Not so many 'Friends'
THE Canal & River Trust (CaRT) released information last week contradicting the claim by its Chairman, Tony Hales, in its 2015/15 Annual Report that it had more than 11,000 ‘Friends', writes Allan Richards.
The exact figure for the number of ‘Friends' at company year end (31st March 2015) was 9,754!
Major achievement?
The press release entitled ‘A record year of success for the nation's canals', which announced the Annual Report, proclaimed as one of its major achievements:
'At 31 March, over 11,000 people were donating each month to support our work—contributing to voluntary donations of £1.6 million—and rising still, with 13,000 ‘Friends' donating as at 1 July'.
However, as was pointed out in the narrowboatworld article ‘A record year of failure', CaRT spent £2.7m raising this money £1.6m so actually lost £1.1m.
No mention of that of course!
... or that the figure was actually 9,754
CaRT's usual statistics
One does not have to dig far into CaRT's 2014/15 Annual Report to find the claim of 11,000 ‘Friends' as it appears on page 2 in a signed welcome message from Trustees Chairman, Tony Hales:
'.... we now have more than 11,000 Friends, people who generously support us with their monthly donations.... '
And just in case you missed it, it is quoted again on page 54, in large print, as a sidebar alongside a description of the functions of CaRT's fundraising committee, as shown.
Key Performance Indicators
At the May Board meeting, Chief Executive, Richard Parry, presented the Board with the Trust's 19 Key Performance Indicator results for the financial year 2014/15. The last on the list of KPI's was the number ‘Friends' which was given as 9,754, shown below.
That CaRT had less than 10,000 ‘Friends' at year end (rather than more than 11,000) is confirmed again by May's marketing report to the board. Simon Salem, Marketing & Fund Raising Director stated in section 2.1 of the report ‘We met our goal of 10,000 active regular donors just after the financial year end'.
In other words, on 31st March (year end) CaRT had less than 10,000 ‘Friends' rather than more than the 11,000 claimed.
Special Board meeting
On June 18th a special Board meeting was held, partly by conference call and partly in person, to finalise the Annual Report and accounts. According to the minutes, five Trustees sent apologies. It seems that they could not spare 25 minutes on the telephone to participate!
Whilst a rough draft of the Annual Report was provided at the May Board meeting, this did not include the chairman's welcome. It is not known if the chairman's report was circulated prior to the special Board meeting in June. Even if it was, it might have changed as minute 15/044 of that meeting delegated Tony Hales and Richard Parry to finalise the Annual Report for publication.
Thus it can not be said with any degree of certainty if Trustees were aware, prior to publication of the Annual Report, that Mr Hales intended to claim the failure to reach the goal of 10,000 ‘Friends' at 31st March as a major success of more than 11,000.
What can be said is that neither the May nor June board meetings give any indication that Tony Hales intended to step down two years into his latest three year term of office. However, the announcement was made very shortly after the July Board meeting that he was.
.... perhaps this was when other Trustees took action after finding out he signed a misleading Annual Report on their behalf.