Who paid for the Mike Pilavachi interns?

Remember Mike Pilavachi's interns?  You may recall that they don't pay for the internship. 

So, where does the funding come from for them?

Let me remind you of some other aspects of the operation:

• Each year 2-4 interns shadowed Pilavachi as he travelled and spoke at events
• The programme was part of the work of the Soul61 charity
• Pilavachi selected the interns. There was no advertised way to apply
• Soul61 was led by Andy Croft, but there seem to be many conflicts of interest that muddy his role

Looking back over the last decade, I see the Soul61 charity receiving money from two main sources.

The festival connection

Firstly, every year a sizeable chunk of money comes from the Soul Survivor charity. This is the charity, led by Mike Pilavachi and Liz Biddulph (until 2014 ), or Mike Pilavachi and Duncan Layzell (from 2014 to 2019), that runs the festivals and other Soul Survivor events such as the Loud and Clear conference.

There are two parts to this money: donations from the charity, and donations from a collection taken at the events the charity runs.

When I say 'donations from the charity', this is Pilavachi and/or Biddulph or Layzell,  granting charity funds to Soul61, to fund work that Pilavachi runs. 

Pilavachi and Biddulph were also trustees of Soul61 (the latter stepped down in 2019).

To fund work that Pilavachi runs? Yep,  most of the donations to Soul61 go on Mike Pilavachi's interns, not on the gap year programme they make lots of noise about.

You can see this in the details of many of the filings for the charity. There is normally a page like this:

(Taken from 'Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2017', page 12)

This example lists the costs of the 'Soul61 course' as £146,794. And the fees paid by participants of that course as £168,682. This year only £1,071 of donations went on the course. Almost all of the donations that came in funded the Mike Pilavachi interns.

The payments from Soul Survivor vary between £12,000 and £15,000. There is a much larger amount the year after the festival stops: £128,732.  (I know,  I know. I'll come back to that in a future post.)

 I wonder if all the trustees knew this money was paying for the interns? The separation of these charities reduces accountability from those people.

We should also note that Soul Survivor gets audited in a different way, by a different company, from Soul61. 

That's permitted, given their income differences. It also means that the auditors may not have been aware how these funds ended up being spent - in some cases on flights to New Zealand for interns.

And then we have the collection that is taken at the festivals and other events.

And this bothers me, to be honest.

Here's how it works. 

Each year there's a moment where they take a collection at the festivals.

Jo Alden, who did the gap year programme one year, remembers the collection as happening:

"towards the end of each week, either the last or penultimate session."

Jeremy Skinner remembers the operation this way:

"The buckets themselves were held by staff/soul61 in pairs, and the delegates would come up to put money in. The pairs weren’t allowed to let the bucket out of their sight. Buckets were loaded into a van and then delivered to collection room. Delivery overseen by finance team" 

Now, a collection in a service doesn't ring alarm bells. What bothers me is how this was pitched to the attendees.

In a previous post I talked about how the Charity Commission is strict that donations must be used for the purpose they're given. 

So what were the words said from the stage before this collection? 

I hunted around to check, but I can't find any recordings of this part of the event. The wording may have varied slightly, as this collection happened a number of times each year.

Helpfully, they give information in the annual filings of Soul Survivor. In the 2017 we read of the plan to:

"Take a collection at each of the summer events to be used towards activities that work for social justice"

(Source: page 21 of Group of companies' accounts made up to 31 December 2017 from the Soul Survivor filings at Companies House.)

In 2016 the same phrase appears. 

(Source: page 17 of Group of companies' accounts made up to 31 December 2016 from the Soul Survivor filings at Companies House.)

That's good, right? These sort of causes seems to chime with Jesus' exhortations to serve the poor.

Excellent. 

But...

But, then the money gets split up. 

In the 2018 report, this division is described as:

"Total collection of £81,078 contributing £27,026 to each of Soul Action, Central Asia, and Soul61."

Soul61?  That feels like a stretch. 

You see, the Soul61 describes its purpose as:

"Young people are trained to serve and to lead others in the UK and around the world"

(Source: page 2 of 'Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 August 2018' from Soul61 filings at Companies House)

This isn't the same as social justice. The young leaders may have no intention to work in social justice in the future. And even if they did, the money isn't going directly on social justice. Perhaps if they were training existing leaders of social justice programmes Soul Survivor could claim that.

The 2016 filings are quite interesting. The trustees give a paragraph to explaining each division of the collection. But not Soul61. No explanation there.

Is this approach fair to the people making gifts?

Actually, given the audience of Soul Survivor, we should ask ourselves: is this approach fair to the children making gifts? (A sizeable chunk of the donors will have been under 18.)

And, as we've just seen most of this money was spent on Mike Pilavachi interns.

Did teenagers and adults giving to social justice expect that the money would end up funding travel expenses for interns to shadow him?

Here's the breakdown of the portion of the festival collection that reaches Soul61:

Financial year	Money received by Soul61 from collections
2011/2012	£30,150
2012/2013	£33,908
2013/2014	£34,147
2014/2015	£31,528
2015/2016	£40,721
2016/2017	£27,228
2017/2018	£35,123
2018/2019	£30,972
2019/2020	£0 (no events happened in 2020)

This wasn't a one-off. This was normal. Every year for 8 years.

The church connection

The other regular source of funding for Soul61 is the Soul Survivor Watford church/charity. Again, there are two parts to this.

Every year £12,000 is donated from Soul Survivor Watford to Soul61. Some years this amount was bigger, for example in the 2016/2017 financial year it was £24,500. In the first financial year of Soul61 operation, 2011/2012, there was a particularly big donation of £44,641.

As before,  in practice this was a charity that Mike Pilavachi leads (or co-leads with Croft in later years), moving some of its funds to another charity that he is a trustee of. To pay for an operation that he runs.

Pilavachi was a trustee of Soul Survivor Watford and a trustee of Soul61.

How do the leaders of the church describe this money transfer to church members?

Do they even mention it?

I wonder if they say "We donate to Soul61" and let people jump to the conclusion that this money supports the paid-gap-year programme that the charity also runs. That programme provided many of the people who help run the Sunday services at SSW.

Because, according to their filings, the money doesn't go there. Instead, most of it goes on the Mike Pilavachi interns.

Sometimes Soul Survivor Watford will have a collection in a service specifically for Soul61. When that happens it's on top of the £12,000 and is labelled differently. In this example, from the 2015/2016 report it's labelled 'Soul Survivor Watford celebration offering':

I should point out the giving is very normal in the Christian world. Most church services have a moment where people give money. My experience in 9 churches is that there's rarely pressure, but I realise that experience may differ.  

In total, in 2011-2021, Soul Survivor Watford provide £188,905 of funding to Soul61.

You know, it strikes me that this arrangement of separate charities would be a good way to limit objections to intern funding. Church leaders could say "We're giving to Soul61, to fund young leader development" without mentioning the interns specifically. Once the money moves to the Soul61 charity it's likely hidden from the view of staff, trustees, and church members.

More Soul Survivor blogs

Questions about a £500,000 gift and Mike Pilavachi

The odd lines of accountability for the Mike Pilavachi interns

Updates

An earlier version of this post mistakenly used the phrase:

'In 2016 it was phrased slightly differently:

"Take a collection at each of the summer events to be used towards activities that work for social justice."'

That was amended to:

'In 2016 the same phrase appears.'

Thanks for the correction Sally and Kate.