The Prince's Trust

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The Prince's Trust

Formation	1976
Type	Charity
Purpose/focus	Helping young people
Location	18 Park Square East, London
Region served	UK
Website	www.princes-trust.org.uk
Remarks	Key people: Martina Milburn Chief Executive Sir Fred Goodwin Chairman

The Prince's Trust is a charity that helps young people who are long-term unemployed, who have been in trouble with the law, who've struggled at school, or who have been in care. Some other young people who are employed also go on Prince’s Trust courses, but they can only attend if their employer pays course fees to the Prince’s Trust.

1 People
2 Finances
3 Charitable Activities
4 Business Programme
5 Team Course
6 Timeline
7 See also
8 References

[edit] People

HRH The Prince of Wales founded the charity and is now its president. This position is that of figurehead and he has no legal responsibility for the charity. The Prince's Trust Council are the trustees of the charity and are legally responsible for management and administration. They also decide the policies and are not obliged to take notice of any views expressed by the Prince of Wales.

The Chairman of the Prince's Trust Council is Sir Fred Goodwin. Other members of the council include Charles Dunstone, Simon Fuller and Michael Marks CBE. Sir Fred Goodwin is the current chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS), one of the major corporate supporters of the trust. In 2007 RBS donated £1.1 million to the Prince's Trust and there were also commercial transactions of 0.4 million.

The Trust employs 688 people, including 72 people who work in fundraising and publicity. Two members of staff earn more than £100,000 with a further two earning between £80,000 and £90,000.

[edit] Finances

In 2006/7 the Prince’s Trust charity, and its trading subsidiary, Prince’s Trust Trading Ltd, had a total income of nearly £51 million, and expenditure of £46.6 million, giving a surplus for the year of more than £4 million. The Prince’s Trust Group currently has reserves of more than £18 million and plans to increase this to more than £19 million.

The largest source of income was the near £20 million received from the public sector. Of this nearly £8 million was from the European Union (EU), £3 million was from local and national government, nearly £600,000 came from the community fund and over £8 million came from a variety of other public sector sources. Most of this money was payment by these organisations for courses, training, mentoring and other services for unemployed young people, provided under contract by the Prince’s Trust.

Most of the EU money came from the European Social Fund (ESF) and could only be spent to help young people who are not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET). ^[1] This is the same group of young people who the Prince’s Trust has decided to help. Some of the ESF money went directly to the Prince’s Trust (£816,000 2006/7), but mostly it went to the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) who “doubled it up” with government money that then had the same restrictions placed on it. Some LSC money was given directly to the Prince’s Trust (£1.3 million 2006/7) but the majority went to the regional LSC offices who took out contracts with the regional Prince’s Trust offices to provide services for unemployed young people. The ESF money was channeled through so many routes it is difficult to determine how much it amounted to, but in 2006 the funding provided by the LSC to the Prince’s Trust in total came to approximately £11 million. ^[2]

The main voluntary income consisted of £6 million from charitable trusts, £3.7 million from company donations and £6.6 million from individuals. The cost of raising the voluntary income was more that £5 million, meaning that for every £1 donated, little more than 70p was spent on charitable activities with the rest going on fundraising costs.

Institutions that the Prince's Trust made payments to included: A National Voice (£163,000), Glasgow Metropolitan College (£51,000) and Bolton Wanderers FITC (£50,000).

[edit] Charitable Activities

The Prince's Trust carries out the following charitable activities.

The Business Programme helps young people start up their own business.

The Team Programme is a 12-week personal development course, offering work experience, practical skills, community projects and a residential week.

Get Intos are short courses offering training and experience in a specific sector to help young people get a job.

Development Awards are small grants to enable people to access education, training or work.

Community Cash Awards are grants to help young people set up a project that will benefit their community.

[edit] Business Programme

The Business Program is the program for which the Prince’s Trust is best known and it helps young people start up in business. A young person can benefit from the program if they are aged 18 to 30, are unemployed or working less than 16 hours a week. If they are in an unsatisfying low paid job they will need to become long term unemployed before they can be helped.

The help provided usually consists of a low interest loan of up to £4,000, which needs to be repaid by the young person. There is also ongoing advice from a business mentor. The business programme does not exist in Wales, despite the fact that the president of the Prince’s Trust is HRH the Prince of Wales.

In 2007 the charity spent a total of nearly £13 million on the business programme. Of this only £616,000 was spent on grants/loans to young people. Of the remaining money £3.6 million was spent on Prince’s Trust staff costs, £3.4 million on other direct costs, and £5 million on support costs.

The Technology Leadership Group is essentially a fundraising group for the Business Programme. It is unclear whether the business start ups helped by this money are technology enterprises.

[edit] Team Course

The Team course is a 12 week personal development course which is operated as a franchise by the Prince’s Trust. The course involves team building activities, a residential week, a community project and a work placement, and it aims to raise self-esteem, build confidence and develop personal skills. There is no charge for people going on the course who also get their travel expenses and other costs paid.

The course is usually run by a local organisation who is known as the delivery partner and many of the delivery partners are local fire and rescue service organisations. The delivery partner, a local college and the Prince’s Trust, all get paid, usually by the local Learning and Skills Council (LSC). Payment is made according to “results” in respect of young people completing certain parts of the course. Sometimes so much money is paid that there is actually a surplus.^[3]

The people going on the Team course are usually unemployed, and if they are receiving JobSeekers Allowance and other benefits they are still able to receive these whilst on the course. Some people in employment also go on the courses but their employer has to pay a course fee to the Prince’s Trust. In 2006/7 the Prince’s Trust received nearly £687,000 from employer’s fees for Team courses.

[edit] Timeline

Year	Event
1976	The Prince of Wales launches the charity
1982	First fund-raising concert
1986	The Prince's Trust All-Star Rock Concert in Wembley Arena to celebrate first 10 years of the Trust
1988	£40 million appeal is launched for The Prince's 40th birthday year
1990	The Prince's Trust Volunteers programme launched
1996	First rock concert in Hyde Park
1999	Trust charities are brought together as The Prince's Trust. This is recognised by HM The Queen at a ceremony in Buckingham Palace, when she grants it a Royal Charter
2000	The Trust is devolved. Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and each of the English regions now has it own Director and Council
2003	The 10,000th Development Award Volunteers programme renamed Team programme
2006	The Prince's Trust turns 30 with a 30th Birthday concert at the Tower of London, an ITV documentary, 'The Prince of Wales: Up Close', a live televised event on ITV, hosted by Ant & Dec and featuring the first interview with all three princes - Prince Charles, Prince William and Prince Harry. The show ended with a performance by Lionel Richie^[4]