Val Austin, the former Charity Business director, is to leave the benevolent fund where she has been general manager for a year and a half.
Austin joined the Electrical and Electronics Industries Benevolent Association in October 2010 as general manager, while she was still a non-executive director at Charity Business, the charity outsourcing agency founded by her husband Mark Freeman. Freeman was still chief executive of Charity Business at the time.
Soon after she joined the EEIBA, the charity outsourced its financial processing to Charity Business.
Late last year, Austin and Freeman resigned from the board of Charity Business, just weeks before it became insolvent and was taken into voluntary liquidation by the two remaining board members.
At the time, EEIBA’s chair Jim McArthur told civilsociety.co.uk that the charity had been aware all along of Austin’s involvement with Charity Business and felt it was adequately managing the potential conflict of interest. He said the trustees had been “fairly happy” with Austin’s performance as general manager and that there was no question of her position at the charity being affected by the collapse of Charity Business.
However, EEIBA is now advertising for a director of operations and McArthur has admitted that Austin will be leaving once that person is recruited and a handover completed.
He said Austin’s appointment was “always based on an interim arrangement in order to complete the necessary objectives that were part of our re-engineering change programme”.
He went on: “Val has satisfactorily completed the change programme and has worked hard for the EEIBA over the very short time she has been with us.
“The final part of our change programme, which is not at all associated with the event that happened at Charity Business, is to recruit a permanent salaried employee, a process with Val is helping the trustees to achieve. In order to facilitate a smooth handover during the coming months, Val will be working alongside the new appointee.”
McArthur also confirmed that EEIBA has already found a new outsourcing agency to handle its financial affairs.
