Air ambulance closes down existing organisation
Howard Lake | 20 April 2010 | News
The Ireland Air Ambulance organisation based in Northern Ireland, which has been criticised for the amount of money spent on administration and how it is run, has been wound up.
Last year, a BBC investigation revealed that 90% of the money collected by the Ireland Air Ambulance Charity in its first year went on wages and overheads.
The organisation’s most recent accounts for 2009 show that it raised £478,000, with £387,265 spent on ‘charitable purposes’. Most of the expenditure described as charitable, however, is for staff and fundraising. In the accounts it says that a viable air ambulance service will require income of £125,000 per month but in the last year the total amount left after administrative and fundraising costs was just under £70,000.
In its accounts the air ambulance organisation described the tone of recent reporting as “very misleading and had a severe impact on our reputation and our fund-raising”.
It now says that the association known as Ireland Air Ambulance has been dissolved. The existing trustees and some of the staff have been stood down and a new charitable company has been formed which will retain the old name. A new website has been set up but contains very little information. The air ambulance accounts also showed net assets of £88,008 but it is not known if these have transferred to the new organisation.
A similar organisation has been established in County Kerry in the Republic of Ireland – the All Ireland Air Ambulance (www.aiaa.ie) but does not appear to be connected to the Belfast-based charity.
After four years fundraising on both sides of the border, no helicopter has ever materialised and there does not appear to be any link with health or emergency services.
www.irelandairambulance.com
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.