The RNLI are not publishing their accounts??

[Bru]

It's a departure from their usual practice.

Is it? In what way?

I would be extremely surprised if they have ever published the accounts for general public consumption before they have been approved by the AGM. I know of no organisation that has ever done so (and I'm a former trustee of a large charity and ex- director of three limited companies

very few charities do this - in fact it would be illegal for most to publish accounts before they've been formally approved by the membership at an AGM

Not illegal as such (to the best of my knowledge) but certainly it would not be normal practice

Note that apart from the usual formalities there are actually only two items of real business on the AGM agenda one of which is....

5. To lay before governors, the RNLI Annual Report and Accounts 2020 for the year ended 31 December 2020.

That is as i would expect (it is not unusual for there to be no formal vote on the accounts, any objections, which would be unusual, in fact in my experience unheard of, would be raised in Any Other Business)

i suspect Sybarite is manufacturing his mole hill out of changes to the way the accounts are presented to the Governors ahead of the AGM due to said AGM being held virtually as a consequence of Covid

Moving on and for the erudition of a wider audience ...

It is not correct that the Governors (the voting membership) have no say in the governance of the RNLI

The Governors elect the RNLI Council which advises the Trustees. The Trustees are in turn elected by and from the Council (with the usual option to elect some trustees from outside the Council where necessary e.g to bring in specific expertise)

This is a common governance model for large charities. Indeed it is the model actively pushed by the Charity Commissioners who do not like large boards of trustees (the charity of which i used to be a trustee used to appoint all council members as trustees, over 40 people. It now follows the model above after pressure was brought to bear by the CC)

In summary, there is absolutely nothing unusual about the way the RNLI is governed.

As for the resurrection of the arguments about the boats, we've done this to death.

 

[penberth3]

Don,t do anything illegal but very clever how they spend other peoples money with incredible arrogance + own brand of social engineering .pick motive org too wil help alot.shame good people help others on water . Nothing will change stop giving and rely on yourself .

Can you repeat that in English?

 

[Mark-1]

at they all share in common, however, is the need to operate their rescue craft as effectively and efficiently as possible,

I don't think the RNLI has that need at all. They find it hard to spend the money they have, to the point the Charities Commission told them they needed to spend more. At that point the over engineered solutions really started to crop up (I assume) in an effort to get through the cash they need to burn.

I suspect if the RNLI operated their rescue craft efficiently they'd breaking the law!

Seems to me the RNLI should be allowed to build up reserves to the point where they can stop fund raising and fund themselves on an endowment model. (I appreciate that might be tricky legally.)

On the plus side, for those of us who love cool over engineered stuff, the situation over the last 25 years for so has been fantastic.