Cherie Blair forced to bail out her own women's charity
CHERIE Blair’s women’s charity has spent more on staff wages and running costs than any of the worthy causes it supports.
It has paid more than £181,000 in salaries, overshadowing any of the donations it makes.
The Cherie Blair Foundation For Women, which aims to promote equality between the sexes, supports just seven projects.
But by the time it has paid its chief executive’s salary of £113,000, another £70,000 on unnamed consultants and temporary staff plus other running costs of £258,000, struggling groups have to carve up what is left between them.
In the 18 months to October last year, Mentoring Women in Business received just £11,808 while Sunny Money for Business was handed £29,508.
The top beneficiaries, Fostering Young Israeli Women Entrepreneurs, received £93,863 over the same period and the Business Development Centre for Women £117, 983.
By comparison the chief executive’s salary took up nearly a sixth of the £671,000 raised by Mrs Blair’s charity last year, of which just £375,000 went on its charitable causes.
Earlier this month, the Faith Foundation set up by her husband Tony, the former Prime Minister, was also criticised for paying senior staff whopping salaries of up to £120,000.
The former chief executive of the foundation, Connie Jackson, a friend of US President Barack Obama, quit last April after just 10 months in the post. She was paid £113,255 according the Foundation’s accounts.
Documents filed at Companies House also reveal that Mrs Blair has failed to attract the sort of wealthy benefactors who have poured money into the Faith Foundation. The mother of four has had to lend her charity, set up in 2008, more than £265,000 so that it can meet its obligations.
The Tony Blair Faith Foundation, meanwhile, has a balance sheet of £4.3million – nearly a million up on the previous year.
Last night a source close to Mrs Blair’s foundation said: “Cherie is finding life outside Downing Street much tougher than she expected."
“It is fair to say that the money being generated by the trust is way out of proportion to its staff costs and overheads. It seems astonishing that Tony’s Faith Trust is raising millions of pounds while by comparison Cherie is raising peanuts. It seems she has been left out in the cold while the great and the good rush to be at Tony’s side.”
Charity guidelines advise that an ideal fund- raising ratio is a 15p to 25p spend for every £1 donated but the foundation is spending 40p for every £1 donated. Currently there is just £23,800 in its bank account.
Last April it even instituted a cost-cutting regime to get a grip on its costly overheads. Of the £265,000 lent to the charity by the Blair Partnership, founded by Mrs Blair, only £64,000 has been repaid.
A spokeswoman for the foundation said: “The foundation is in pretty good financial health for a new charity. We have received nearly half-a-million pounds in donations and Cherie Blair has in addition given us both a long-term interest- free loan and a significant donation of her own."
“The foundation now has a small staff of four, the highest salary being £55,000, so our administrative costs are much reduced and they will stay that way.”
