The Cup Trust

Howard Lake | 6 February 2013 | Blogs

• Tagged with:
• Charity Commission
• funding
• Prospect research

According to its website, The Cup Trust (1129044) “seeks to raise funds to enable us to make grants to other UK based registered charities”. It also states that it will, at some stage, list details of all grants it awards. According to its entry on the Charity Commission website, the Trust has a preference for small or start up charities that seek to benefit children and/or young adults. In 2009/2010, the Trust had an income of over £97,000,000, which was all spent. The Trust received a donation of £100,000 from The Somerton Charitable Trust (an “unconnected charity”). In 2010/2011, income and expenditure were listed at over £78,000,000. In 2011/2012, income was just over £5,000, with no expenditure noted.

Third Sector magazine, The Times, and other publications, etc., have expressed some concern that The Trust appears to be an attempt to use charitable status for tax avoidance. The Trustee is Mountstar (PTC) Limited. The Charity Commission has issued a press release, noting that “the Times and Daily Mirror articles about the Cup Trust have caused serious concern, not just among members of the public who give so generously to charities, but also among the many thousands of charities that demonstrate high standards of probity, ethics and governance and do so much to support vulnerable people in society”.   The Charity Commission had previously opened an investigation into the charity (March 2010) following concerns raised about its governance, its activities and how its funds were raised and applied.

So, there’s something unusual going on. The Charity Commission and a number of journalists are monitoring the situation. It will be interesting to see what happens to all that money.

Finbar Cullen, ResearchPlus

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.