In accordance with the philanthropic tradition of the City of London Livery Companies, the Guild of Educators operates a separate charitable fund (Charity Reg. No. 110435). It does so to support the development of those who are engaged in the profession of education, development and training.

The objects of the charitable Trust are:

At present, the Guild is able to reflect those objectives by way of three annual awards:

In addition the Guild, through in-kind contributions o f time and effort by individual Freemen, both administers the City Livery-wide, Livery Schools Link (see www.liveryschoolslink.co.uk ) and itself offers help to schools through voluntary service, e.g on one-day courses on Enterprise, Job applications and interview skills, and Financial Literacy

The Trustees of the fund are currently:

Mrs Susan Fey (Chairman)
Dr Peter Warren
Dr Nicholas Carey
Professor Raoul Franklin
Mr Francis Hazeel
Professor Max Weaver
Sir Roderick Floud (Associate Trustee)

Two challenges face the Trustees. The first, and ultimately the most important, is to create a collective legacy, from educators and those concerned for the quality of educational and training delivery, and to determine the best use, at any given time, of the income from that endowment by way of charitable giving in support of educators.

The second, and immediately critical challenge, is to enable the Guild to move forward to Livery status by building up the charitable fund to some £150 000, as soon as possible, at which time we may apply to become a "Company without Livery" and, in due course, to £300 000 to enable the Company to apply for full Livery Company status and a Royal Charter.

The sources of our charitable fund are 3-fold:

At present the Fund stands at £62 000 and yields an income of £6500 per annum including the Gift Aid recovery.

As a key element in determining an appropriate strategy for the Guild's charitable giving (at a time when the Fund's total assets are small and the prime objective must be to increase it size), the Trustees held an Open Meeting for Freemen in July 2005 out of which emerged some valuable ideas on both expenditure and income. Those ideas and those of Trustees, themselves, were circulated to the full Freedom in September 2005 and the totality of responses and proposals informed Trustee thinking when they met in November to determine a strategy for 2006.

The subsequent news that our Sponsoring Alderman, John Stuttard, was to become the new Lord Mayor from November 2006 and that he would generously include the Guild among the beneficiaries of the Mayoral Appeal 2007 has led to some re-thinking of both short and medium term strategies for fund-raising in support of our Charitable fund, as well as the role we should play in supporting the Lord Mayor's Appeal, itself.

Our conclusions await the outcome of those further deliberations; they are likely to take the form of a set of specific fund-raising activities spread over the next 21 months.

For further news on these activities and on the growth of the Fund, watch this space!

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