Support Lloyds TSB Foundation for Scotland
Howard Lake | 15 October 2009 | Blogs
Over 12000 grant awards and almost £85m awarded since 1985 to charities working in Scotland and overseas. The reason for their extraordinary decision not to accept any new funding applications?
Simple. Lloyds Banking Group – now partly owned and funded by the bank of you and me – wants to sweep away everything that makes the Lloyds TSB Foundation for Scotland unique. Oh, and haven’t actually got round to giving them any money this year.
The four Foundations in the UK were established by an Act of Parliament when the Trustee Savings Bank was floated on the stock market in 1985. A covenant was also put in place guaranteeing their independence and a fair and transparent funding formula.
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The Lloyds Banking Group has tried to ignore the convenant and shift the goalposts. Effectively it wants to bring the Foundations inhouse and change the funding mechanism. Currently the bank has no say in how the Foundations disburse their funds – if brought inhouse that could change.
Each of the Foundations sets its own rules for applying grants. But generally they – and especially the Foundation for Scotland – have taken the broadest possible approach.
Many fundraisers, the organisations you work for, and the causes and needs you support, will have benefited from a Lloyds TSB Foundation grant over the years.
Lloyds TSB Foundation for Scotland has worked hard to ensure that the poorest communities got their fair share: it is proud of its roots in the values of the Dumfriesshire man who founded the TSB in 1810 believing that everyone, regardless of wealth or status, could benefit from a savings bank.
The trustees at the Foundation for Scotland have shown an independence of thought and action that is to be applauded. They are standing up not only for themselves but for us all. The offer being made by Lloyds Banking Group would result in an estimated £22 million less for good causes in Scotland over the next nine years. Unlike our politicians who have failed to rein in the worst excesses of our financial sector, the Foundation’s trustees are taking a firm stand.
For fairness, for independence, for transparency, for universality.
They are doing so for our benefit. The least we can do is support them.
Join the cause at http://apps.facebook.com/causes/373633/38383816
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.