Partnership and Purpose – the relationship between business and charity Charles Rowett , current Chief Executive of Gotelees Solicitors, worked in financial services before leaving the private sector in 2011 to lead a Yorkshire based cancer charity, but returned to his adopted county of Suffolk in 2017 when he rejoined the commercial world. He explained to Adviser why he made the move, and shares his passion about business and charity working together.
community commitments. With radical and fundamental changes facing the law firms in the years ahead, it felt like an irresistible opportunity. And a chance to move back to our adopted home in Suffolk! Charities are – understandably – focused on addressing the needs of their beneficiaries, but increasingly we are seeing charities having to adopt a more corporate approach to their operations. In your experience how do you think the sector will change in the future? There are 168,000 registered charities in the England generating a total annual income of £75bn and employing 1.1m people with 3.6m volunteers. So, it’s easy to see how the major national charities, which let’s face it are more like FTSE100 corporations than charities, will have to become more corporate – that is inevitable. The Top 50 charities represent 0.03% of the total number of charities but account for £17bn (23%) of the total sector income. Whilst these charities do great work, they are not, in any way, representative of the sector and a day in the life of one of the 3234 charities operating in Suffolk will be very different.
Financially, the charity had been reasonably well-funded but struggled to attract new donors because of the relentless onslaught of marketing by national charities hoovering- up enormous amounts of local charity giving. We rebuilt our fundraising activities, set up some game-changing partnerships, including Yorkshire County Cricket Club (YCCC) and engaged much more closely with local people in towns and cities across Yorkshire and it worked! To add to our good fortune, generous legacies and a major new income stream from drug royalties helped us to transform the charity into one of the very best in the UK. By 2016 our finances were in great shape, the charity was well-managed, highly respected and had built very positive collaborations with universities, the NHS and Public Health and City councils. In many ways, I felt “my work was done”. YCR was well-funded and was going to need a leader that had much more intimate knowledge of the NHS and health innovation delivery than I did. It was exactly the right time to move on. Again, by a series of unexpected coincidences, looking at a number of opportunities to head up major national charities, Sue and I realised that although we loved Yorkshire, we really missed Suffolk. Having worked in manufacturing, logistics, consulting, financial services and now charities, I needed a new challenge. I knew of Gotelee Solicitors and their reputation and was very impressed with their charity and
You worked in corporate life for over 30 years before going to work for Yorkshire Cancer Research. What made you make the move, and why have you now moved back into that world? 2011 was a strange year for both me and my family. At that time I was working in financial services in Norwich, the economy was still in the depths of the recession and the sector was frustrating - it really made me think about “doing something more meaningful with my life”. On a personal front, my father had been diagnosed with kidney cancer and my mother had been fighting cancer for several years. Most of my relatives had died of cancer, so this was always going to be “a cause” that had relevance to me. By coincidence, Yorkshire Cancer Research (YCR) came up by chance in a conversation which persuaded me that this could be the right move. I met them and was completely hooked by their passion and commitment. So, we moved to Yorkshire. I enjoyed five, life-changing years, it gave me a completely different outlook on work, family, health and the importance of local communities. My priorities centred on developing a new strategy: moving away from long-term bench research to highly focused patient-centred innovation, cancer prevention, early diagnosis and clinical trials.
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