Charitable losses

WITH Canal & River Trust (CaRT) now known to have misled the public with exaggerated claims regarding the number of ‘Friends' it has (Not so many ‘Friends'), perhaps it's time to have a long hard look at the voluntary income stream and see how well it is doing, writes Allan Richards.

Irrespective of whether you are a ‘Friend' or not, it does not make pleasant reading.

Planned losses

Firstly it should be explained that voluntary income comes from more than one source but CaRT does not provide a breakdown. Suffice to say, it has always been considered that individual giving via regular donation (i.e. the ‘Friends' scheme) would provide a much higher level of income than other charitable sources (e.g. corporate giving). For example, British Waterways estimated that individual giving would provide its successor with 58% of its £4.3 charitable income in 2021/22.

The original plan was that voluntary giving would make losses in its first three years whilst the Trust built up numbers of ‘Friends'. This year (2015/16) it is meant to break-even with its expenditure in attracting donations equalling its income from them.

Projected vs actual

The following table gives the long term projections of net voluntary income (taken from British Waterways' 2012 published plan) compared to actual income taken from CaRT's annual reports. The asterisked (*) marked figures are not ‘actuals' but new projections based on CaRT's latest three years plan and provided in response to a Freedom of Information request.

All figures are in millions with losses in brackets:

Year    Projected Actual

2012/13  (0.3)      (0.9)

2013/14  (0.4)     (1.0)

2014/15  (0.5)     (1.1)

2015/16  (0)        (0.4)*

2016/17  (0.5)    (0.3) *

2017/18  (1.4)    (0.1) *

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Total     ( 0.7)     (3.8)

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Losses over six

It short, British Waterways' original projections gave a small cumulative profit over six years. However, CaRT's performance has been so poor that it has lost £3 millions over its first three years and now believes that smaller losses will continue for the next three.

One wonders how many of those that became ‘Friends' when CaRT started, realise that not a single penny of their monthly donations have been used for charitable purposes over the last three years. How can they be if voluntary giving is running at a loss?

One also wonders how many realise that we are probably looking at ten years or more before the voluntary income stream is showing a cumulative profit.

... if it ever does?