MINUTES OF THE ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING OF THE BRITISH & FOREIGN SCHOOL SOCIETY HELD AT RESOURCE FOR LONDON, 356 HOLLOWAY ROAD, LONDON N7 6PA AT 1.3O PM ON FRIDAY 13 MAY 2016.
Present: Rt. Hon. David Lammy MP (President)
Professor John Furlong (Vice-President)
Professor Steve Hodkinson (Chair)
Rev David Tennant (Vice-Chair)
Mr Steve King (Treasurer)
Mr Dominic Bond, Ms Lynne Broadbent, Ms Charlotte Cashman, Mr Lamin Daffeh, Mr Robert Dimsdale, Mr Chris Eccles, Mrs Angela Hillyard, Mr Roger Howarth, Mrs Diana Hoy, Mrs Karen Hughes, Mr John Kidd, Mr Graham Kingsley, Ms Sarah Lane Cawte, Mr Peter Miller, Rev Prof Stephen Orchard, Ms Mangal Patel, Mr Terry Ransome, Mr Stephen Ross, Ms Sarah Rowse, Mr Andy Sexton, Mr Leslie Stephen, Mr David Swain, Professor Linda Thomas, Dr Emily Tomlinson, Dr Iris Turner, Dr Ian Waitt, Ms Juliet Weale, Mr Stephen Wordsworth and Mr Brian York.
In attendance: Dominic O’Reilly (Director) BFSS, Vic Craggs (Grants Consultant) BFSS
Richard Goatcher (Finance Manager) BFSS, Belinda Lawrance (Grants Administrator) BFSS and Nick Simkins (Auditor) Moore Stephens LLP.
Convening Notice: The Director read the Convening Notice at the request of the President.
Welcome: The President welcomed all those present, including Nick Simkins from the Auditors (Moore Stephens LLP) and Ilse Howling, Chair of UNICEF UK.
AGM16/01 Apologies for Absence were received from Miss Fatima Anwar, Dame Jocelyn Barrow, Mr John Bell, Mr Raymond Bevan, Ms Phaedra Casey, Mrs Ella Charlesworth, Ms Divine Chipanga, Dr Geoffrey Chorley, Miss Joyce Cook, Professor Joy Palmer Cooper, Mr Charles Crawford, Mrs Fiona Dodwell, Mrs Pamela Draycott, Mr Reginald A Elson, Ms Monique Francois, Mr Andy Gibbs, Mr William Harnden, Miss Elizabeth Hunter, Dr Diana K Jones, Mrs Yvonne Limbrick, Ms Mandy Mordue, Rev Dr Simon Oxley, Dr Ben Ramm, Dr M H Richardson, Dr Jaz Saggu, Rev Dr John Sutcliffe, Mrs Joyce Taylor, Mr Iestyn Thomas, Mr Cliff Winlow and Ms Gillian Wood.
AGM16/02Members’ Declaration of Interest
There were no declarations of interest.
AGM16/03Minutes of the AGM held on 22 May 2015
These were approved and signed.
AGM16/04Annual Report 2015
Report by the Director
The Director paid tribute to the work of his predecessor, Imogen Wilde, whose work and achievements were reflected in the BFSS Annual Report of Grant Giving2015 which was distributed to those attending the meeting and posted to those who were not there.
He said that he was on his 38th day in the job and had already attended meetings of the Grants and Investment Committees and now an Annual General Meeting of the Society. He added that the Trustees’ attention to detail and commitment meant that for any application to become a grant it most definitely had to prove its case.
The Director went on to say that much of the Society’s grants in the previous year had focused on providing access to education in post-conflict or post-natural disaster areas such as Nepal, West Africa (where there had been the Ebola outbreak) and Syria and that the Society could build on this relationship with applications for funding the next phase of work from those which it has already funded. He gave an example of how this could work (which was neither post-conflict nor post-disaster) with a UK charity called HealthProm, which was working in Russia helping children with disabilities gain access to education. As a result of a pilot scheme funded by BFSS, HealthProm had received a much bigger three-year grant from the European Council.
He finished by making it clear that the Society still funded projects in the United Kingdom and mentioned two charities which had received grants at the previous Grants Committee meeting – one from Cornwall and the other from East Anglia.
AGM16/05Accounts 2015
The Treasurer told the meeting that income was similar to that of last year with outgoings slightly higher due to the decision of Trustees to give out a higher amount of money in grants. Despite turbulent conditions in the market over the past year, the fund finished at a similar level even though more had been given out in grants.
AGM16/06Results of election of Treasurer pursuant to Statute 5
The President asked the Director to read out the result of the election, which had been administered by the Electoral Reform Society. He did so. Steve King was re-elected as Treasurer for a three-year term.
AGM16/07Results of elections of Councillors pursuant to Statutes 5 and 55
The President asked the Director to read out the results of the elections, which had been administered by the Electoral Reform Society. He did so. Professor Joy Palmer Cooper, Karen Hughes and Leslie Stephen were all elected to the Council for a three-year term. Peter Miller and Stephen Wordsworth were both re-elected to the Council for a three-year term.
AGM16/08Appointment of Auditors
Moore Stephens LLP (previously known as Chantrey Vellacott DFK LLP) were re-appointed as Auditors accordance with Statute 6by an overwhelming majority of the meeting.
AGM16/09Resolutions from Dr Ian Waitt with the support of five Members
Resolution 1: That all Members shall have open access to the Register of Members
Resolution 2: That all Members shall have full access to all information concerning the affairs of the Society
Resolution 3: That not less than 50% of grant expenditure shall be on UK projects
Resolution 4: That there shall be a full day conference in 2017 in London, time to allow full participation of Members living at a distance, on Society future policy and development, with the invitation open to all Members to submit papers
The President invited Dr Waitt to speak in support of his Resolutions. The President said that Dr Waitt should cover all the Resolutions in one speech.
Dr Waitt said that he had consulted the Charity Commission’s RS7 brochure on Membership Charities. He believed that open access to the Membership Register would ‘allow the free flow of ideas, reflections, guidance, perspectives, comment and experience’
Referring to the word ‘Foreign’ in the Society’s name, he said that, in the 19th Century, ‘Foreign’ meant the British Empire.
He also asked the meeting to consider what it felt were ‘appropriate further educational opportunities’ in what he said was ‘an era of food banks’.
Dr Waitt said that ‘charity begins at home’ and ‘yet approximately 87 per cent of the Society’s grants is going abroad.’ He drew a comparison with the UK Government’s commitment to provide 0.7% of GNI to international aidand said that, by ‘calling only for a minimum of 50%[to be spent in the UK]’, the resolution was ‘modest in the extreme’.
The President then invited Prof Steve Hodkinson, Chair of the BFSS Council, to reply to Dr Waitt.
Prof Hodkinson said that on Resolution 1 he had taken advice from the Office of the Information Commissioner who had advised him that this was impossible.
He continued that, concerning Resolution 2, the Society’s grant-giving strategy was set out clearly in its Annual Report.
It was, he said, set out in the Grant-Giving Review that grants are ‘awarded on merit rather than location’ and that the result of an ‘arbitrary 50:50 match’ would be to see the ‘funding of poor projects in one area or turning down good ones in another.’
Prof Hodkinson said that the Councilwas willing to plan and organise a Members’ Conference and would ask the AGM to allow it to consult the full membership in the next e-newsletter. Before the Council spent resources planning it [the Conference], he said, it would want to know if the membership wanted this to happen.
The President then invited comments from the floor.
Brian York said that, in the early 19th Century, ‘most grants went overseas and not just to the British Empire.’ He felt that the allocation of grants was a matter which ‘ought to be left to the Trustees.’
Roger Howarth commented that he found the Resolutions ‘very poorly put together’ and they seemed to be ‘a way of getting something off one’s chest.’
Robert Dimsdale said that he ‘agreed broadly with the Resolutions’. He felt that there were ‘far too many projects that are too small and too scattered.’
Mr Dimsdale said that he was in favour of ‘fewer, bigger, properly-monitored projects’ and mentioned but did not name another charity which, he said, ‘had partnered with a bigger source of money but which required proper evaluation in return.’
The President brought the discussion to a close and called for a vote on the Resolutions. Dr Waitt said that he had five proxy votes but the Chair told him that proxies were not permitted and this would require a change in the rules.
The President commented that one of the Members included in Dr Waitt’s proposed proxy votes, Dame Jocelyn Barrow, was a woman in her 80s. This was taken to mean that the President felt it was wrong to pressure a woman of such an age and whose ill health had prevented her from attending BFSS meetings for a number of years into providing a proxy vote.
Note added after 2017 AGM
Please note the minute from the AGM of May 2017, in response to the above minute:
“Dame Jocelyn Barrow asked for it to be noted that while the minutes had suggested that she was susceptible to pressure, she had not been susceptible since the age of 10. Rt Hon David Lammy apologised if his comment had come out poorly and caused any offence.”
2016 Minutes Continue:
The President called for a vote and the results were as follows:
Resolution 1: In favour - 2Against –25Abstentions – 1
Resolution 2: In favour – 2Against – 25Abstentions – 1
Resolution 3: In favour – 2Against – 25Abstentions – 1
Resolution 4: In favour – 2Against – 25Abstentions – 1
The Resolutions were therefore defeated.
AGM16/10Date of next meeting
This was set at Friday 12 May 2017.
AGM16/11Closing remarks
The President read from the 2015 Grant-giving booklet about the achievements of the grant recipients. He asked those present to remember the achievements of the Society and those it funded. He spoke of his concern of ‘these broadly similar resolutions’ which had now been ‘brought on three occasions.’
The President then left and handed over to the Vice-President, who invited Ms Ilse Howling to speak.
AGM16/12Presentation by Ilse Howling, Chair, UNICEF
Ms Howling thanked the Society for inviting her to speak at its AGM. Her presentation began by looking at the role of education in preventing conflict and the successes and failures achieved in the effort to fulfil the key objective of Millennium Development Goal 2 for education that ‘by 2015children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling’.
Ms Howling also spoke of how almost half of the world’s out-of-school population is in Sub-Saharan Africa and talked of the importance of the quality of education provided and that access alone was not enough.
She listed Unicef’s education priorities as ‘equity; early learning; quality education; education in humanitarian action; global partnerships and systems strengthening’ and added that, in Unicef’s global strategic plan 2014-17, approximately 20 per cent of the available programming budget is allocated to education programmes in these five priority areas.
Of particular interest to the meeting was her comment on the‘growing recognition of the need to ensure that education in emergencies is similarly prioritised’ [with life-saving interventions such as food and WASH].
She said that it is estimated that ‘37 million children are out of school in crisis-affected countries and that 22 million are primary aged and 15 million are of lower secondary age’. This was of great interest to the meeting given that BFSS has restoring access to education in post-conflict areas as a priority for its grant giving.
There were many questions from the floor on how UNICEF drew up its list of priorities, how it worked with other organisations and how it monitored and evaluated its projects.
The Vice-President thanked Ms Howling for her presentation and her answers and declared the AGM closed at 4.10 p.m.