Local trust makes ‚€10,000 donation
Howard Lake | 5 April 2006 | News
A County Carlow company trust has made a ‚€10,000 donation to a special school. St Laserian’s School was recently presented with the cheque courtesy of the Springhill Trust, a charity set up by Springhill Woodcrafts in Pollerton and run and managed by staff at the company.
St Laserian’s is just one of the charities that has benefited from the generosity of the trustees in recent times but the donation was one of the biggest made by the trust to a local charity.
About five years ago, the board of Springhill Woodcrafts began to develop a strategy that would help to develop and preserve the ethos and culture of the company. A small group made up of directors and staff members engaged in a process of research to discover how this could come about. Then in November 2003 the shareholders transferred 40% of the ordinary shares of the company to a newly registered charitable trust, which is controlled by the employees of Springhill Woodcrafts.
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In effect this gave employees a form of negative control over the company’s operations, thereby enabling them to exercise considerable influence and power in the affairs of the company and the employees would share in the fortunes of the company through a profit-sharing arrange-ment, explained John Fitzpatrick, one of the trustees.
More recently, the Springhill Trust has refined its focus and is concerned with helping children in need both at home and in Third World locations. We switched our focus this year to children’s charities. People simply write in and make a request and then we assess it to see if it fits our criteria, John explained.
About 40% of the money given to charity last year went to worthy causes within Ireland. The other 60% went abroad. Among the groups that benefited included cancer research and the Niall Mellon Township Challenge.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.