Author: willw

Factary New Trust Update 2018 Review

Posted on by Shaun

In 2018 Factary’s New Trust Update contained profiles of 224 newly-registered grant-making trusts and foundations. Our review of the year found that 62 of these were founded by individuals with an estimated wealth of at least £10m which equates to more than 1 out of every 4 trusts featured in our reports. This is an increase of 30% from last year. The combined wealth of these philanthropists is in excess of £25bn and includes a number of global philanthropists who have chosen to set up a foundation in the UK.

Our New Trust Update 2018 infographic report includes a range of useful analysis and statistics including the philanthropic areas of interest of the trusts and foundations featured throughout the year, the source of funds of the High Net Worth Individuals creating their own foundations and their geographical distribution. It also includes mini profiles on a handful of the most interesting and potentially major foundations and their settlors.

Whilst there are on average around 100 new organisations registered with the Charity Commission each month that state they make grants to other organisations, in practice the vast majority of these are not what would be considered grant-making trusts or foundations. We scrutinise and carefully select the organisations that are featured in New Trust Update, making it a vital resource for finding out about new sources of funding in the foundations market, particularly from High Net Worth families and corporates. With details on around 20 new grant-makers each month, including notes on the professional and philanthropic interests of the settlors and interview notes on the aims and objectives of the trusts and foundations, New Trust Update gives fundraisers a head-start on building relationships with these new philanthropic vehicles before they appear on any other directories.

Subscriber numbers for New Trust Update are limited to maintain exclusivity of the information contained. If you would like to find out more, or to receive a downloadable version of the report, then please contact Nicola Williams or call us on 0117 9166740.

The £6.8 billion Recipe for Philanthropy

Posted on by Shaun

There is a kitchen theme in this year’s Foundations of Wealth, published today, with Gordon Ramsay featured alongside the owner of the UK’s largest franchise for Domino’s Pizzas, and a kitchenware manufacturer.

They are three amongst 42 wealthy philanthropists who have set up a grant-making trust during 2014, all of them profiled in depth in our freshly-prepared report.

New trusts appear to be boys’ toys. 93% of the wealthy founders whom we profile are men, with just 7% women. That is the same ratio as in 2013, and slightly more male than in 2012. It reflects the gender imbalance in great wealth in the UK with around 10% of the Sunday Times Rich List being women, and a hard-to-explain gender imbalance in structured philanthropy. As “Untapped Potential” reported in 2011, just 4.8% of European foundation grant monies go to women and girls (see Shah, Seema, Lawrence T McGill, and Karen Weisblatt. Untapped Potential: European Foundation Funding for Women and Girls. New York: Foundation Center, 2011.) Factary is currently engaged in a study of philanthropy amongst women of wealth to try to find out why.

As in previous reports, the founders of UK grant-making trusts are economically active – more than two thirds (69%) are under 65 – a similar percentage to 2013 and a slightly younger profile than 2012, when 53% were under 65.

Their’s is new money – more than three quarters are self-made millionaires – with wealth principally from financial services, retail, manufacture and property. The total wealth represented by the 42 we have profiled in depth is over £6.8 billion – reflecting the increasing concentration of wealth in the UK.

The founders are distinctly international, with four people of Indian descent and three others with non-UK nationality, as well as founders who have lived and worked abroad. The UK is not the easiest country in the world in which to create a charitable foundation (it is arguably easier in the Netherlands, for example) but the combination of a wealth management industry that is growing and gearing up for philanthropy, a broadly stable economic climate and people – philanthropists – who want to make their giving more effective has led to a boom in the establishment of trusts. Last year we reported on 214 newly created grant-making trusts in our monthly New Trust Update report.

Could you build a partnership with these new trusts and foundations? Our report tells you about the founding philanthropists, about their philanthropy they set up their foundation, and about the new foundation’s interests. Health, welfare, education and training are the big subjects, and we’ve identified clusters of interests linking health and arts, education and welfare. We have researched an in-depth profile of each of these leading philanthropists, and here you will find biographic information that will help you build a link with the trust, or the founder.

Philanthropy is alive and well in the UK amongst people of wealth. These good 42 at least are willing to share their wealth with the rest of society.

Factary Atom: what makes it different (and quite probably better)?

Posted on by Shaun

A few people in various research forums have asked how Atom differs from other providers of network maps. I thought I’d run through a few of the key differences here.

First, Atom is a tailored service. Unlike other providers, which mainly if not exclusively offer subscription-only access to their database, in an Atom project we would work with you to identify your specific needs and then prepare a dataset to meet those needs. For example, we could provide a map showing the connections of your board, your most generous supporters or potential major prospects. We can provide you with online access to this map, along with a guide instructing you on how to use it. We provide a copy of the data gathered during the course of our research for you to import back into your database. Finally, we are also able to provide a report drawing attention to any items of particular interest within your map.

Second, in contrast to many other network map providers we do not limit the information we gather to business positions only. We only use data from reliable sources (Companies House, Bureau van Dijk/DASH, Debrett’s People of Today and Who’s Who, to name a few) and do not ‘harvest’ unverifiable data from the internet. We also include information on individuals’ non-business positions – so any charitable affiliations, club or society memberships, social or family connections, leisure interests, and so on.

Third, we make use of more information that we gather to draw connections. Several other network map providers do include educational information on the people in its database – but I’m not certain whether they draw connections on that basis, which Atom certainly does. We also draw connections between people on the basis of shared leisure interests. This doesn’t indicate a real-world connection of course, but is immensely useful in strategising. In fact, since Atom is a tailored service we are in principle able to include any data available in the public domain within our maps.

The upshot of this is that our maps potentially present a more rounded picture of the individuals within it. A report we published earlier this year on the basis of the data gathered for Atom projects since its launch in 2011 showed that half of all connections discovered were on the basis of non-business positions. Given that non-profits often have different aims from businesses when using maps this additional data is, we feel, vital. For example should a map of your board show that one of them is connected to a trustee of a major grant-maker via a shared membership of a London club, this could form the basis of a useful point of access.

Finally, we use a method of showing connections between individuals that takes into account not only shared positions at an organisation but also the time spent at that organisation. If two people have spent time at the same company, but during non-overlapping periods, then there’s no true basis for saying a connection exists between them. Atom takes this information into account, drawing direct links between individuals only where they’ve spent overlapping years at an organisation.

Factary Director Martine Godefroid workshop at 9th AFF Conference

Posted on by Shaun

Martine Godefroid, Managing Director of Factary Europe, will be giving a workshop with Mélina Mercier, Director-General of the Fondation de l’UPMC, at the 9th Fundraising Conference of the L’Association Française des Fundraisers.

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Événement phare du secteur de l’enseignement supérieur et de la recherche, cette conférence vous permet, une fois par an, d’être au cœur des enjeux du fundraising, de rencontrer un grand nombre de professionnels du secteur et de monter en expertise sur tous les sujets qui font votre quotidien. Quel que soit votre niveau, quelle que soit la taille de votre structure, vous pouvez être de la partie!

L’innovation, la créativité et le renouveau sont au cœur de vos métiers; ils seront également au centre de la 9ème édition de la conférence et des sessions qui y seront dispensées. Inspirez-vous des intervenants internationaux qui seront à l’honneur cette année et puisez des idées applicables dans votre structure! C’est un moment unique pour prendre la température du secteur, motiver vos équipes… et vous-même! Vous pourrez partager vos bonnes pratiques, vos succès mais aussi vos craintes et échanger avec vos pairs tout au long de la formation.