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Date Transcribed: 7th November 2018
Interviewer(s): Clare
Respondent(s): Jonathan Fagan (Trustee of the Ten Percent Foundation)
INT: Okay, so, what is the Ten Percent Foundation?
RES: The Ten Percent Foundation is a charitable trust, that was set up in 2002 to deal with the donations from the Ten Percent group of websites.
INT: So, can you tell me why and how it was established?
RES: It was established because when we set up the Ten Percent companies, we thought it would be a good idea to donate ten percent of our profits to charity every year and we realised quite quickly after trying to donate money to charities that it was a difficult thing to do because the charities were a bit suspicious, as to why a company would want to give them any money.
INT: So, what did you do next?
RES: Well, we went through the difficult experience of trying to set up a charitable trust, which took forever with the Charity Commission and… But that’s now in place and has been since 2003. So, we’ve been donating for fifteen years into the charity.
INT: And why ten percent?
RES: Why not? Would be probably the best answer because we… That was a figure we thought was a good idea. It’s connected to the tithe principle going back into medieval times and that’s just what we ended up doing.
INT: So, can you tell me a bit about the charities you’ve supported so far?
RES: Well, we’ve supported numerous charities around the world, in Africa mainly and the UK. So, our charitable principles are that we donate to charities in those areas. We won’t donate to charities that have staff salaries of more than about seventy-thousand, because we don’t think that’s appropriate for any… Any charity to be giving that sort of money.
So, types of charities we’ve donated to have been local charities in the North West area, so, Centre 63 in Kirkby. A domestic violence charity on Merseyside. We’ve given money to local sports clubs, we’ve also supported the Riding for Disabled, the Clywdian Riding for the Disabled, and a trampolining group in Denbigh.
INT: And how do you decide what charities you’re going to support?
RES: We have two charity trustees. We meet fairly regularly, every year to determine who gets the money. And we like ongoing projects, we’ve been supporting four children in Tanzania for about five years now through their education. And similarly, we’ve done work with a couple of Liverpool charities, of a similar nature where we’ve been giving them ongoing support for a number of years. And we look at new options that come into us from members of the public and our clients and go from there.