I notice it is the ATC GP Fund with the beneficiaries being the ATC and it is changing to Air Cadet Charity. The ATC GP Fund should only be supporting the ATC and not the greater RAFAC. Will the beneficiaries of the Air Cadets charity change to include the CCF.
seconded.
to take a well known example - The Royal British Legion and Poppy Appeal
Note the āandā - they are two separate organisations, one charitable (Poppy Appeal) the other a Membership organisation (The RBL).
People often donāt realise this and see the two as one - no surprise given the obvious link and connection.
But is also why there is so much confusion and bad taste in peopleās mouths when they see the RBL spending money on non-charitable items - such as the new logo (Daily Mail article - poor reporting but it has a catchy headline and so grabs attention) it was not charitable money (money destined for charitable purpose) that was spent, but from the RBL pot - raised via membership fees, legacy funds and other such incomes.
the charity commission is in place to stop the misuse of such funds - See the Captain Tom story in the recent press - all of the money he raised was intended for charity, any spenditure that was not in the name it was collected for is fraudulant.
The Poppy Appeal has very low ārunning costsā as the RBL pick up the tab.
What many donāt know is you can help the Poppy Appeal without being a member of the RBL, indeed āPoppy Appeal Organisersā those who arrange collection tins, buckets and poppy boxes to be on the streets and in shop tills and businesses have no obligation to be an RBL Member.
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Youāve hit another important point there too; the difference between restricted and unrestricted funds.
It is possible to make donations to charities and specify that it is subject to being spent only on certain activities. Theoretically, a donation could be made to the Air Cadet Charity and the donor could stipulate that the money is only to be spent on the provision of flying activities.
Iād be curious to see how the charity world mitigate that, if say every cadetsā parents decided to impose those terms on their donation (subs).
I suspect the subs will be payable directly to HQAC, who would then issue a grant to the Air Cadet Charity (this would mean subs wouldnāt be considered a donation), but itāll be interesting to see if thatās been thought of.
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but subs are not a donation. it isnāt voluntary to pay it or a voluntary amount, or indeed over a voluntary timeframe.
If however someone donated Ā£5000 to the organisation then yes they could legitimately say āthis must be spent on Xā
Our Squadron has had that recently with a Tesco blue coin charity scheme - the submission was for updated IT (new laptops) and so what we must spend the money on.
on a previous Squadron we had a grant for band instruments - the trouble being the CFAV who submitted the grant application left by the time the money arrived, and no one was interested or knowledgable enough to know how to spend it - and any interested Cadets that CFAV had recruited had also left or were about to. I think we ended up giving the money back as we couldnāt spend it in the manner it was intended
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At the risk of derailment and as someone close to being in the know, this is the press and general public adding 2 and 2 and coming up with 5.
Did people not realise that they already lived in one of the biggest houses in their village before all the fun and games? Breaching planning conditions isnāt the same as misappropriation of funds and paying someone a salary is typical practice in charity circles as shown above!
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Thankfully, else Iād be unemployed.
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And me! Charities paying staff isnāt new.
The issue is people like granting or donating money for the cause, it is often much harder to get money in to pay for back office costs like admin, data, HR, finance etc.
Back on topic:
I note for the first time they have more specifically mentioned sqns who are charities in their own right, not just wings and regions, and so my hope is they donāt do what they seemed to be trying before and forcing everyone to adopt this structure āto protect themā
I think it was always pretty apparent she was in it for self-promotion.
It seems pretty cut-and-dry that theyāve been misusing funds. She even claimed in an interview that Capt Tom āwanted his family to benefit from the release of his booksā but the blurb and foreword clearly says heās excited to continue earning money for charity long after heās gone.
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Yeah nah, youāre wrong.
Zero mis-appropriation of funds.
You know better than someoneās daughter their wishes? (bearing in mind it was a ghost writer for the book)
Out of the Ā£35m raised for NHS Charities, not a single penny was given for extra security, damage caused by news crews and plenty of others. To the point that NHS Charities didnāt ever actually thank the family, Boris did, Beckham did but NHS Charities didnāt. The fundraising efforts (pre Cpt-Tom Foundation) cost the family.
We all know the media lie and twist the truth about almost everything yet this one thing theyāre correct on?
The BBC reporting itself was impartial however they did add fuel to the fire by keep reporting on things that are typically quite insignificant (i.e. private citizen has breached planning consent).
Back on topic however, itās good that some progress is being made and will be interesting to see what RAFAC will look like in 5 years from the impact of this.
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A big thing with the Johnos is that they refused to make their qualifications RQF regulated, so a lot of folks who joined, did a few years of volunteering, got their ECA or Technicians quals sorted and then moved on to paid work, stopped volunteering and trained privately.
I did my FREC 3 with an St Johns Technician (also former 2 tour RAMC medic) who had to start at square one with training to be able to crew contracted ambulances so he had the right bit of paper
its put a lot of fresh blood off, as far as I know
Would that be a bad thing?
Detaching from the RAF would, I think, be a disappointment and problematic; but expecting a supporting charity to stump up some funds could be good for us.
Iām always amazed at what the Marine Society and Sea Cadets manage to do outside of MOD funding.
For example, every Sea Cadet and Royal Marines Cadet gets issued with a No1 uniformā¦Every yearā¦ Granted, they are pool items and reused between cadets, but I know the costs involved in such uniforms and itās still not to be sniffed at.
By comparison, our GP Fund has achieved the square root of sod-all in the timeframe.
Perhaps some new thinking is what we need.
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