Friday 3 July 2009

Ask a stupid question ...

Over at JuliaM, Staybryte asks:

What the hell is the Fawcett society? How does it get funded? How come these busybodies get to lobby the head of the BBC and push their self-serving agenda?

The middle bit's easy. Download their 2008 accounts from the Charities Commission website and check out their 'Income from charitable activities' (about 60% of their total income) on page 12:

The Indigo Trust £36,800
Lloyds TSB Foundation for England and Wales £20,000
Electoral Commission £10,866
Department of Communities and Local Government £20,000

Barrow Cadbury Trust £33,333
Esmée Fairbairn Foundation £22,289
LankellyChase Foundation £15,000
The Home Office £42,000
Nuffield Foundation £3,894 + £39,418*
Oxfam Poverty Programme £10,000
Equal Opportunities Commission £10,000
Amicus (Unite) £2,940
Unison £15,938
City Parochial Foundation £26,250


I've bolded the donors who are wholly or partly taxpayer-funded. The Indigo Trust is a Sainbury's trust, who appear overly keen on paying for all this nonsense, presumably they are trying to curry favour with the Labour government, so they're suspect as well. The City Parochial Foundation appears to be part of the Church of England, so make up your own mind whether they are part of 'The State'.

* UPDATE: as John B points out in the comments, The Nuffield Foundation is a private foundation set up by the chap who designed the Morris Minor. But ... its offshoot The Nuffield Council On Bioethics receives up to £400,000 from The Medical Research Council, which in turn is "a publicly funded body". So I've unbolded it but with misgivings.

But I'm not budging on the Lloyds TSB Foundation. It was set up on the whim of the government at the time the TSB was privatised with the mission "to support and work in partnership with recognised charitable organisations which help disadvantaged people to play a fuller role in communities throughout England and Wales.", which puts it squarely in fakecharity/quango territory.

3 comments:

John B said...

The LTSB foundation shouldn't be bolded - it's covenanted to received 1% of LTSB profits forever, as part of the demutualisation of the TSB, with no involvement from LTSB/LBG on how this is spent or who the trustees are. So the fact that the government happens to currently own the majority of LBG shares doesn't affect LTSBF at all.

I'm also not sure why you've bolded the Nuffield Foundation, which is funded solely by returns on the estate of the chap who invented the Morris Minor...

DBC Reed said...

Alec Issigonis set up the Nuffield Foundation?

Mark Wadsworth said...

DBC, fair point, but the Nuffield Foundation was set up by William Morris (no, not that one, the other one) before the Morris Minor was first invented.

So John B's comment should have read "the chap whose company later designed and manufactured the Morris Minor" but he had me bang to rights on the substantive issue.