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Welcome to Issue 11 of the Newsletter dedicated to all our Company’s diverse philanthropic efforts. The scope is broadly: updates on our pro bono activity and the work of the Company’s Charitable Fund. This issue majors on the former, with two Pro Bono Case Studies. Special thanks this time to Bob Harris, Tom Jenkins, Nanette Young and David Glassman for articles.
Charitable Fund Update
The Chair of the Fund – Steve Cant - reports:
Trustees:
Newly appointed Fourth Warden Ian White has agreed to become a Trustee ex officio, while Immediate Past Master Kanan Barot has stepped down. Details of the current Trustees of the Charitable Fund are available on the website here. There is currently one vacancy for an elected (as opposed to ex officio) Trustee, as Terry Corby came to the end of his three-year term in October 2024.
Opportunity:
The Trustees have agreed to advertise the opportunity to become a Trustee here: Broadly speaking the role is to help shape the future of the Fund, to assess and approve grant applications received from charities and to promote further liaison between the Charitable Fund and the Company's Pro Bono activities. Trustees are required to attend four meetings per year as well as investing the time to work on, and review papers for Trustee meetings. Additionally, Trustees may be asked to carry out grant assessments which may take a couple of days. Full background briefing and training will be provided.
The Trustees are looking for a relatively young Liveryman who can represent all Members within the Board of Trustees. Applicants should be conspicuously active within the Company. Any appointment will be decided upon by the existing Trustees. If you are interested or would like further information, please contact me. (ed: the same!)
Due Diligence
It is worth recording here that not every application to the Charitable Fund is successful. We continue to operate a robust and rigorous grant assessment process that involves a significant level of due diligence. Sometimes this reveals that the charity is simply an unsuitable recipient. While this is regrettable it is necessary given some examples in the recent history of the not-for-profit sector. The Trustees are resolute in their desire to make grants that accord with our funding criteria and to organisations that are well established and well managed, hence our robust assessment process.
New Logo
The Company’s Charitable Fund is a distinct legal entity. It is a separate charity and has its own Trustees, although there is an overlap with the Company itself in that 5 of the 8 Trustees are the Wardens who are ex officio. As the Chair of this separate entity, I have long thought that it should have a unique identity and indeed a logo. I am now pleased to report that at we have a new logo and it is shown here. Readers will recognise it as an extract of the Company's own Coat of Arms, which dates from our incorporation and was originally designed by the Garter Principal King of Arms, Sir Conrad Swan.
More about the Coat of Arms. The ascending star or comet (the tail denotes a comet) refers to knowledge and aspiration. In the case of the Charitable Fund this refers to the knowledge we apply in deciding where to make donations and our overriding aspiration to help others. The comet is held by a hand which references the advice and assistance provided by a consultant or mentor. In the case of the Charitable Fund this alludes to the advice that we provide to applicants whether or not they are successful - we always try to provide constructive feedback. Our grant assessors spend time and energy in checking that an application is robust, well thought through and likely to succeed in achieving the stated social outcomes. Thus, the hand gives advice based on the wisdom of the star. You can read more about the Company's Coat of Arms here.
City Harvest
It was a pleasure and an honour to be at the Livery Food Initiative Old Bailey Thank You Reception on Monday 9th September, representing our Charitable Fund. I was joined by Second Warden Malcolm McCaig and Past Master Denise Fellows, who is one of the organising committee.
We were one of 40+ Livery Companies represented. We heard from Sarah Calcutt, CEO of City Harvest, about the impact that Livery donations have made via their new collection truck. In the six months since it was launched, it has rescued 230 tonnes of food, delivered 548,766 meals and prevented 553 tonnes of Greenhouse Gasses. We also heard from Sheriff Dame Susan Langley who hosted the occasion and presented each Company representative with a commemorative plaque – pictured.
As Hilary Lindsay, organiser of the Livery Food Initiative and Chair of the Livery Charity Chairs Group (LCCG) said, “It was such an uplifting and heartening evening.”
Ed: Stop press: The latest Impact report from the Livery Food Initiative has just been published and you can find it here. Here's an extract....the difference that Truck we helped to fund has made in the 8 months since Lord Mayor Alderman Professor Michael Mainelli handed over its keys to City Harvest on 6th March 2024.
"Connect to Prosper" Update
Report on the philanthropy colloquy:
On Monday 24th September half a dozen WCoMC Members, attended the latest and 17th “coffee colloquy” organised by the now former Lord Mayor Michael Mainelli at the Mansion House. This one was on philanthropy and was organised by the Centre for Charity Effectiveness (CCE) (with whom we have a long relationship) and the Pan Livery Pro Bono interest group, in the shape of our own Bob Harris. Alex Skailes, Director of the CCE at @Bayes Business School opened proceedings and introduced a range of speakers who each got their statutory four minutes. We heard from charities, corporate and family foundations, Fozia Irfan OBE (from BBC Children in Need) and other leading lights from the world of philanthropy. The penultimate speaker was Bob Harris who spoke about the Livery’s contribution in terms not only of philanthropy but of pro bono time and our experience with “Funder plus”. (Grant funding plus professional pro bono support).
It’s not possible here to summarise all the ideas that were aired on the day, but a few themes emerged:
- The need for charities to be focused on transformational impact rather than transactional support
- The need for innovation in operations, especially in the use of AI
- The need for cooperation and collaboration across the sector.
It was a far ranging and thought-provoking conversation, and the Lord Mayor's primary aim of making connections, as in the olden days of coffee houses, was met. I certainly met a charity who may be of interest to our Charitable Fund and will follow up.
Pro Bono Update
New Prospectus:
PM Patrick Chapman and PM Steve Cant are pleased to announce the creation of a new Pro Bono Prospectus, which outlines what we do Pro Bono and how we go about doing it, particularly with the aim of showing that any member can get involved, typically building on their previous consultancy experience. We aim to ensure that Pro Bono assignments deliver both value for the client and worthwhile experiences for volunteering members. Members generally find their involvement in Pro Bono activities to be very rewarding. We summarise this in the phrase "Giving and Gaining” and many Members join the Company with the broad aspiration of “giving something back”. The prospectus looks at what a potential volunteer might be expected to give and indeed what they might expect to gain from volunteering to carry out Pro Bono assignments. Read more in the Prospectus itself, now available on the website, here.
Pro Bono Case Studies
We always try to recongnise the efforts of our volunteers and to record the Company's thanks. (Ed: See more on this below). One way of doing this is to include some interesting examples of Pro Bono assignments carried out by our volunteers in this Newsletter. Here are two examples:
Mr Motivator: One recent example involves Mr Motivator - Derrick Evans MBE - who many will remember joined us, rather colourfully, for the Charities Supper in January of this year.
In July 2023 we received a request from Mr Motivator to help him in the creation of the “Mr Motivator’s Bed Bank” (MMBB) Charity. The focus of this Charity is to raise funds to help the supply of beds to children in poverty. It is estimated that there are currently 750,000 kids without beds in the U.K. Over the past year or so we have worked closely with Mr Motivator to establish the MMBB Charity and to design, with active Pro Bono support from one of the world's largest advertising agencies, a public launch programme.
We are also working on the creation of a new CIC, associated with MMBB, to be launched next year with the aim of cleaning and refurbishing some of the 7 million mattresses annually that are discarded and mainly end up in landfill. It is planned that this CIC will have 2 income streams:
1. From a refurbishing service aimed at companies which use significant numbers of beds and their mattresses.
2. From selling other refurbished mattresses to existing charities focussed on this sector. All surplus income from the CIC will be passed directly to the MMBB Charity.
Tom Jenkins, who is leading our pro bono efforts, says this about the work: “This continues to be an enjoyable and challenging project. In particular, packaging the regular flow of innovative ideas from Mr Motivator on how to grow potential donations to keep them within the structures of the MMBB charity and the rules to which it must adhere, is an almost daily challenge. Channelling all that “Motivator” energy constructively is both stimulating and rewarding”.
Let’s hope we see Mr Motivator at the Charities Supper again in 2025. Meanwhile you can donate to MMBB here…
Mentoring: Nanette Young and David Glassman ran another mentoring workshop at the end of October. It was for Company Members who wished to start mentoring, those who have undertaken pro bono assignments and wished to finesse their approach. The workshop was also attended by several Members of other Livery Companies - via the pan-livery pro bono interest group. Their mentoring initiatives vary from ours and their clients do not necessarily have the same leadership roles as ours but the diverse backgrounds and areas of expertise of the participants provided a cross fertilisation of ideas and approaches that led to a stimulating day.
The workshop has been developed to help management consultants appreciate the best way to mentor clients, primarily the leaders of not-for-profit organisations. Its aim is to re-orientate the approach for those who have been used to telling and advising to one that is more encouraging, especially in helping clients to avoid the mistakes that we made in their situations.
For all, the focus was on harnessing participants' professional experience to mentoring practices using the tools, tips and techniques offered and then trialled through case study role play in a safe setting.
The feedback from one Member was: "challenging and satisfying" while a Member of another Livery Company said:
"What a brilliant workshop yesterday. Thank you so much for inviting me to participate and for an inspirational day. I left feeling I had learnt an enormous amount, both personally in terms of mentoring techniques as well as professionally in terms of processes and what makes a good mentoring programme. Thank you both very very much."
The next mentoring workshop will be held in the spring of 2025.
Pan Livery Update
Bob Harris reports:
"Back in the summer Steve Cant and I, along with Steve Smith of the Information Technologists, met with the Mercers’ Company grants team as representatives of the Pan Livery Pro Bono interest group (PLPB). After they had given us an overview of their extensive grant-giving programme, we presented what PLPB was about and provided them with a matrix showing which professional services and what sort of pro bono support the modern Livery Companies could offer. The Mercer’s team found this very helpful and since that session three opportunities have arisen via the Mercers Company. In each case we have been able to provide pro bono support via WCoMC or other PLPB member Companies to supplement the funding provided by the Mercers. I hope to share one or two “Funder Plus” case studies from this route in future editions of GTKP.
We have also had two meetings of the PLPB since the last issue, the most recent being in late November. These in-person meetings are typically attended by 20-30 people - with the list of attendees rotating and evolving. For example, at the last meeting we were joined by Mike Lakin who is Master of the Worshipful Company of Fan Makers. Mike was very enthusiastic about what PLPB are doing and was keen to learn from our collective experience.
During the evening Steve Cant provided some feedback on a survey that he carried out recently on the broad subject of “engagement with volunteers”. Mike took plenty of notes and asked some pointed questions as did others. There is clearly some interesting practice out there from which everybody can learn. The Fan Makers and the Nurses took quite a lot away but even our own Pro Bono Committee have things to learn. One very simple example: a “thank you” tactic used quite regularly by other Companies is a letter of thanks from the Master or “somebody distinguished”. Patrick Chapman and Steve Cant agreed that this was something that they had not done as Master but that it was worth investigating. The evening was a good example of knowledge sharing across the Livery via the PLPB and I hope that there will be more to follow.
Me in action at Mansion House and Steve in action at PLPB:
Finally, I have been progressing the 2024 Pan-Livery “Survey of Philanthropic Giving”. This is the fourth such survey that I have undertaken and a number of responses are awaited: getting responses from all Livery Companies is always a challenge. However, based on preliminary analysis from the 87 responses received by 20th November, I was able to report at the Lord Mayor’s address to the Livery at Mansion House on that day that overall giving across the livery had increased to £80m and that the time and and value of pro-bono support had increased by over 20% since the 2022 survey. More on the results from the survey when we have finalised the report."
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As ever, many thanks for reading this far and to all the contributors of content for this GTKP Newsletter.
Steve Cant
Editor
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