Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment Consultants donate £13,000 to UK Charity
Industry: Legal Services
Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment have just donated £13,000 to charity. The company is one of the few companies in the UK to give 10% of their annual profits away.
United Kingdom (PRUnderground) December 3rd, 2014
Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment, a company based in Chester and London, has just donated £13,000 ($23,300) to charity. Every year since 2000 the company has committed to donate a percentage of annual profits to charity.
Jonathan Fagan, the managing director explains:
“For 14 years our board of directors has agreed to 10% (after all, how on earth could we carry on with our business name?). We have now donated over £66,000 to the Ten-Percent Foundation, a small sum in the general scheme of things, but a lot of money for a company of our size”.
Giving money to charity may seem like a nice idea, but it is not always easy. Jonathan explains:
“Last week I transferred just over £13,000 from our business current account into the Ten-Percent Foundation charity bank account and I have to say that it really, really hurt. I know it shouldn’t cause pain, and as a company we ought to be delighted to see our money going towards worthy causes, but I am afraid it does. I get extremely depressed for at least a few days, thinking about all the money we have just given away.”
Has he any regrets about deciding to give money away to charity? Yes – lots!
Fagan adds “I wish the founders of Ten-Percent had not sat in a café in Leicester in 1999 and decided to set up a recruitment agency whereby 10% of our profits would be donated to charity. I wish I hadn’t got so annoyed by a recruitment consultant working for a national agency loftily informing me that as a newly qualified solicitor I was lucky to get the £20,000 just offered by one of his clients and that he would be taking £4,500 plus VAT in commission. I wish I had taken time to set up the company, researched the market, looked at profit margins, realised that giving away 10% of profits to charity was definitely not a good idea from a business perspective and gone more corporate with our approach.”
Furthermore, getting charities to accept money can be difficult.
“Some charities are an absolute nightmare to donate to. For example many years ago a water-linked charity wanted to charge us a fee to include their logo on our website after we had donated £2,500 to a project in East Africa.”
There are positives. Jonathan explains that it feels good to be one of only a tiny minority of UK companies who have such a commitment.
The company would like suggestions for the donations, which are given to the Ten-Percent Foundation, a charitable trust, to distribute. They do not support large national charities with staff on salaries and packages higher than those of a doctor and like to help smaller charities with identifiable projects, particularly those with links to the legal profession.
If you have any ideas, please feel free to email them across to the company.
Finally Jonathan calls on other businesses to do the same. “How much difference can we make to the world and what do we benefit personally from making donations? I have learned over time that commercial or financial gain ever comes from donating a percentage of your profits to charity. Just a general feeling of depression followed with a warm glow of satisfaction in a few months…”
About Ten-Percent.co.uk Limited
Ten-Percent.co.uk Limited is a legal recruitment consultancy, concentrating on the recruitment of solicitors, lawyers and legal support staff. Established in April 2000 we get over 60,000 hits per month from lawyers using our recruitment services and law students using our legal careers information portal.
Our costs are low and we get a significant proportion of our work through personal recommendations from candidates and clients whom we have already assisted. Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment donates 10% of its profits to charity.
