.

 

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Hayward Ollerton
8 Jun 2009

It's not what you do, it's the reason why you do it and the trustees assessment of its impact on the operation! Lists of figures do not tell the whole story.

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Stuart Etherington
4 Jun 2009

Dear John

Thanks for this.

Think we need to know the value of the company when you sold it.

Interested to see you had a major involvement in CITRA which lost out to the ICT hub.

For the record my average annual expenses are £111k including all hospitality and overseas travel. They are aproved by my Chair and examined annually by my Treasurer.

Stuart

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John Tate
4 Jun 2009

Well Stuart – what a great question!

I am definitely up for answering this but it is a bit tricky to quantify exactly. Also to provide some transparency I need to give you a fair amount of detail...

However here goes:

1. I formed Tate Bramald Ltd in 1989 and sold it in 2002. I put my house on the line to get it started and say in the first 5 years of the business drew a salary for significantly less than I was getting in my previous job as an FD. So let me estimate this cost me £100k at today’s value over the five years – plus the risk of failure. I would allocate 20% of this ‘cost’ to the charity work we did. i.e. £20k

2. In the next 8 years I am afraid I do not have an exact record of what I got paid/took as dividends but guess it was around £100k per annum at today’s value. In the last few years of the company before I sold it I was earning more than this but on average this seems about right. Charities accounted for c. 20% of the company’s revenue – so let’s assume that 20% of this was allocatable to the charity sector. i.e. £160k.

3. I am afraid I cannot disclose what I sold my company for and my exact shareholding at the time of sale (I have an NDA in place on this). However as an indication I’d put a value of £300k on what I got out of the sale being attributable to the charity value of the business. So adding this all up over 13 years – years one-five minus £20k, years six to 13 plus £160k and on sale = £300k. Total £440k. An average of £34k per annum.

4. I then joined the board of Opus Systems who bought my company as a non-exec director. My role was wider than just Tate Bramald and I’d allocate c. £4,000 of what I got paid over the c. 2 years I was in the role to the money related to the charity sector.

5. I also did a small amount of consultancy work direct with Charity between c. 2002 and 2006. I estimate I billed c. £20,000 for this work over the period.

6. Between 2002-2006 I spent a significant amount of time on voluntary Charity Work including a lot of time on CFDG (at one stage I was working 3 days per week for them supporting an IT project), Citra (!), and was a trustee of a couple of charities. I estimate that this took on average 2-3 days a week of my time. All this work was unpaid. with the exception of I think one CFDG trip to Manchester (where the tickets were bought for me by CFDG) and one trip with Citra up North (where a fellow director purchased and reclaimed the cost of the trip direct from CITRA) I did not submit any expenses for this work. If I take my lower estimate of 2 days a week of voluntary work this equates to c. 500 days of my time.

7. I was a non executive director of Plaza Publishing for c. 2 years and earned some money from this. I am not sure if this counts as earning money from charities so I exclude these figures from my sums for the moment. 8. Since 2006 I have done almost no chargeable work for charities and in the last 18 months, none at all. I am earning money solely in the commercial sector. I have done a small amount of paid lecturing to charity students and get less than £1,000 per annum for this. I have reduced the amount of time I have spent on voluntary work in the last 6 months but estimate since 2006 I have spent 1 day per week on voluntary work. i.e. c. 120 days

So the grand total:

Tate Bramald 13 years £440k

2002 – present £20,000 plus say £3,000 for lecturing = £23,000

20 years total £463k. An average of £23,150 per annum.

Since 2002 I have ‘given back’ c. 620 days via voluntary work. As a consultant I could have earned some decent money if I had not given this time to charities. Probably could have got £1,000 per day typical ratio – 2 days selling and 3 days work. So 3/5 620 x £1,000 = £372k forgone income.

So that is the story. If you would like to get some external validation of these figures I’d be happy to give up a day of my time to work with an independent third party to provide some validation of these figures. Please be aware that some of the above numbers are a bit rough and ready but my guess is that the final figures if prepared more thoroughly will be about right. I appreciate that there are a lot of assumptions in the figures, but hope you feel I have taken a reasonable view of the above. Happy to answer any specific question if I can.

Now your turn. In the public interest will you disclose your detailed expense claims for say the last 2 years and your list of corporate activities/entertainment you have participated in?

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Lucy Smith
3 Jun 2009

We run a very small charity in Northants(thomassfund.org.uk) delivering music therapy to children withh life limiting conditions and I am appalled at how much money is wasted in national charities. We are totally volunteer led and pay only for the therapists sessions and her travelling costs.

Admin is kept to its lowest limit. Of course if we expand we will need to employ people to help but will certainly not be sending them to training sessions on 1st class travel like so many I hear do.

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Stuart Etherington
3 Jun 2009

John In the public interest, how much net personal wealth did you acquire as a result of your engagement with the voluntary sector over the last 20 years?

Stuart

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