Cox becomes Small Charities Coalition's first chief executive

Governance | Tania Mason | 20 Nov 2007

Small Charities Coalition founder Patrick Cox has become the Coalition’s first chief executive following the receipt of a £50,000 grant from the Tudor Trust.

Cox (pictured) has stepped down as chief executive of the Male Cancer Awareness Campaign to take up the post, though he will continue to spearhead fundraising efforts at the charity in his spare time in order to help secure sufficient funding to employ permanent staff.

He plans to remain at the Small Charities Coalition for as long as it takes to get it up and running and stabilised, and then to recruit a successor before moving back to run the Male Cancer Awareness Campaign. Cox estimates this will take about a year, but added: “I won’t be handing it back until it is ready.”

Debra Allcock Tyler, chief executive of the Directory of Social Change, who is the Coalition’s first chairman, said it was extremely rare for an organisation to secure a grant of this size when it did not yet have charitable status or a full board in place.

But the Tudor Trust said the Coalition was an idea whose time had come. The Trust’s research and information manager Nicky Lappin said: “Tudor has a strong focus on funding smaller charities – around one in four of the organisations we support have a turnover of less than £50,000 a year. Tudor’s trustees are therefore very aware of the challenges facing small charities, and were interested in encouraging the sort of mutual support proposed by the Small Charities Coalition. They were also impressed with Patrick’s drive and energy, and keen to enable him to develop his ideas.”

The Coalition has changed its definition of a small charity, from Cox’s initial criteria of top salary of £50,000, to total income of about £1m. It also plans to change its web address from smallisbest.com to smallcharities.com.

Cox said the Coalition’s vision was to “make small charities’ lives easier – to identify the problems they face and find the best solutions”.

“It will be about small charities supporting each other and about big charities giving something back,” he said.

Who's Who: Patrick Cox

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