87. How to start and scale a charity: Supporting 7000 kids a week through football | Charlie Hyman

0:00Welcome to All About Business with me, James Reed, the podcast that covers everything about business, management, and leadership. Every episode, I sit down with different guests who bootstrap companies, masterminded investment models, or built a business empire. They're leaders in their field, and they're here to give you top insights and actionable advice so that you can apply their ideas to your own career or business venture. do charities need to think more like businesses and what can businesses learn from charities in return today on all about business i'm joined by charlie hyman founder and ceo of bloomsbury football a charity that has grown from a one-person operation into an organization supporting thousands of young people every week through football in this episode we discuss building a mission-driven organisation, scaling impact without losing focus, and why some of the biggest lessons in leadership apply whether you're running a charity or a business.

1:06Well, today on All About Business, I've got football on my mind. Maybe you have. It's World Cup fever, isn't it, out there? And I couldn't be more delighted than to welcome Charlie Hyman, who is the founder and CEO of Bloomsbury Football Foundation, a London-based grassroots football charity that Charlie founded in 2018, shortly after he graduated from university. And Bloomsbury Football, as I understand it, aims to use football to improve young people's lives, which sounds like a great thing to do. Charlie was named London Sports Inspirational Young Person of the Year and has been recognised in 30 Under 30 Sports Leadership Lists.

1:47so well done for that Charlie thank you for coming to talk to me I think the beginning let's kick off forgive the pun with what is you know what is the Bloomsbury Football Foundation what is it that you do? So as you said Bloomsbury Football Foundation is a charity we use what I think is the most powerful thing in the country football up there with religion to inspire young people and hopefully transform their lives for the better I think if I zoom out and think about the biggest challenges facing society for young people at the moment. Lack of trusted adults and role models, lack of a sense of belonging, struggling with mental health, declining levels of activity.

2:30And if I had to create a solution to all of those problems, something that young people already love that was low cost, non-clinical, scalable, I think I'd come up with something that looked like football. It's just that we already have this thing called football that people have an understanding of and so what Bloomsbury does is harness the power of the nation's game to improve these young people's lives at scale and as you say we are based in London at the moment but excitingly about to expand nationally for the first time opening in the Midlands in September. So you founded Bloomsbury Football Foundation as a recent graduate after leaving university I mean, you were very young when you started.

3:16Straight out of university. Yeah, it was the first job I had. I'd done, you know, bits and bobs of work experience, but really never a proper job. And yeah, the inspiration really came from growing up. I love football. Every boy who grows up loving football dreams of being a professional player. And I wanted to play for Arsenal, who I love. But when I was 15, it was school made everyone go and do volunteering. and the options they offered just weren't very exciting. So I went and found my own volunteering opportunity, which was actually basically picking up the cones and chasing the dog who stole the football at my younger brother's football team in the local park.

3:57And initially I went to go and do it because it was just like a tick box exercise as part of the volunteering. But I actually really enjoyed it. And particularly the coach who ran the group was very inspirational. and I ended up asking him for a summer of work experience to sort of follow him around. And his full-time job was working for Fulham football clubs in the community program. So what age were you then? I'm 17. Right, so this is why you're at school. Yeah, this is sick form. So this is such good advice for anyone who's sort of thinking about what they might want to do. Definitely. Do a bit of volunteering, you never know where it might lead.

4:32My friends, so when I was going down to South London working um for Fulham's foundation age 17 thought I was crazy I would leave school in North London on Friday afternoon they'd all go off and hang out and I would literally travel an hour and a half on the train to go and coach a football session at Fulham's training ground which is in Motspur Park and then travel back up late that night back to back to home um but I absolutely loved it and I think the coaching itself was brilliant obviously that's what led me to to end up setting up bloomsbury but the the life experiences of of working when you're 17 of meeting other adults of being in the office of having to submit your pay sheet of doing training of collecting your kit all those things were were brilliant and invaluable so what is it charlie about the coaching that works so well what is it that sort of took your sort of interest at that point why did you think this is a really good thing coach i mean because i mean many people listening might be thinking well they're just playing football yeah but it's obviously deeper than that of course you say of course but explain yeah well I think um if you ask anyone um you know for people who they look up to who inspire them um you know everyone has at least someone or or hopefully they do and we actually did a recent survey of a few thousand teenagers in the country and after a school teacher or their parents their sports coach is on average the adult they look up to most who gives them you know both all the skills to hopefully succeed at school and education whether that's turning up on time preparation respect communication skills so these are things that people have in the workplace or expected in the workplace that maybe aren't learned in the classroom is that what you're saying definitely well so you have to go could be learned in the classroom but i think often in extracurricular and sports is one of many good ways i think football specifically just because of how ubiquitously popular it is is for me the most powerful but you know there's lots of other great extracurricular activities that help but sometimes you see professional footballers and the way they behave towards the referee spitting all over the place and stuff it's not necessarily the ideal role models for the workplace definitely so how do you manage that yeah of course well I think there's a big difference between being a footballer to become a professional footballer and that being your career versus sport and the power it has to help you in wider life and the the foundation I set up and run of course it's nice if a child who comes to our programs goes off and becomes professional I wasn't expecting that no no that's not what you're about of course so what are you what are you about asking me how do you hope people proceed from your sort of intervention I mean in the long run have a you know much better happy a healthy life uh there's you know huge amounts of research out there to say that young people who are involved in sport go on to earn more go on to be more likely to get a job to you know have better relationships to stay active for life so it's really setting up these these young people for success and raising their aspirations right so how many young people are you able to do that for now uh we are supporting around 7 000 children every week in london at the moment and that's gone from me and a bag of footballs with four children in 2018 plus two years of covid so it's really been very quick so how many people are involved in your organization um there's just over a hundred staff um of which roughly half a full-time and half a part-time and most of whom are the you know the coaches you went from a bag of footballs and four kids to an organization of 100 staff yeah and 7 000 kids so how did you do that wow a lot of hard work Yeah, that's what I'm interested in.

8:22What were the sort of levers you had to call for that to happen? I think the overall one is just consistency of putting in the hours and time. There is nothing that will ever have been done. You must have raised a lot of money. Yeah, of course. I didn't say of course, but that's quite an important part of this, isn't it? I mean, how did you do that? So how did you get the interest of people to support you? What sort of people supported you or organized it? If someone wants to start a charity like this, how do you do it? What tips would you give them? So when we first started, the first money we raised was through me realizing that I was terrible at writing fundraising bids.

9:02So I actually went out and said, right, come on, it can't be that hard to get a grant. I'll write and submit some applications. And I was terrible at it and we didn't get any money. So who were you applying to with these applications? We started with sort of local foundations. So, you know, Young Camden Foundation, Camden Giving, small local pots where we're, you know, the exact sort of thing they would want to fund, a local community group. So you researched that? Helping disadvantaged children, yeah. Found them online. There's lots of portals where it's easy to find these things and wrote applications.

9:34And it was a no from every single one I applied to. So I quickly realized that I needed to find someone who knew how to write these applications well. um and so i paid them i think it was like one or two days worth of work to do a handful so how did you find that person um through a facebook group called something like freelance bid writers so the two things i'm observing here you you didn't quit which is really important and you realize where you had a gap yourself so you try to fill it with someone else and you look for those skills elsewhere yeah and also uh took the risk of investing before the money came in so invested in someone to send off some bids knowing that we'd probably win let's say one of five of them and then we could use some of those funds to then pay that person to do a few more days and then we were off so you had to put a bit of money yeah before we knew which is i think something that most charities struggle to get uh their mind around typically the way charities run is let's secure the money then we can spend on things as opposed to how do we invest in fundraising to raise more money and take a bit of risk but you have to like any you know it's like a business yeah you've got to invest in sales to to sell yeah um and so then the second round was more successful was it much more successful we actually got two i think of the first grants and they were you know five six thousand pounds by that time for us that was massive that would you know pay for all the pitch space and all the coaches for months um and suddenly you can then turn that person who was writing some bids into two days a week and you begin to grow from there did you know that there are nearly one million 18 to 24 year olds who are currently not in education employment or training in the UK.

11:25This is simply not good enough, and I want to do something about it. That's why Reed is launching a new initiative, giving£20 ,000 to young entrepreneurs to help them grow their small business. Visit reed.com forward slash entrepreneurs to find out more. We want to support and encourage the next generation of entrepreneurs. So Charlie, if I was sort of wanting to follow in your footsteps and start a charity and I'm thinking about bidding what are the sort of blocks I need to put together to make that work in your experience yeah I think there's different ways to generate the income you need and it does vary quite a lot depending on the cause area so for example we are able to and I think it's a great thing if you can have some payment for services so we set out from the start knowing that we would try and have a share of our income not being fully reliant on philanthropic grants and donations and that can work for different sorts of charities on the bid side often you're having to bid based on the criteria of the fund you're applying for some you're able to go and have a conversation with and tell them what you really need and i think increasingly which is a good trend funders are open to that and they want to understand what you actually want as opposed to what they think they want to give to um so i would advise particularly early on where there are listed grants and bids read the um description of what they're looking for really carefully and work out what best fits that but if you can ask them for a conversation and go and meet them and just be honest with what you really need most people do actually want to help and want to give you what's most helpful so ask for a conversation that's i would always ask for a conversation always ask always even if it's very clear on the website what you think it does just increase your chances you never know what extra bit of advice they're going to say you never know they might say actually we've got a bit of extra money you know go and apply for right at the top end of the grant range often people say sorry we can't chat to you know it's unfair we don't have time but definitely worth trying um and and if you can get a warm introduction that's always best so just like sales really exactly the same exactly the same it is sales it is so so so it's a big big part of the business model is winning bids from what local organizations are they a mix yeah i mean it's grown and our sources of philanthropic funding are far more diversified now.

14:04So today, a third of our income comes from what I would describe as payment for services. So schools and families paying towards attending the programs or the cost of our programs running in the schools. Then the other two thirds of our income is a mix of money from government sources, corporates, both brand partnerships, where it comes out of the marketing budget, as well as traditional corporate philanthropy. and then the rest is what most people would describe as traditional charity fundraising so asking wealthy people for donations and bids what's a brand partnership how does that work uh so brand partnership would be uh a partnership in which the company you're working with are working with you primarily because they want to uh essentially associate themselves with your brand or some part of your brand as opposed to who's in that category a couple of recent examples would be we've done stuff with adobe we've got a big partnership with mastercard and their primary reason for working with us isn't a philanthropic donation so adobe want to create a campaign around girls who love football and how they can be more creative and think about careers outside of football, but the crossover with media and graphic design.

15:24And so we've done a big video campaign. We've had girls be the mascots for the FA Cup final and a load of brilliant experiences, plus, you know, awareness raising for what we do, plus some funding from Adobe. So that's been really successful. And I think there's lots more opportunities to do that. So companies might come forward to you saying, we want a partner. Yeah. I mean, that's the dream. You'd welcome others. Yeah, inbound is always the dream, but very rare. There you go, there's a great partnership opportunity. Rare, but possible. So many people assume charities operate differently from businesses.

15:58Yeah. Do you agree with that? Primarily, no. I think that's a massive misconception. So ultimately, a charity as a legal entity must exist wholly for the public benefit, which is different from a profit maximizing entity. Other than that, everything else is basically exactly the same as a private company. You need... Exactly the same. I would say pretty much exactly the same. As in, you need a finance function, you need strategy, you need to have talented people, employ them, you've got the same employment laws, everything else other than the fact that your ultimate purpose is social impact as opposed to profit maximization.

16:41But people treat charities like this whole separate thing. And often charities carry the very negative stereotypes of people don't work hard or the charity only exists for the employees or people work there because they couldn't get a job in the private sector. And I think it's a big problem for the charity sector that it's often branded in that sense. So you take issue with that? Definitely. I actually don't even subscribe to the term charity sector. it's not a sector it's just a you know a legal entity with which you register if you want to prioritize impact over profit it's just a company right okay so how do you think about it so what lessons so apart from i mean it's interesting my next question is so what lessons from the commercial world have been most valuable to you in building blue it feels to me that you just approached it a similar way yeah i think everything as a commercial project for sure yeah definitely i I think we don't have shareholders with equity for whom we pay out dividends.

17:47But other than that, everything, I think the speed with which we've tried to grow. We just mentioned investing ahead of funding coming in is definitely something. I think the level of ambition probably is if I had to pick one thing from the venture-backed for-profit world that I would take that I've seen a real dearth of in the charity sector. it's just the level of ambition of what's possible but you're coming to it with a different level of ambition you're saying trying that's what i'm yeah even then i question whether we're being ambitious enough um you know we want to support 40 000 children a week by 2030 most people think it's like a completely ludicrous strategy and you're never going to achieve that um but i think our role is to try and make the most impact possible and we should shoot incredibly high and we'll end up making more impact with a massive goal that we fall short of than being too safe.

18:44You mentioned the difference between sort of impact and profit. And so is that how you measure impact? How many children you reach a week or are there other measures? Not ultimately. So the ultimate measures of impact are what is the difference we make to the children that we work with? So to what extent is a child in our programs more confident after doing our programs for a year? To what extent are they? How do you know that? How do you measure that? hard to measure that's a problem profit's kind of easy to measure of course yeah and a lot of the impact we make is to some extent intangible i think we do a good job of measuring the impact so we uh do both qualitative and quantitative measurements on the qualitative side it's gathering testimonials from young people but specifically those whose lives have been most changed and then looking at the drivers of that change so was it that they had a safe place to go at six o 'clock on a Tuesday evening?

19:38Or was it that the role model they had in the coach completely changed their outlook on life? On the quantitative side, we use what's called longitudinal tracking, where we measure the difference we're making by asking young people and their parents over a number of years and compare that to national and local base rates. So we can see that, for example, girls in our programs are double as active on average as the national average for daily minutes that a girl is active. So we know we're making significant impact there. But is it self-selecting in the sense that the active ones want to come and play football or have they become more active?

20:19Yes. So we focus on areas of high disadvantage. So in the bottom few percent nationally based on income deprivation affecting children and those girls are disproportionately more inactive than others they don't typically have space and exactly means to do the cost and sports exactly the cost barrier prevents them from taking part in these sorts of activities right and so they just don't get the opportunity to do that um and then beyond that there's a various getting a bit technical but sort of validated instruments where we've done uh sort of quasi random control trials so we'll look at a school and say these two classes in year three let's work with one for six weeks and work with the other and then what's the difference that we're seeing how material is that change um yes very hard given all the ethical concerns with sort of uh forcing a group of young people not to take part in your activities if they wanted to um but you can get some really interesting uh and very clear probably the clearest you can possibly get evidence of impact right that's interesting so how how's your role changed charlie as the organization organization has grown to have started more than 100 yeah i mean it started with me coaching the first session um so you're a coach yourself i was a coach myself and then i quickly ended up coaching and hiring other coaches and then i guess i coached the coaches and then we got to a point where we needed other people who weren't coaches to sort of managers program officers etc to manage the coaches and now my my day-to-day I mean one of the biggest things that I miss is being so close to coaching I mean I still go out every week and see the programs but you know there's the coaches who have coach managers who have a head of coaching who reports into director programs and you just um it's the only way to scale but of course that is one of the trade-offs that you do become further and further away from it so what makes a good coach first and foremost good person so we strongly believe that the right sort of person we can help to run brilliant football programs but we have to run brilliant football programs otherwise the young people won't come but we know that we're running brilliant football programs for the social outcomes that come from doing it intentionally and so our coaches are trained not just to make the children better at passing and shooting, but at how many times they will try something that was really hard or how better to communicate with a teammate when they're losing and under stress.

22:58And so in a very nuanced manner, our coaches are trying to accelerate their learning of those, but without making it feel like they're in a classroom or some sort of charity intervention, it's a really fine balance. Yes. So how do people find you if they want to be a coach or are already coaches or one of the typical channels i mean of course we're on all social media platforms online um we have we're always looking for great coaches and talented people to work so bloomsbury football foundation what's the url foundation as bloomsburyfootball.com bloomsburyfootball.com and we um we're always gonna make inquiries through there exactly talented people whether it's sales operations i think there's one of our biggest challenges with attracting talent is people don't know what it's like to work at bloomsbury football or similar organizations so particularly for graduates we're not amongst their consideration set everyone knows that they can become an accountant become a lawyer broadly what that entails we're just not amongst that so trying to at least be known as an option is something that we're really working hard on to try and attract the most talented people because you need that to do something they're not necessarily aware of what you're doing what what we're doing or what it's like and what is it like i think it's very like working for a fast growing scale up that's for-profit so for all the people who think you know i want to go and work somewhere where i'm going to have lots of autonomy it's going to be exciting there's opportunities to get promoted quickly but where i'm happy to trade off ultimately on uh earning for social impact i think we're one of if not the best place to come and work in the uk well it's very exciting so how have you thought about scaling i mean it's obviously a real priority you're very ambitious it's got to go to that 40 ,000 number.

24:53I've thought about it a lot. So what's your approach, Charlie? Our approach is to take what we've proven already works in London and to take it to other cities and towns around the rest of the country where there is so much need and where often these towns and cities, the football, the football club is the most important thing. It is the thing which brings everyone together. Okay, so I'm from Swindon. Yeah. I'd love to have Bloomsbury come and we'd love to come to Swindon yeah we'd like that too yes how does that happen what needs to happen for these sort of initiatives to become established sure so we um we ultimately need a a set of things in order for us to feel that it's right to open in a given town or city so of course we need to look at what else is running there how high is the need how many other youth programs are running.

25:52And then you need to look at the inputs that are required to run. Obviously, funding is one of the big ones. We need a certain amount of money from the right sort of funders with an expected pipeline. It doesn't necessarily need to be. We like them to be bought in. It helps, but it could be, you know, two local businessmen. It could be a philanthropic family. It could be a corporate. So if someone listening likes the sound of what you're doing and thinks their area would be benefiting from this they can approach you too and say yeah and what would it cost to set up then so if you're a philanthropist based in swindon sure you think i'd like to bring this to the town yeah it it varies a little bit between towns and cities there's sort of a critical mass which we would want to uh run in terms of the number of programs per town on city for it to make it worthwhile uh the initial startup capital we'd need would be somewhere between 500 and 750 000 depending on the area um what would the investor if that's the right word get for that uh so with that initial funding we would be confident of raising enough money from other sources over a three-year period to then be supporting around three and a half thousand boys and girls every week in that town or city by year three right so that makes it puts it into a sustainable sustainable program so that that would allow us to build the capacity we need to then bring in other local supporters obviously um partly funded by national grants and wider pots that aren't specific to a given area plus the the you know fees for services we get from schools and families so your strategy is it's important to stay disciplined is it you've spoken very much so so what so what's that mean what's that look like i think um there's a lot of uh advice out there that says you know say yes to everything and there's also a lot of advice out there that's like make sure you're really prepared to say no and say no to anything that isn't in your plan and stay on track it's very confusing the honest answer is it's just not neither of those is right and the right answer is picking the right things to say yes and say no to which is obviously one of the hard parts like making choices as a person running, particularly a fast growing organization where we've got every day people coming and saying, you know, would you come to this town?

28:15Would you do Bloomsbury netball? Would you do Bloomsbury cricket? And I think it's... So you're not doing those things? No, we're not. We're sticking to football. So you're sticking to football. There's more than enough young people. You know, there's 4 million young people growing up in poverty in this country of which 60 % are inspired by football. So we don't need to do other sports. and I think if I had to give aggregate advice I would say if you think it's something which is going to be in line with what you want to do even if it's a bit of a stretch on resources try and say yes because good things come that you don't ever expect or plan so what would be an example of that all sorts of events and partnerships we've done where at the outset people are like oh i just don't have time to do i mean uh we just did a partnership with a very small up-and-coming fashion brand who wanted to create some hoodies around the world cup and uh initially we were like this isn't a good use of time it's not going to raise us loads of money but you do it and suddenly the company you work with decide that they want to make an amazing promo video and bring in an agency then suddenly we've got this brilliant asset which we've then shared with funders who support that program and a couple of them have come back and said wow that was an amazing video i didn't realize you did this you know could we catch up i'm actually really interested in the work you're doing here had no idea that would come about one thing leads to another but we said yes um even though it would have been really easy to just go not for us for now you know we're a bit busy we don't we don't fancy taking that extra work so stretch yourself is the message stretch yourself as long as it's you know in line with broadly what you want to do if it's something completely different i mean we're too busy is not really a good excuse for things is it i mean you want to be usually yeah i think everyone's if you ask anyone in the country how are you they say ah i'm so busy i'm so busy in practice basically everyone has time to do everyone's got a bit of capacity exactly well it's all it's just a choice of what you prioritize at So making those choices, you're saying you stick to the strategy or the objective.

30:27And if you can add to it and stretch further, that's a good choice. I'm a big believer in, I think it's called Parkinson's law, where the task expands to fill the deadline that you set. And if you need to get something done by tomorrow, you're surprised at how much you can get someone to do by tomorrow. Yes. So have there been times when you've been offered funding, but it hasn't fit? All the time. So it happens a lot. yeah and you say no do you we have to yeah i mean it's so what because it's someone says well i'll do netball uh yeah it's a range it's it's usually linked to yes doing something that's not in our strategy so it could be hey you know you've got all these young people who come along every week why don't you do a financial literacy program on the side you know that'd be really beneficial agree it would be but we can't do everything you know we we could also give out food and and set up a food bank on the side.

31:21But there's expert charities who already do those things. It's much better to partner with those than become broad, which I think, again, another challenge with the sector is too many charities, partly because they have to, have to say yes to the funding because they need the money to run, but then end up being five out of ten at ten things. Yeah, and there's definite parallels in business there. Here's a possible new sector we could expand into or someone wants us to do something that maybe doesn't quite fit, but should we do it anyway? Should we consider it? Yeah, there's a tough choice. So your experience is that staying close and remaining focused to the visual mission is...

31:59Definitely. I think it's also easier for us now at the size we're at earlier on when it's, you know, you're living grant to grant. That can be harder. And yes, sometimes you definitely do have to make trade-offs. Yeah. So what advice would you give to founders about saying no then? it's very hard to give i guess my advice would be consider things on a case by case i mean you the best advice i had recently from um a very successful senior business person was you whatever strategy you pick you have to remain opportunistic um so actually our plan a few years ago was to grow in london and keep growing in london and not go outside of london for a few more years but we said we're going to remain opportunistic and if the right opportunity arose then we would actually do that and that's part of the reason why we had a meeting that led us to the right funder which led us to opening in in the midlands in september so that was you have opened in the midlands we're about we're about to in september where are you opening in leicester excellent excellent i like that so stick to your strategy but you have to remain opportunistic definitely for the right thing and just consider the pros and cons the time the resourcing the funding there there just is no easy it would be nice how strategies evolve i suppose of course yeah yeah and and lean on saying yes you know it would be again it would have been easy then to say oh no you know our strategy's staying in london and we want to do national but not quite ready yet we sat down and said actually i think we can make this work um and that was so you had a supporter in leicester who said we had a supporter yeah who approached us they were so leicester was one of the cities and towns we'd mapped out on our list that we were you know keen to go to but it may not have happened for another year had we not been open to that conversation yeah well i'm pleased to hear that leicester's going to be your new destination it's got a famous football club it does and it's it really needs it they've got you know 41 childhood poverty a lot of the youth and youth clubs have closed down but right there's a lot of young people there who love who are inspired by football and i think our programs make a massive impact that's good to here so one misconception perhaps is that charities struggle to attract top talent i mean you mentioned earlier that this was important to get your name out there has that been your experience um yes and no i think we have a really talented team of actually nearly entirely people who haven't worked in the charity sector previously um who are young and at the start of their careers on the whole but very high ceiling um which has served us well uh yes it is hard because it's just hard to attract you know top talent i think that's the same sort of people you recruit varies lot by role but on the whole people who are uh very driven willing to work hard intellectually curious ambitious about what's possible um and happy to work compared to most places with more autonomy and less clear you know direction and micromanagement um that's what's got us to where we are today we're very happy to invest in a very talented young person who has never done the job that they're doing before uh if we feel that they're up for learning and have a high ceiling and can get there.

35:24So you're looking for people who are really keen to learn and will show real commitment to what you're doing. And we've come quite a long way over the last 12 months of building out our senior leadership team. So we have supplemented that really high potential sort of early career talent with some absolutely brilliant director-level hires from top companies. I mean, our director, Martin Growth, was at Meta for 10 years as director of product marketing for Mia there. So giving those young people the leadership they need and the mentorship so that they can achieve their potential has been a really key and valuable addition.

36:03I mean, the kind of people you're describing, I was thinking, you know, I'd love them to join our business and I'm sure you have to compete with a lot of private sector. Definitely. Yeah, for the top talent. So how do you do, I mean, how do you sort of close the deal then to get them to come to you rather than go to a private sector commercial I think there's a lot of people who want to do something with with with purpose and I say with purpose you know a lot of businesses you know create a purposeful strap line but our purpose is purpose and um I think increasingly do you have a strap line people are transforming lives through the magic of football right um and I think increasingly people are interested and wanting to spend what takes up you know most of the hours of your life doing something that really makes a difference and i think you can both earn enough to have a comfortable enjoyable life but also really feel like you're doing something meaningful and that's attractive to a lot of even the most talented hard-working people so do you have football events in the company all the time organization we did have you got a world cup sweet steak we've got world cup sweet steak we've We just actually made Bloomsbury World Cup wall charts and gave thousands out to all the kids, which they were absolutely delighted about.

37:21So they can follow the... And they can follow all the games. Put their teams in. Exactly, put the scores in. I used to love doing that when I was a kid. Very fun. I'll make sure I'll bring you one. Could you? Yeah, you should have brought one. Have it up in the office. Yeah, I probably should have put it up. Well, put it up. That's a good idea. Yeah. And I know we do all sorts of events. I mean, we just did a big football tournament for companies actually on the pitch at the Emirates Stadium, which was a real success and like obviously one great way of getting companies involved who won uh one of the big banks can't remember which one uh goldman sachs oh yeah everyone loves goldman sachs they have to be doubly generous yeah they've won of course yeah those helpful winners yeah now they've got to give us a big grant they must yeah yeah that's uh so that sounds like a lot of fun so I can imagine it being very attractive to people when you're recruiting.

38:12How do you see AI affecting charities and social impact organizations? Because, I mean, it's everywhere, isn't it? Yeah, of course. How are you using AI? I'm a firm believer that it will be overall incredibly net positive. Of course, there's lots of challenges that it's going to bring. I mean, lots of similar to what we have with social media. Why are you so optimistic? Well, I guess there's two parts to it. One is the overall society part, which is, you know, the extent to which it's going to, I think, you know, bring an age of abundance, allow us to have much higher GDP growth, more wealth, more even society, medical breakthroughs, lift people out of poverty.

38:56I think overall it'll be incredibly net positive. I think for charities like us and others on a more individual organization basis, we can just do way more work for the same number of pounds spent. So whether that's assessing the quality of our programs, communicating with parents, researching funders, writing grants, analyzing data to decide which areas to go to next, all of those things which would have been thousands of pounds full-time staff we can do in a matter of some of them even minutes ourselves in the office so you're really using this oh all over good effects at the moment yeah very much so um it's it's transformation i mean personally i feel i can do double the amount of work probably i could have done months ago what specifically is it doing for you i mean even even months ago yeah yeah it's the the the you're twice as productive of you feel than you i would say so yeah so what are you doing different i mean even just writing emails like i would have to sit down for a follow-up from you know a podcast like this and say hi james thank you so much it was lovely don't worry i know you enjoyed it of course but your ai will do yeah it will send me a drop which is nine out of ten and is trained on how i write it and uh you know pulls out your email address suggest the right subject header i mean it's looked in the calendar and seen that it was a podcast it's it's um so it's like an assistant you've got yeah i think i can i mean that's one use case but uh you know researching funders we've developed a tool which has so on the charity commission there are i think about 16 000 grant giving organizations each one has pdfs which have a list of who they give out money to each year the only way to look inside them is to go and download one and open it we have downloaded every single one scraped it all put it in a database that's queryable to ai so i could open my phone now and say hey tell me who the reid foundation has given grants to every single grant every single amount for the last five years and it'll give me a list within seconds that's a very good use of the technology i have to say and and it does show how i mean the more dynamic or entrepreneurial charities are going to secure quite an advantage of course yeah i think um particularly if we can get the um foundation model companies to support us philanthropically i think we're about to see the biggest step change in philanthropic dollars ever.

41:24So OpenAI's majority shareholder is a charitable foundation that is going to give out somewhere like 200 billion, maybe more, or have assets of. Anthropic founders have pledged to give away 80%, where we're going to see tens, hundreds of billions. That's the theme of my book behind you, Karma Capitalism. I'm going to give you a copy at the end. But yeah, so you see that model becoming more widespread as well um companies having charitable i think it shareholdings i think it might there's there's pros and cons i mean uh i think a lot of it comes down to the founders and and whether they want to do that um obviously there's been a lot in the news about open ai and the extent which is you know moved from a charity to not a charity but it's still going to be it's still going to be a massively positive outcome that when they go public it's going to be hundreds of billions of dollars Whereas Anthropic have taken a slightly different decision, which is the founding team have pledged to give away 80 % of their wealth.

42:23Do you use both of those? Yeah, we do. Yeah, for different tasks, we use different foundation models. We also use Gemini, the Google one, quite a lot. Yes. So do you feel optimistic about the sort of philanthropic landscape in Britain? because you know that there's i was at a conference the other day only 10 of high net worths are giving to charity businesses are giving less um it felt like quite a challenged environment yeah it's definitely a challenged environment i think um overall it's a harder environment than it was there's less money going right now the government doesn't have more money to spend or it shouldn't be spending lots more money uh corporates are definitely have less money overall because there's low growth and the you know sort of we've coming down from peak di and so those sorts of budgets are diminishing and high net worth are leaving the country in their droves uh so the the size of the pie is is shrinking but the pie is still big so for an organization like us there are still many many people your market share is tiny tiny there's you know billions of philanthropic pounds out there um to be raised i think where the biggest difference could be made is education particularly to those who are most able to give personally about how to give out and how to do it well i think there are a lot of people with a lot of money who don't know where to start what would you say to them uh the the simplest advice is just start um there's a lot of analysis paralysis ask other people you know who are giving out money who are they giving to what they like just start giving pick a few charities give them literally just email them and say see what you do i'm going to give you a donation let's go for a coffee you go for a coffee you get to understand what their challenges are how they work ask them which other charities they think are good very similar really to how you would invest in you know venture you've had quite a lot of people through referral it sounds like then through nearly i would say definitely over half of our um the rest is applications is is through you know someone introducing us to someone um which again is how a lot of obviously business operates the same way uh and then some of it is also people seeing that we've been backed by lots of credible funders who they know do you know heavy due diligence processes and thinking wow if they're back by them they must be good they must be serious yes and that's always helpful so there's a cumulative definitely benefit yeah so charlie starting out when you when you began you were what 21 22 you were probably pitching to quite big corporates you were going into offices you're meeting sort of philanthropists i mean that's quite daunting in some ways what advice would you give to young people who want to do something similar or want to get out there and make a difference in some way.

45:22I think there's no shortcut to doing it. I remember being incredibly nervous myself, not knowing how to have those conversations, particularly not feeling confident asking for money. It's a really hard thing to do. You go and meet someone for a coffee. They probably think you want their money it's all a bit awkward you get to a point in the conversation where it's time to say you know would you support my charity will you give me some amount of money that's really hard and takes time to get confident i can remember countless meetings where essentially i wimped out of asking for the money because i was too scared so there's nothing eventually because you did very work yeah it is just practice um what is the tip you would give to close the deal in that how do you do that i always try and ask more questions than i talk particularly at the start of meetings the more information you can gather about them their thinking their philanthropy what else they fund what typical range they give grants in the easier it is to then not ask for something that's wildly out of the question um and then so you're trying to fit your ass you're trying to fit your ask you need to be careful because you don't want to shift from what you actually want and just bend to what they're looking for but you can you can at least ask for something in the range of you know what they have in mind or what you know they're interested in or they might say no at the moment i'm not looking to do more grants in which case it allows you to have a very different sort of conversation so i would always advise starting with discovery questions where you can um if you're not able to say they're not looking to do more grants yeah where would you take that incredibly important to stay in touch and build a relationship so completely understand you're not looking for grants at the moment but you know could we catch up in a few months over a coffee could i take you down to go and see one of our programs in action the amount of people who say they're not looking to do grants but then decide to give you a grant once they come and see how great the impact is or think you're doing something's amazing most people organizations have the ability to make a grant if they really want to make one so i think it's always worth being very classy polite respectful but never giving up and keep inviting them to things building relationships tends to pay off in the long run so you've got these big ambitions how how would you expand nationally what are the practical steps you need to take to achieve that 40 000 yeah number it's uh so the the the first step is is making our first step outside of london which is which is leicester in september and then it's making sure that we um as well as make amazing impact in leicester really codify all the different parts of our operation that will allow us to then open successfully in other places it just will be different from opening in the london borough there are certain nuances with different cities towns communities ethnic groups um and so understanding those and then being able to open in say Birmingham next have a regional HQ then we probably look to Manchester there's a interesting debate about the extent to which we go into you know big cities or towns and who needs it more versus how much funding is available and how much of our funding could come from national versus local so there's lots of lots of considerations but really it's about getting less to write and having like any business a really really well-defined scalable product that you can then take to other places or it will all fall over yeah so so so if you had a magic wand what would be the next things you do leicester then you need to find some more benefactors yeah leicester then probably birmingham but yeah of course we need more benefactors so there's a big business in birmingham that would like to get definitely so we're looking for those in either east or west midlands uh who want to support our growth there or for those who like basically have deep enough pockets to give us all the money we needed to get started in another place we would definitely consider that if it was the right amount of money um and then we want national brands philanthropists the government to fund us to sort of go wherever we feel is the most impact there'll always be a mix of regionally interested capital and you know national um growth money that allows us to scale um so we're we're raising what i would describe as the philanthropic equivalent of a sort of series a or series b a growth fund which we will then invest over the next few years to scale nationwide fantastic so you strike me charlie as like a brilliant entrepreneur very kind yeah you started this from scratch.

50:14It's growing. You've got really ambitious plans for the future. I mean, this is social enterprise, and it's very best. So I just want to say thank you for coming and talking to me, and congratulations on what you've done, because I'd like to celebrate it. It's really good. And I hope people listening will come and support you, whether they're big companies, philanthropists, football coaches, or just kids who'd like to play some football in their local community.

50:43So thanks for coming in. I always ask two questions at the end of my podcast conversations. The first is, what gets you up on a Monday morning, Charlie? Wow. I think it's waking up knowing that I'm going to build something incredibly ambitious that's really hard and doing it with amazing people who I enjoy working with. And the fact that on top of that, I have the privilege of doing it for something where purpose is the purpose. And that gets me up on every morning, no matter whether it's Monday, Saturday, Sunday. I believe you. Yeah, I absolutely love it. It's a real joy and a privilege. That's fantastic.

51:26And my last question from my interview book, Why You, is where do you see yourself in five years' time? Hopefully running an organisation that is making population-level change for tens of thousands of disadvantaged young people across the country and giving them a better shot at life. Fantastic. population level change. That's what we want. Thank you, Charlie. Thanks for coming in. Pleasure.

51:57Thank you, Charlie, for joining me on All About Business. I'm your host, James Reid, Chairman and CEO of Reid, a family-run recruitment and philanthropy company. If you'd like to find out more about Bloomsbury football or Reid, you'll find all the links in the show notes. Thank you for listening and see you next time.

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