History |
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Chris Westwood Charity for Children with Physical Disabilities - History
The announcement in November 2021 that after 18 years of operation the Charity had reached the major milestone of £1 Million raised and granted to help children with disabilities, and with zero operating cost, resulted in a number of questions about the story behind the Charity, how we started, what we do and where we are going.
This is the Story so far.............
The Background leading up to the formation of the Charity:
My father died in 1986, and as the executor of his Will one of my duties was to distribute a donation to what was then the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. As a result of a long saga I ended up being invited to become a Life Governor of the Fund, which later became Cancer Research UK. Subsequently the role of a Life Governor was dropped but I continued to receive the regular progress reports and accounts.
Thus I became aware of Charity work and also aware of the costs that could be involved in running charitable organisations. While levelling no criticism against the work of many operations I reasoned that I could develop a business model such that a charity could operate at absolute minimum cost. If the Trustees then covered any very minor expenses remaining, so that operation at zero cost was possible.
After the death of my Mother in 2002, thus becoming the sole remaining family member, I began to consider the long term and decided that rather than allow Inheritance Tax to take a significant proportion of my estate (hopefully well into the future at that point), by forming a working charity to which the funds could be left, something constructive could be done with the money made and saved by parents and grandparents on both sides of the family who had all started from humble beginnings, and had given me many opportunities in Life.
The Choice of Objective, Name, and the Original Plan:
With limited knowledge and an industrial background of constantly facing new projects in new and unfamiliar areas, there was little concern (initially) at the scale of the challenge. Based on what I had heard about and not heard about charity work, together with some contact with young people with disabilities, I decided to choose that area as I felt that forming a charity could make a positive contribution.
For the name, I reasoned that it would be better to describe what we did and since both my father and myself had the same Christian name, the choice was made to leave something in memory of the family.
The original plan was simple enough, form a legal charity and just keep it ticking over until my untimely demise when, with the benefit of some income from a permanent endowment from my estate, it could become a relatively stable entity in perpetuity. At least it would be able to do some work each year, and not be totally dependent on external fundraising. Little did I appreciate the scope and extent of the problems we were about to discover.
The Development of the Charity:
With no great need to rush and with the help of a local solicitor, who was to become a Trustee, we spent a year sorting out the paperwork, writing the required procedures and drafting the Deed of Trust, so that we gained Charity Commission approval on 19th November 2003, and entered the official Charity Commission Register on 17th December 2003.
Part of the application procedure at that time required confirmation that there would be minimum income of £1,000/year which I, as the Founder, agreed to provide.
We began steadily and completed grants of £600 in total in year one, and £500 in year two while I began to learn all about the requirements of running a charity.
A series of serendipitous events then occurred over the next few years which completely changed everything. Having a keen interest in finance and investment and having seen a competition advertised by the Financial Times and Axa Equity & Law regarding Pension Proposals for the Future, I entered the non-professional section. The intention was to perhaps win one of the runner up prizes of £500 which could be used to boost Charity funds. In the event, I won the non-professional section with a prize of £5,000 of educational vouchers for Pension Education Courses.
Being retired this was of little interest and I requested the possibility of commuting this to a cash prize, at whatever level they would accept for donation to the Charity. They agreed to donate the full £5,000 as we were a registered charity which was a massive boost to reserves.
This led to a story in the local paper picked up by a local Special School Teacher, then subsequent contact from her Head Teacher, and the world of Special Schools was now opened up to me, with all the needs of the children both at school and at home.
With contacts also developing in local NHS Trusts in Children with Special Needs Departments, our work began to expand rapidly and for the next 10 years we grew at over 40%/annum compound.
It was clear that we had stumbled onto something where help was needed, so having been in business we just had to run with it. This was obviously a total change in direction with the new and difficult challenge of fundraising, but seeing what was desperately needed there was no hesitation and the original plan was forgotten as we constantly worked at increasing our level of fundraising to cope with the applications received.
The problem became that the more help we managed to give, the more that our details were passed on by word of mouth and the more applications we received. The challenge has continued ever since, and we just try to do as much as we can.
In trying to meet this challenge we found that a few more serendipitous events continued, including being found by fundraising groups, a Cycle Ride from London to Stourbridge by our solicitor Trustee which raised an incredible £11,000, help from a local company as their charity for a year which raised £60,000 and the sad loss of a more distant member of the family. In this case I believe that the Charity was originally due to receive 5% of her estate, but with other premature deaths, and the Charity being named as the default recipient we eventually received over £100,000. I did actually assist the executors having dealt with Wills on many occasions, but the amount was dramatic and arrived at a time of peak demand which helped us greatly.
We have continued to concentrate on the development of fundraising methods as well as using acquired business skills to negotiate equipment discounts wherever possible and although we have just about managed to keep up with demand we have had to introduce waiting lists (thankfully short on each occasion) to cope with sudden spikes in applications. Fortinately, with no operating costs we can stop/start with no cost implications, the only problem being that if we do have to form a short Waiting List, young people in need of urgent help have to then wait a short additional period before we are abke to approve the funding required.
The Future as we currently see it:
With continued substantial growth the challenges remain, although hopefully long term (as long as possible I hope) the anticipated permanent endowment will provide some stable income which together with whatever else those following my untimely demise can raise, will enable the Charity to continue to function at a level of activity in perpetuity.
Changes on the horizon to the long term picture are currently seen as relating to changing Charity Legislation. We have already made one change to our Deed of Trust to allow meetings to be held using whatever means of communication the Trustees deem at the time to be the most appropriate. This enables the small group of four Trustees to keep in close contact at all times and discuss any queries that arise. Fast response is one of the main points of our Business Model.
Recently it was pointed out to us by a Charitable Foundation carrying out due dilligence on our Trust Deed that we do not have a Dissolution Clause. While we do not consider that one is really needed, we applied to the Charity Commission to again modify the Trust Deed and they informed us that it was not needed with our current structure, but could be incorporated if we were to change structure to a new approved format as a CIO (Charitable Incorporated Organisation).
I am aware from acting as Chair of another local charity whose Deed of Trust does urgently need updating that (being very much older than ours) such a change is likely to cost in the region of £5,000 to £6,000 (as at 2023/2024).
I object to using funds for non-charitable purposes, but if required by Law we may have little alternative. Our present activities do not require a change to be made (as confirmed by the Charity Commission) so we will continue to monitor the situation, and should future changes in Charity Legislation mean that a change would be preferable we will review the situation again.
In the interim we will continue to try to meet the fundraising challenges we expect to face. Based on what we now know we can not stop and we must just drive on as best we can. Little did we have any concept of how thr original plan would have to change. We will update this note in a year’s time to try to keep everyone aware of where we came from, and where we see ourselves going.
Chris Westwood
25.12.23
The announcement in November 2021 that after 18 years of operation the Charity had reached the major milestone of £1 Million raised and granted to help children with disabilities, and with zero operating cost, resulted in a number of questions about the story behind the Charity, how we started, what we do and where we are going.
This is the Story so far.............
The Background leading up to the formation of the Charity:
My father died in 1986, and as the executor of his Will one of my duties was to distribute a donation to what was then the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. As a result of a long saga I ended up being invited to become a Life Governor of the Fund, which later became Cancer Research UK. Subsequently the role of a Life Governor was dropped but I continued to receive the regular progress reports and accounts.
Thus I became aware of Charity work and also aware of the costs that could be involved in running charitable organisations. While levelling no criticism against the work of many operations I reasoned that I could develop a business model such that a charity could operate at absolute minimum cost. If the Trustees then covered any very minor expenses remaining, so that operation at zero cost was possible.
After the death of my Mother in 2002, thus becoming the sole remaining family member, I began to consider the long term and decided that rather than allow Inheritance Tax to take a significant proportion of my estate (hopefully well into the future at that point), by forming a working charity to which the funds could be left, something constructive could be done with the money made and saved by parents and grandparents on both sides of the family who had all started from humble beginnings, and had given me many opportunities in Life.
The Choice of Objective, Name, and the Original Plan:
With limited knowledge and an industrial background of constantly facing new projects in new and unfamiliar areas, there was little concern (initially) at the scale of the challenge. Based on what I had heard about and not heard about charity work, together with some contact with young people with disabilities, I decided to choose that area as I felt that forming a charity could make a positive contribution.
For the name, I reasoned that it would be better to describe what we did and since both my father and myself had the same Christian name, the choice was made to leave something in memory of the family.
The original plan was simple enough, form a legal charity and just keep it ticking over until my untimely demise when, with the benefit of some income from a permanent endowment from my estate, it could become a relatively stable entity in perpetuity. At least it would be able to do some work each year, and not be totally dependent on external fundraising. Little did I appreciate the scope and extent of the problems we were about to discover.
The Development of the Charity:
With no great need to rush and with the help of a local solicitor, who was to become a Trustee, we spent a year sorting out the paperwork, writing the required procedures and drafting the Deed of Trust, so that we gained Charity Commission approval on 19th November 2003, and entered the official Charity Commission Register on 17th December 2003.
Part of the application procedure at that time required confirmation that there would be minimum income of £1,000/year which I, as the Founder, agreed to provide.
We began steadily and completed grants of £600 in total in year one, and £500 in year two while I began to learn all about the requirements of running a charity.
A series of serendipitous events then occurred over the next few years which completely changed everything. Having a keen interest in finance and investment and having seen a competition advertised by the Financial Times and Axa Equity & Law regarding Pension Proposals for the Future, I entered the non-professional section. The intention was to perhaps win one of the runner up prizes of £500 which could be used to boost Charity funds. In the event, I won the non-professional section with a prize of £5,000 of educational vouchers for Pension Education Courses.
Being retired this was of little interest and I requested the possibility of commuting this to a cash prize, at whatever level they would accept for donation to the Charity. They agreed to donate the full £5,000 as we were a registered charity which was a massive boost to reserves.
This led to a story in the local paper picked up by a local Special School Teacher, then subsequent contact from her Head Teacher, and the world of Special Schools was now opened up to me, with all the needs of the children both at school and at home.
With contacts also developing in local NHS Trusts in Children with Special Needs Departments, our work began to expand rapidly and for the next 10 years we grew at over 40%/annum compound.
It was clear that we had stumbled onto something where help was needed, so having been in business we just had to run with it. This was obviously a total change in direction with the new and difficult challenge of fundraising, but seeing what was desperately needed there was no hesitation and the original plan was forgotten as we constantly worked at increasing our level of fundraising to cope with the applications received.
The problem became that the more help we managed to give, the more that our details were passed on by word of mouth and the more applications we received. The challenge has continued ever since, and we just try to do as much as we can.
In trying to meet this challenge we found that a few more serendipitous events continued, including being found by fundraising groups, a Cycle Ride from London to Stourbridge by our solicitor Trustee which raised an incredible £11,000, help from a local company as their charity for a year which raised £60,000 and the sad loss of a more distant member of the family. In this case I believe that the Charity was originally due to receive 5% of her estate, but with other premature deaths, and the Charity being named as the default recipient we eventually received over £100,000. I did actually assist the executors having dealt with Wills on many occasions, but the amount was dramatic and arrived at a time of peak demand which helped us greatly.
We have continued to concentrate on the development of fundraising methods as well as using acquired business skills to negotiate equipment discounts wherever possible and although we have just about managed to keep up with demand we have had to introduce waiting lists (thankfully short on each occasion) to cope with sudden spikes in applications. Fortinately, with no operating costs we can stop/start with no cost implications, the only problem being that if we do have to form a short Waiting List, young people in need of urgent help have to then wait a short additional period before we are abke to approve the funding required.
The Future as we currently see it:
With continued substantial growth the challenges remain, although hopefully long term (as long as possible I hope) the anticipated permanent endowment will provide some stable income which together with whatever else those following my untimely demise can raise, will enable the Charity to continue to function at a level of activity in perpetuity.
Changes on the horizon to the long term picture are currently seen as relating to changing Charity Legislation. We have already made one change to our Deed of Trust to allow meetings to be held using whatever means of communication the Trustees deem at the time to be the most appropriate. This enables the small group of four Trustees to keep in close contact at all times and discuss any queries that arise. Fast response is one of the main points of our Business Model.
Recently it was pointed out to us by a Charitable Foundation carrying out due dilligence on our Trust Deed that we do not have a Dissolution Clause. While we do not consider that one is really needed, we applied to the Charity Commission to again modify the Trust Deed and they informed us that it was not needed with our current structure, but could be incorporated if we were to change structure to a new approved format as a CIO (Charitable Incorporated Organisation).
I am aware from acting as Chair of another local charity whose Deed of Trust does urgently need updating that (being very much older than ours) such a change is likely to cost in the region of £5,000 to £6,000 (as at 2023/2024).
I object to using funds for non-charitable purposes, but if required by Law we may have little alternative. Our present activities do not require a change to be made (as confirmed by the Charity Commission) so we will continue to monitor the situation, and should future changes in Charity Legislation mean that a change would be preferable we will review the situation again.
In the interim we will continue to try to meet the fundraising challenges we expect to face. Based on what we now know we can not stop and we must just drive on as best we can. Little did we have any concept of how thr original plan would have to change. We will update this note in a year’s time to try to keep everyone aware of where we came from, and where we see ourselves going.
Chris Westwood
25.12.23