Top charities to join forces

Published on Sunday 23 November 2003 00:00

SCOTLAND’S top three charity-givers are to join forces in an attempt to ensure the millions they donate to good causes are used to maximum effect.

Monaco-based tycoon Irvine Laidlaw, retail entrepreneur Tom Hunter and Andrew Muirhead, the chief executive of Lloyds TSB Foundation for Scotland, have already met to discuss how they could work more closely together to increase the impact of their donations, and cut down on bureaucracy faced by charities.

The news comes days after Laidlaw, reputedly Scotland’s richest man, announced he planned to sell his conference-organising company - the Institute of International Research - valued at around 720m - in 2006 and give between 10m and 20m a year to charity.

Last week, Laidlaw, who bankrolls the Tories in Scotland, teamed up with First Minister Jack McConnell to launch a new venture - The Laidlaw Youth Project - aimed at children leaving local authority care. Laidlaw invested 1m in the scheme, while the Scottish Executive put in 250,000.

Laidlaw, 60 , told Scotland on Sunday: "This is at any early stage, but I can confirm I have met up with Tom, who is an old friend, and with Andrew Muirhead, for preliminary talks. The idea is that we would work together and encourage charities to work together. We wouldn’t be trying to run or control the charities, just to do everything we could to make their own task less burdensome."

At present, the Lloyds TSB Foundation for Scotland is the country’s biggest benefactor, distributing 9m to grassroots charities in Scotland this year alone, while the Hunter Foundation, which has donated 12m since it was established in 1998, comes second.

Ewan Hunter, chief executive of the Hunter Foundation, said collective giving for some projects would be encouraged.