About War Child

Awards

nominated for Best Fundraising team of the year - War Child’s Music & Entertainment team has been nominated for Best Fundraising Team of the Year at The Charity Times Awards 2010 which take place on September 1^st.

Fundraising Team of The Year 2010 – Our team of 3 picked up this much coveted award from the Institute of Fundraising with some incredibly tough competition. It recognises the imaginative approach the team take whilst fundraising in this tough financial climate.

BeMobo Award 2009 – War Child’s music team was awarded this for their outstanding contribution to social causes through music. It highlighted how much positive change can be brought about through music and the hard work of our team.

Third Sector’s award for best trading 2009 – War Child’s music team picked this up for the innovation they showed in fundraising around their Heroes album release, realising they couldn’t rely on album sales alone.

Brit Award 1995 – for our legendary Help album during the days of Britpop.

Board of Trustees

Tom Davis

Chair
Tom has been at Action for Children for 4 1/2 years, first as their Head of Marketing and New Business, and latterly as Marketing Director. He volunteered for the Delhi-based street children's charity Butterflies in 2004, working for the Children's Development Khazana, then served as a Trustee for the Consortium for Street Children for 4 years while chairing their Marketing & Fundraising Committee. Recent roles have included advising the social enterprise MyBank and Community Insight, the social enterprise of Brent Homeless Users Group. His previous career was in the the commercial sector, marketing in finance organisations for 20 years before joining the voluntary sector in 2004.

Gill Avis

Trustee
Gill has been a trustee for 11 years. She retired early but had worked for the Ministry of Defence for over 30 years, latterly as a deputy director in Whitehall. Her knowledge of, and involvement in, War Child has therefore been extensive, and contributed towards its focus and development. She has recruited six new trustees over the past 12 months who have already made a positive impact on the organisation.

Neil Fenton

Treasurer
Neil is currently the Finance Director at the large childcare charity and social enterprise, The London Early Years Foundation, where he has been for the last year. Prior to this role he had spent 20 years in the music industry, having worked in various financial positions at Polygram, Virgin, EMI and finally at Chrysalis Group plc, where he was COO of Chrysalis’ music division. In that role he oversaw significant growth of the music division, setting up and buying companies internationally and also developing strategy to make Chrysalis Music one of the foremost independent music companies in the world.
He was also responsible for raising £75m through a securitisation of Chrysalis’ music publishing catalogue.
When his role at Chrysalis came to an end he decided that he would follow his passions and work in the charity sector. He is a chartered accountant having qualified with KPMG and is a member of the Charity Finance Directors Group.

Martin McCann

Trustee (programmes oversight)
Martin is the Chief Executive of the Disaster Relief charity RedR UK since 2007. Martin is also a trustee of People in Aid in the UK and a member of the Supervisory Board of the Porticus Foundation based in the Netherlands. Martin has 30 years experience of working on international development issues at a senior level.

Richard Butler

Trustee (financial and business management oversight)
Richard has spent the last 18 months putting his financial and strategic understanding to use with a variety of social enterprises and charities. His current focus is on developing the capacity of the third sector through his work on 3SC. He has a decade of financial analysis and research expertise in Investment Banking and is qualified as a Chartered Financial Analyst. His prior experience is in buy-side equity research covering a range of sectors from media & telecommunications to insurance.

Ray Longbottom

Trustee
Prior to 2006, Ray’s career was spent mainly with 3M Company, leading businesses in the UK and then for the whole of Europe. He joined the board of War Child UK in 2008 and is using his experience of developing people and organisations to contribute to the charity’s ongoing progress. He has recently led an evaluation of board effectiveness.

In his other roles, Ray is a coach and mentor to current and emerging business leaders. He is also chair of the “Music of Life Foundation” a musical charity involving young people with disability and a governor of Therfield School, a comprehensive.

Tim Wilson

Trustee (monitoring and evaluation oversight)
Tim is a Director with Charities Evaluation Services, the UK’s leading provider of training and consultancy on evaluation and quality in the charitable sector. He has over 12 years experience of working with charities. As well as work in the UK he has spent time working in Nepal, Indonesia, Albania and Bosnia. Tim is passionate about charities getting stable levels of support because they can demonstrate their effectiveness.

John MacAuslan

Secretary
John worked for nearly 20 years in Her Majesty's Treasury, including in a range of posts as a senior civil servant, and then for 13 years in the National Gallery leading the corporate service functions including finance and the Board secretariat. He has acted as Trustee in a small charity for seven years, including five years as chair of the Trustees. He was a Civil Service Commissioner from 2005 to 2008.