Prince's Trust
| File:Prince's Trust.gif | |
| Formation | 1976 |
|---|---|
| Type | Charity |
| Purpose | Helping young people |
| Location |
|
Region served | UK |
| Website | www.princes-trust.org.uk |
| Remarks | Key people:
Martina Milburn Chief Executive Sir Fred Goodwin Chairman |
The Prince's Trust charity currently only helps four groups of young people. The groups helped by the Prince's Trust are the long-term unemployed, people who have been in trouble with the law, people who are in difficulty at school, and people who have been in care. Some young people who are employed also go on Prince’s Trust courses, but they can only attend if their employer pays course fees to the Prince’s Trust.
Prince's Trust People
HRH The Prince of Wales founded the Prince's Trust and is now its president, a figurehead position with no legal responsibility. The Prince's Trust Council are the trustees of the charity and are legally responsible for management, administration and deciding policy.
The Chairman of the Prince's Trust Council is Sir Fred Goodwin. Other members of the council include Charles Dunstone, Simon Fuller and Michael Marks CBE. Sir Fred Goodwin is the current chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS), one of the major corporate supporters of the Prince's Trust. In 2007 RBS donated £1.1 million to the Prince's Trust and there were also commercial transactions of 0.4 million.
The Prince's Trust employs 688 people, including 72 people who work in fundraising and publicity. Two members of staff earn more than £100,000 with a further two earning between £80,000 and £90,000.
Finances of the Prince's Trust
In 2006/7 the Prince’s Trust charity, and its trading subsidiary, Prince’s Trust Trading Ltd, had a total income of nearly £51 million, and expenditure of £46.6 million, giving a surplus for the year of more than £4 million. The Prince’s Trust Group currently has reserves of more than £18 million and plans to increase this to more than £19 million.
Income
The largest source of income was the near £20 million received from the public sector. Of this nearly £8 million was from the European Union (EU), £3 million was from local and national government, nearly £600,000 came from the community fund and over £8 million came from a variety of other public sector sources. Most of this money was payment by these organisations for courses, training, mentoring and other services for unemployed young people, provided under contract by the Prince’s Trust.
Most of the EU money for the Prince's Trust came from the European Social Fund (ESF) and could only be spent to help young people who are not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET). [1] Some of the ESF money went directly to the Prince’s Trust (£816,000 2006/7), but mostly it went to the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) who “doubled it up” with government money that then had the same restrictions placed on it. Some LSC money was given directly to the Prince’s Trust (£1.3 million 2006/7) but the majority went to the regional LSC offices who took out contracts with the regional Prince’s Trust offices to provide services for unemployed young people. The ESF money was channeled through so many routes it is difficult to determine how much it amounted to, but in 2006 the funding provided by the LSC to the Prince’s Trust in total came to approximately £11 million. [2]
The main voluntary income consisted of £6 million from charitable trusts, £3.7 million from company donations and £6.6 million from individuals. £147,000 was received from The Prince's Charities Foundation.
Expenditure
The Prince’s Trust expenditure of £46.5 million was made up of £36 million spent on charitable activities with the rest being spent on administration and other costs, including the costs of raising the voluntary income. The cost of raising the £19 million voluntary income was more that £5 million, meaning that for every £1 donated, little more than 70p was spent on charitable activities with the rest going on fundraising costs.
The £36 million spent on charitable activities was divided between the different programme areas such as the Team program, and the business program, but not all of the money was spent on helping young people. £2.7 million went on grants, loans & other awards to young people, whilst £18.3 million was spent on direct staff and other direct costs, and nearly £15 million was spent on support costs such as managerial and marketing staff, office rents etc. But not even all the “direct costs” were spent on helping young people, because with much of the money for these programmes coming from the public sector, these direct costs also include the cost of arranging and monitoring all the contracts etc.
So from a total income of nearly £51 million, significantly less than £21 million was spent on directly helping young people. When in 2008 Prince Charles made a plea for additional money for the trust, the response from a volunteer was “does it [the Trust] look to control its spending or is it more interested in building a bureaucratic structure at some considerable cost.” [3]
Prince's Trust Charitable Activities
The Prince's Trust has six main types of charitable activity.
The Business Programme helps young people start a business.
The Team Programme is a 12-week personal development course, offering work experience, practical skills, community projects and a residential week.
Get Intos are short courses offering training and experience in a specific sector to help young people get a job.
Development Awards are small grants to enable people to access education, training or work.
Community Cash Awards are grants to help young people set up a project that will benefit their community.
xl clubs are held in schools.
The Prince's Trust is sometimes referred to as being part of The Prince's Charities group.
Business Programme
The Business Program is the program for which the Prince’s Trust is best known and it helps young people start a business. A young person can benefit from the program if they are aged 18 to 30, are unemployed or working less than 16 hours a week. If they are in an unsatisfying low paid job they will need to become long term unemployed before they can be helped.
The help provided usually consists of a loan of up to £4,000, which needs to be repaid by the young person togther with 3% interest. [4] Each year young people pay the Prince's Trust around £360,000 in interest payments on their loans. Ongoing advice is also provided for three years by a business mentor who is a Prince's Trust volunteer.
In 2007 the Prince's Trust spent a total of nearly £13 million on the business programme. Of this only £616,000 was spent on loans (or in a very few instances grants) to young people with the average value of a loan being £500. Of the remaining money £3.6 million was spent on Prince’s Trust staff costs, £3.4 million on other direct costs, and £5 million on support costs. A substantial amount of the money for the business programme comes from the public sector. For example, in 2007, the Wigan Economic Partnership provided the Prince's Trust with £85,000 for 20 business startups.
The Prince’s Trust takes only a very small financial risk with the loans, as in the event of a young person failing to repay the loan, the Prince’s Trust can be repaid up to 75% of the loan by the European Investment Fund. [5]
The Technology Leadership Group is essentially a fundraising group for the Business Programme. It is unclear whether the business start ups helped by this money are technology enterprises.
Team Course
The Team course is a 12 week personal development course which is operated as a franchise by the Prince’s Trust. The course involves team building activities, a residential week, a community project and a work placement, and it aims to raise self-esteem, build confidence and develop personal skills. People going on the course also get their travel expenses and other costs paid.
The course is usually run by a local organisation who is known as the delivery partner and many of the delivery partners are local fire and rescue service organisations. The delivery partner, a local college and the Prince’s Trust, all get paid, usually by the local Learning and Skills Council (LSC). Payment is made according to “results” in respect of young people completing certain parts of the course. Sometimes so much money is paid that there is actually a surplus.[6]
The people going on the Team course are usually unemployed, and if they are receiving JobSeekers Allowance and other benefits they are still able to receive these whilst on the course. Some people in employment also go on part of a course but their employer has to pay a course fee of £1,250 [7] to the Prince’s Trust. The Prince's Trust employs fundraisers with "proven sales experience" to persuade employers to pay for their employees to go on the Prince's Trust Team Course. [8] In 2006/7 the Prince’s Trust received nearly £687,000 from employer’s fees for Team courses.
xl Clubs
xl Clubs operate mainly in schools and are for young people at risk of exclusion from school and/or at risk of underachievment. The informal clubs take place during the last two years of compulsory schooling and meet for at least three hours each week. The clubs are described to young people as being where “you choose what you learn. You have a lot of fun. And you do it all in school”. The clubs do not help young people to obtain GCSEs or other qualifications.
In 2006/7 the Prince’s Trust spent £4 million on the xl program and of this £298,000 consisted of grants to clubs, £1.26 million was spent on Prince’s Trust staff costs and £2.3 million on other direct costs and support costs.
Prince's Trust Timeline
See also
References
- ^ "European Social Fund in England 2007 – 2013". Retrieved 2008-04-15.
- ^ "House of Commons Hansard Written Answers 11 Jan 2006". Retrieved 2008-04-15.
- ^ "The Telegraph May 15th 2008".
- ^ "Services in Nottinghamshire". Retrieved 2008-07-5.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ "Guarantee for micro-credit to the Prince's Trust (UK)". Retrieved 2008-07-7.
{{cite web}}: Check date values in:|accessdate=(help) - ^ "Cheshire Fire & Rescue Service". Retrieved 2008-04-18.
- ^ "Nottinghamshire Fire & Rescue Service". Retrieved 2008-06-30.
- ^ "Prince's Trust Current Vacancies". Retrieved 2008-06-21.
- "Prince's Trust Accounts 2007". UK Charity Commission. Retrieved 2008-04-08.