Three gifts. Three years.
£100,000
£100,000
£500,000
All going to Soul Survivor's Soul61 charity.
But there's something else. The written records of these donations don't add up. I'll explain more.
But first, I need to recap the role of trustees. Trustees are important - they're the people who "share ultimate responsibility" for governing a charity. They have a long list of legal obligations. For example, trustees must:
- make sure that charity assets are only used for its purposes
- deal with conflicts of interests
- ensure the charity complies with relevant laws
(Source: The Essential Trustee)
Back to those donations. As previously mentioned, I don't have particular concerns about the donor company at this stage. I do have concerns about the money going into the Soul61 charity and the wording that references Mike Pilavachi.
The first gift: in the 2016/2017 annual filings of Soul61, we find this passage:
"During the year, a significant donation of £100,000 was received, to be used at the discretion of the charity trustees but not necessarily for the day-to-day activities of the charity."
(Source: Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2017, page 6)
Okay, that's fairly standard wording. The trustees decide how the money gets spent. In this case, as in some other charities, the director (Andy Croft) is also a trustee, and so is part of that conversation.
This section of the report is signed by Andy Croft. He does that most years with the Soul61 reports. However, we should remember that Croft also seems to have a number of conflicts of interest that may alter this power dynamic.
Later on in the same report we find this passage:
"Soul61 received a donation of £100,000 from a donor wishing to support the work of various Soul Survivor activities, to be used at the discretion of Mike Pilavachi"
(Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2017, page 16)
These two statements can't both be true.
Either the trustees decide together how the money is used, or Mike Pilavachi decides by himself.
One, or the other.
But this trustee report says both.
I see 3 possibilities about the contradiction here:
- a simple mistake
- deliberate, with the blessing of the trustees
- deliberate, without the knowledge of some of the trustees
Can you see another option? Let me know if you can, and I'll consider adding it. Contact details are in the top-right of the page.
1. Is this a simple mistake?
Might this be a case of incompetence rather that design? That's possible. However, as we consider the circumstances, the chance that an error has occurred gets ever-smaller. I can think of a number of reasons these statements are unlikely to be mistakes:
a. The next year the same mistake happened again
"During the year, a significant donation of £100,000 was received, to be used at the discretion of the charity trustees but not necessarily for the day-to-day activities of the charity."
(Source: Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2018, page 6)
and later on:
"Soul61 received a further donation of £100,000 from a donor wishing to support the work of various Soul Survivor activities, to be used at the discretion of Mike Pilavachi."
(Source: Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2018, page 16)
b. Then the mistake happened another time, at the end of the 2018-2019 financial year
This is the year of the £500,000 gift:
"During the year, a donation of £500,000 was received, to be used at the discretion of the charity trustees but not necessarily for the day-to-day activities of the charity."
(Source: Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2019, page 6)
And the contradiction is found later in the report:
"Soul Survivor received further donation of £500,000 from a donor wishing to support the work of various Soul Survivor activities, to be used at the discretion of Mike Pilavachi."
(Source: Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2019, page 16)
c. The mistake happens in relation to the 3 largest gifts ever received by Soul61
In particular, the £500,000 donation is 33 times bigger than the next-largest gift from an external organisation.
The next-largest gifts are:
- £15,000 donation from The Tufton Trust in 2013-2014
- £15,000 donation from Holy Trinity Brompton in 2013-2014
d. This mistake is in the trustees' annual report - they'd spot it
They're expected to review this. Wouldn't they spot a mistake? At the time of these gifts the Soul61 trustees were, in alphabetical order:
Given the many legal responsibilities of trustees, wouldn't one of them spot this in one of these 3 years?
When you consider these four aspects together, you reach the conclusion that it's possible, and unlikely, that these were mistakes.
2. Is the contradiction deliberate, with the blessing of the trustees?
Maybe. I find it hard to believe though. Trustees have lots of legal responsibilities. I can't imagine that all of them would stand for this, particularly in a document that's part of the public record.
Some of them, such as David Saunderson, are leaders of other organisations with a reputation to consider.
3. Is the contradiction deliberate, without the knowledge of some of the trustees?
I find this explanation more plausible than the other two. This would explain how these contradictions exist in three separate trustee annual reports.
Remember how these donations were given to the single Soul Survivor charity that didn't get audited? I wonder if auditors would have spotted this conflicting documentation.
I wonder if routing the gifts to Soul61 then allowed someone to change their purpose?
So what? Does this matter?
It seems to me that either:
a. YTL Utilities wanted the trustees to decide how the money was spent and the sentence about Mike Pilavachi was added in some other way
or
b. they wanted Mike Pilavachi to decide how the money was spent and the sentence about the trustees was added in some other way
Charity Commission rules put a lot of focus on what the donor wants. The Fundraising Code of Practice says:
"You must make sure that donations are used to support the cause in line with any conditions attached to the donation. This may be conditions the donor sets when making the donation or representations you make (either verbally or in fundraising materials) about how the money will be used."
I've seen organisations put a lot of time and effort into making sure this happens. It's a big deal where charities are concerned.
Soul61 must honour the donor's wishes. What were they?
The donor knows.
The staff or trustees who liaised with the donor know.
Maybe they will share that information at some stage.
Overall, the contradictory information shifts and blurs control of £700,000 of funds.
It gives someone in leadership the opportunity to quote part of the report when making requests about the money.
If option a was true, then Pilavachi could, for example, ask an administrator to transfer an amount to the Soul Survivor charity for travel costs. Unless the employee had read the whole trustees report they wouldn't realise the request was invalid.
If option b was true, the trustees could block a request from Pilavachi to move some of the money to the Soul Survivor Watford charity, by citing only one section of the report. While we might prefer that, given the allegations against Pilavachi, it would run against donor wishes and break the rules of the Charity Commission.
The end result is that one party (either Pilavachi or the trustees) gain power that they didn't have over £700,000 of funding.
More Soul Survivor blogs
Questions about a £500,000 gift and Mike Pilavachi
Soul Survivor spent more than £14k on each Mike Pilavachi intern
