Cycling UK Forum

this is one of the questions left hanging from the previous layout.

I saw interim accounts that the donation was running at £750,000, but would be reduced, by some miracle, to £250,000. Simon Connell told us that it was reduced to £450,000. I've now got a piece of paper that suggests that the year end donation was £872,000, of which £170,000 went to Campaigning. This on subscription income of £1,526,000.

Is it £453,000, £750,000 or £872,000?

Time for a formal FoI style request to HQ perhaps?

Would making a formal request render up the true figure?

Part of the problem with my understanding of the picture is that CTC donates to the Trust, who then provide CTC with staff and services. It's a confusing mess: it looks like the majority of membership fees get spent on charity work, but in fact a lot of the money donated to the Trust is spent on membership benefits.

I wonder whether we can divide the money spent into "traditional club expenditure" (i.e. Touring advice, magazine, RtR network support, National Office staff, overheads) and "charitable expenditure" (i.e. spend on things that don't directly benefit members). I know the boundaries will be debatable, but rough proportions would do.

Personally I'm very happy for CTC to spend some of my membership subscription on general charitable things that won't benefit me. But I'd prefer that the majority of my membership is spent on direct benefits for the club members, including encouraging more people to join.

If I want to donate money to a cycling charity, Sustrans is there and very well established.
If I want to join a cycling club, I'll pay a membership fee to join CTC.

Fonant wrote:Part of the problem with my understanding of the picture is that CTC donates to the Trust, who then provide CTC with staff and services. It's a confusing mess: it looks like the majority of membership fees get spent on charity work, but in fact a lot of the money donated to the Trust is spent on membership benefits.

I've heard this before, but there's nothing in the papers that I've received to suggest that this is the case. The (tiny) expenditure on RtR may be in the Trust accounts, and Campaigning is also in the Trust accounts, but, as a member of a DA committee that sees the service to member groups, and as an individual member I see no evidence that any amount of money donated to the trust is spent on member benefits.

Simon L6 wrote:

Fonant wrote:Part of the problem with my understanding of the picture is that CTC donates to the Trust, who then provide CTC with staff and services. It's a confusing mess: it looks like the majority of membership fees get spent on charity work, but in fact a lot of the money donated to the Trust is spent on membership benefits.

I've heard this before, but there's nothing in the papers that I've received to suggest that this is the case. The (tiny) expenditure on RtR may be in the Trust accounts, and Campaigning is also in the Trust accounts, but, as a member of a DA committee that sees the service to member groups, and as an individual member I see no evidence that any amount of money donated to the trust is spent on member benefits.

You may disagree but I think this spreads some light on the situation:

http://www.ctc.org.uk/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabID=5363#three

The public accounts at the Charity Commission site don't help very much. Expenditure in 2007/2008 is split into:

• Cycling development - £878,508 (42%)
• Cycle training - £509,030 (25%)
• Cycling information & helplines - £136,536 (7%)
• Campaigning - £190,624 (9%)
• Services to cycling professionals - £313,053 (15%)
• Environmental projects - £41,068 (2%)

I don't know what "Cycling development" is, but perhaps items 3, and 4 could be mostly traditional member benefits, adding up to perhaps £327,160, or 43%, of the CTC's donation to the Trust (£758,000 in 2007/2008) coming back to CTC as a club. This reduces the effective donation to the Trust to £431,000 in 2007/2008, but that's still quite a large chunk of membership income.

Elsewhere in the public accounts we are told that the Trust spends £550,285 on 19 full-time staff, who I understand are the National Office people. This expenditure doesn't appear in the Statement of Financial Activites, so I presume they're included in the above figures.

Why do some people insist on giving links to HQ's ambiguous propaganda?

John Catt wrote:You may disagree but I think this spreads some light on the situation:

http://www.ctc.org.uk/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabID=5363#three

It doesn't really, as it doesn't say what the Trust is spending its money on.

Also the comment "As the Trust has grown and its contracts and grants make an increasing contribution to overheads, the Club has been able to reduce the amount donated each year." doesn't seem to be supported by the figures presented. Here are the donations from CTC to the Trust since the complete split from the table on the page linked to above:

2005/06 = £375,000
2006/07 = £606,000
2007/08 = £758,000
2008/09 = £453,000

Apart from the last year's donation (which this thread is questioning and which apparently appears as £872,000 somewhere) I see an increasing donation from CTC to the Trust each year.

bikepacker wrote:Why do some people insist on giving links to HQ's ambiguous propaganda?

Because some people don't consider it to be propaganda. One could equally ask why people add links to the opposing propaganda...

I want to see links to all aspects of the discussion, so that I can make my own mind up!

bikepacker wrote:Why do some people insist on giving links to HQ's ambiguous propaganda?

Perhaps because undecideds such as I have read it, and are more likely to be convinced by debate that answers the points there than by unsupported references to lies?

drossall wrote:

bikepacker wrote:Why do some people insist on giving links to HQ's ambiguous propaganda?

Perhaps because undecideds such as I have read it, and are more likely to be convinced by debate that answers the points there than by unsupported references to lies?

I have to agree.
If you want people to oppose the Merger then you have to give them something a little better to go on than just stating that the opposing view is propaganda and lies, etc. I'm sure that you believe that you have such material, but unless you relay it clearly then why should anyone believe that the opposing view is unfounded?



(ed, on account of my original post went all around the houses to say what I could have said in a couple of lines)

Rather than using the SORP regulated financial statements as published in annual reports and given to the Charity Commissioners what this member would like to see is the SOFA / management accounts used for running the Club and the Trust so as to understand how the transactions contained therein relate to the reality of the operation. Unlikely to happen. But surely a Councillor could have oversight of a copy if they wanted.

Just for those like me who don't know these acronyms:

SOFA = Statement of Financial Activities
A requirement of all charity accounts, introduced by the Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP), it is a method of analysing all income and capital in a way that shows what happened to it.

SORP = Statement of Recommended Practice
Recommendations issued by the Charity Commission on the way in which a charity should report annually on the finances and resources entrusted to it.

John Catt

The following is from your link above, (which is why I have addressed this to you.)

The average subscription rate for 2008/09 was £24.36.

Do you know how that is calculated? Is it simply total subscription income ÷ total membership? It does seem to be a lot nearer to the reduced rate than to the full adult rate. I do appreciate that a lot of OAPs are taxpayers (I am one myself) and that for a joint subscription a tax payer can Gift Aid the total sub, even if the partner is not a taxpayer, but such a low avarage seems to suggest that there may be a lot of non-taxpayers among the CTC membership.