I've been looking at the annual filings of UCCF. The most interesting thing? What's missing from the reports.
(If UCCF are unfamiliar, I've written an introduction: Who are UCCF?)
Like Soul Survivor, UCCF has a number of connections to other charities and churches. And yet their filings rarely show any transactions with those charities.
Is that plausible?
Well, let me tell you about The Areopagus Trust.
The Areopagus Trust has no website and uses no social media channels. The only information available about them comes from the filings they're required to make with the Charity Commission.
I tell a lie. They are mentioned in one other place on the Internet: on the biography page of the UCCF CEO, Richard Cunningham:
"Richard has been Director of UCCF: the Christian Unions since early 2004. Immediately prior to that he was Executive Director of the Areopagus Trust, developing initiatives in confronting secular thought in universities across Britain and Europe and, at the same time, was Director of Evangelism at St Andrew’s Church, Oxford."
If we look at the Charity Commission website, we find a statement about the purpose of The Areopagus Trust:
"(a)for or towards such charitable purposes and to make donations to such charitable institution or institutions at such time or times and in such manner as the trustees may in their absolute discretion think fit (b)without prejudice to the generality of sub-clause (a) the trustees shall apply the trust fund in particular towards the provision of facilities and accommodation for the use of students who are members of the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship (UCCF) and who are attending a course of study given by the charity in order to train and educate them in apologetics and biblical exegesis with the object that they embrace the christian faith more intelligently and to enable them to relate that faith in a skilful and convincing manner to the secular society."
I find it hard to follow, but it does seem to centre UCCF in its mission.
The annual filings of The Areopagus Trust give some more info about this relationship:
"During the year the Trust continued to provide accommodation and facilities to enable courses of study to be run for students at its principal place of operation. The Trust received fees for the provision of the facilities from the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship (UCCF), who took responsibility for all expenses arising in connection with the courses."
(Source: Page 2, Accounts and TAR 2019, Charities Commission website)
I've worked in charities, but I know little about trusts. The gov.uk website has some useful information about trusts. They use this definition;
"A trust is a way of managing assets (money, investments, land or buildings) for people. There are different types of trusts and they are taxed differently.
Trusts involve:
-the ‘settlor’ - the person who puts assets into a trust
-the ‘trustee’ - the person who manages the trust
-the ‘beneficiary’ - the person who benefits from the trust"
In the case of The Areopagus Trust, the settlor is identified as someone called David Douglas Monteath.
Each year the income of the trust is composed of donations (made, perhaps, by Monteath), fees and investment income. I think that the fees here are from UCCF, because no other charity gets mentioned in any of the available reports, and UCCF is central to the purpose statement of the charity. That is an assumption on my part.
If that assumption is correct, UCCF made these payments to The Areopagus Trust over the last 6 years:
- £16,000
- £17,500
- £20,000
- £21,000
- £17,500
- £21,000
In total the trust says they received fees of £113,000 in that time period.
So what? UCCF probably pay all sorts of organisations in fulfilling their mission, right?
There are two reasons I bring this up.
Firstly, I find it strange that UCCF makes no other mention of this charity. I went through their last 15 years of filings, and there's not a single mention of The Areopagus Trust.
Secondly, the UCCF CEO, Richard Cunningham, had a significant connection to the Trust from 2003 until at least 2018.
You see, the contact address he gave for some of his trusteeships:
So what was Cunningham's relationship with The Areopagus Trust? He's not listed in any of the available filings for the charity.
Some possibilities...
- Maybe he is close friends with the staff member (1 is listed), or the trustees, and they let him use their building as a contact address for 15 years.
- Maybe he is the single staff member, drawing a salary from The Areopagus Trust as well as UCCF.
- Maybe he lives at the building, in some sort of unpaid-caretaker-role.
This matters because these possibilities would each present a conflict of interest. Is paying the Areopagus Trust for training facilities in the best interest of Richard Cunningham or in the best interest of UCCF?
Maybe there's another explanation. Do let me know if you can see one - my contact details are at the top-right.
Long-time readers will remember that Charity Commission rules say
"disclosure must be made of transactions involving trustees, related parties, staff renumeration and ex-gratia payments"
(Source: The Charities Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP), page 86 )
If Cunningham lives at that location, or works there, my understanding is that it must be disclosed in the UCCF annual filling.
In the last 15 years of filings... there is no mention of such a disclosure.
So, what is Cunningham's relationship with the Areopagus Trust? And if it's significant, why have the UCCF trustees not disclosed it in the annual filings?
