The emergency appeal from the Jubilee Sailing Trust dated June 28th, could not be more dire.
Our objective is to urgently raise £1m (one million pounds) of unrestricted funds by Friday July 5th 2019 … If we are unable to reach this target, then it is likely the JST’s activities will cease immediately …
The Jubilee Sailing Trust (JST) is a registered charity that owns and operates the tall ships Lord Nelson and Tenacious, the only two tall ships in the world designed and built to enable people of all physical abilities to sail side-by-side as equals.
JST describes its mission as giving people of mixed abilities and circumstances the freedom to explore their ability, potential and place in the world through inclusive adventures at sea. Over the past 40 years, the JST has delivered nearly 50,000 transformative adventures. Throughout this time, our work has made a profound difference to the lives of people of all abilities, ages, backgrounds and circumstances. We have had a global reach and sailed our important mission to every continent on the planet.
So what has happened to bring about the potential shutdown of the organization? It is not entirely clear, but the press release notes: “..We have been struggling to stabilise our financial situation for the past 12 months, following a number of substantial mechanical issues across both ships, poor uptake of our winter 2018 programme, and the deferral of some partner projects from this summer to next year. This has increased our short-term liabilities and we have not been able to raise the additional income, above that which we normally would expect, which is necessary to cover this shortfall.”
I have only found accounts information up to 2014 with no record of staff costs and emoluments. I would be most interested to learn about how much the directors of the charity are taking home before I consider a donation.
See https://jst.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Annual-Report-31-March-2018.pdf for last years financials. The salary and benefit amounts do not seem out of line. Running about 1/3 of the total operating cost is about standard in most industry/business models. I do question the seemingly year additions to the staff, when it is obvious that money is slowly bleeding out. Throwing more people at a problem is usually not the right approach. Throwing the right people at the problem is.
There is much I could say about sailing with JST from personal experience but won`t except privately since speaking out only brings corporate complaint.