If you have no mechanism to find out who the Corps Chair is and what their role is, you’re reinforcing my case.
Thanks!
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I still see a significant change in that this is now a whole-RAFAC charity, not just an ATC charity. To some that may seem minor, but as a charity, that is a significant change.
The most frustrating part of it is that it now commands the parent fund but is not part of our organisation - that is to say they have been known to decline access to funds for the administration of civilian committees and their projects.
They are simultaneously part of the civilian committee yet at the same time, they’re conveniently not. They have our money, are able to spend it on resource (staff, equipment, websites, expenses) for themselves but have no mechanism to spend it on us for the same. It has no interest in allowing us the economies of scale for our projects that HQAC benefit from because of its existence. Whilst I realise that’s not quite how it works, the point is that this new organisation has it much better than us.
I’m trying not to judge it too early in its life but the last I heard it was trying to sell flight simulators to the organisation rather than ask the organisation what flight simulators it wanted to operate.
Actually, I just got what you meant. However you’re expecting it to say something materially different whereas what CCP 11 will say is going to be a text replace of ATC General Purpose Fund with Air Cadet Charity. There will be no information added about it. Thankfully, the Charity Commission help us with most of that (including making it clear that civilian committees at any level can ever be a beneficiary of their funds).
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The current Chair of Trustees is Mark Osman, this information is free available on the the Charity website and his bio is extracted below.
Mark Osman Bio
From the ages of 16 to 19 Mark was an Air Cadet. At the age of 20 he was commissioned into the Royal Air Force and left 18 years later having achieved the rank of Wing Commander. He is a graduate of the Advanced Command and Staff Course where he won the best Defence Research Paper runner up prize and was awarded a Cormorant Fellowship by Kings College London.
Mark’s first job out of the Royal Air Force was as an Operations Director in central government. He then spent 16 years with PwC where he had a senior role in leading or assuring the delivery of national and international complex and high risk transformation programmes for public and private sector clients.
Mark took the lead trustee role, working with Jess, to transform the General Purposes Fund to become a fully independent grant making charity. He is motivated by the positive difference he believes the charity can make in terms of supporting all cadets (regardless of geography or background) to help them grow in confidence, resilience and find a sense of purpose in an increasingly complex world. He has a particular interest in raising awareness of the benefits/challenges of neuro diversity as it relates to young people.
They have their money that they have raised (via cadet subscriptions) and it is available to all units who have paid in to request allocation of funds via the grant process, in 2024 the split of grants was 60% to HQ RAFAC projects, with the remainder to Regions / Wings / Squadrons, I’d encourage a look at the Air Cadet Charity Presentation from the Commandants Conference, in particular slide 9 that shows the distribution of grants geographically.
They have set out, and some detail on this is in the linked presentation above to fund 1 simulator per squadron, this is likely to be the XBox type the Immersive Tech Team at HQ have proven works and can be used to deliver the Blue Wings Groundschool.
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You have fallen at the first hurdle! Mark Osman is NOT the Corps Chair!
Your second paragraph reinforces my point - money is available to Squadrons, Wings and Regions but not the civilian committees and trustees themselves for their projects, should they choose to have any.
So much love for everyone proving my points on this post.
I’m unsure what you mean by this?
They are a ‘grant making charity’. Can they not therefore give grants to CWCs?
If we at the Sqn want to buy a flight sim, and we apply to the ACC for a grant, surely that money goes to our CWC to buy the flight sim, then it is the property of the Sqns CWC? Or are you saying that isn’t how it’ll work?
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What possible “project” would a civilian committee have that isn’t also for the squadron? Other than a rugby club…
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Sounds like someone didn’t read the first post!
The first post that doesn’t refer to anything I would consider a “project”?
What are you referring to here? Have I missed what you meant and you weren’t talking about projects there?
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@JoeBloggs, have you taken a look at the application form to see the approval chain or looked at what they describe the function of their charity is. By way of an example, a Squadron can apply to the Air Cadet Charity for a computer but the Trustees cannot apply for a grant to get a till for example to improve the collection of funds. A till will safeguard the cadets’ funds and accountability of the cadets’ funds and is therefore for the benefit of cadets - it even fits the empowerment by technology aspect of the ACC’s objects, however since the squadron isn’t asking for it (financial management is notionally nothing to do with staff) it’s not possible to apply.
It’s a terrible example but I’m trying to indicate the separation. And I’m also trying to, throughout this chain, emphasise that this strange separation goes from the bottom to the top. At the top there is a) no committee to make the application for the nations Trustees anyway (like buying them all a Microsoft 365 licence) and b) the application process would have to be a preferential one as the standard application form wouldn’t allow it. This application would be nothing to do with the Commandant; they don’t oversee the civilian committees.
My understanding is that despite the name change it will still be only ATC as CCF contingents don’t pay in (they pay in & get grants from the CcF association)
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I hope there is at least an offline alternative offered to units without fast broadband.
Maybe it’s the example, but I’m not seeing the problem.
Are you trying to suggest that the Air Cadet Charity should fund Xero for squadrons? If that’s the case, I still don’t see the problem.
It would take a lot of persuading for me to buy into higher levels funding a CWC’s OpEx on products and services where they are the beneficiary and not the cadets.
Maybe there are some edge cases that might sway me, but anything with as tenuous a link to “cadet benefit” as this isn’t going to cut it.
I have no idea what this means.
All the time it is just ATC cadets paying into the pot, then I think that is how it should be. ATC cadets pay in, they get out. However I don’t think The ACC can say they are only there for the benefit of the ATC cadets only now. A few things in the powerpoint they did certainly are RAFAC wide (AT Centre fees and licenses, RAFAC insurance schemes etc) and I assume the RPAS kit they will be spending a lot of money on will be for RAFAC wide use, not just ATC.
I think they need to go down one of two roads. 1) Stop sub payments into the charity, and focus on finding funding through external fundraising, or 2) CCF cadets should be paying into the pot the same as ATC cadets do.
I think option 1 is most appropriate. Why are we paying subs into a charity that has it’s own goals and aims, that we have no control over?
So in my example above, a CWC can apply for a grant for that? As a Sqn can’t apply on it’s own, it would be the CWC that applies, surely?
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Which is a CWC function, as Squadron staff have far too much to do in the normal run-of-the-mill times. But if you look at the forms I perceive that a wing input could potentially kybosh the application.
In the accounts chart, subscriptions are denoted as donations, a subtle but significant point, Subs are normally mandatory rather than optional. Interesting that Merseyside wing and North Region have no and very little obvious presence within the social media about what they do and where and what subs monies fund…
Please can you indicate why the Trustees at a Squadron level (who would submit all grant applications) could not apply for a Till Unit in this example to Exploit Technology in the running & managing of the Squadron. To note that it also offers the operators training in skills that would be useful in civilian life?
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RC(N) is very much working towards all units having a broadband connection provided by the MOD by the end of 2025.
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It is a bit of an odd one that I have never fully understood. And now that the top level of where this money goes is outside of our control is pretty bizarre if you ask me.
And it’s certainly not a donation. We tell our cadets subs are £x a month. And they get no break down as to how much of that is taken off by each level in the CWC chain.