On Wednesday 5^th June, Brian Carlin was invited to take part in the Third Sector Charity Leaders’ Forum about ‘The Future of Income Generation’.  The fundraising environment is rapidly changing and the forum gave chief executives an opportunity to reflect on their charity’s existing fundraising strategy and explore the other possibilities now available.   

Aspire's CEO Brian Carlin was on the panel for the ‘Beyond the Status Quo’ session with other charity leaders who have been experimenting with new ways of developing sustainable income for their organisations.

Brian spoke about the creation of Aspire Law, a pioneering initiative to support the work of Aspire through a sustainable major income stream.  Aspire Law was launched in November 2014, a joint venture between Aspire and Southampton based law firm Moore Blatch.  Within 18 months, it had exceeded its original business plan for the number of clients it would be representing and went on to treble its original target.  Aspire Law is now possibly representing more spinal cord injury clients in England than any other law firm and prides itself on a client focused service driven by charitable principles that guarantees every Personal Injury Claim will keep 100% of their compensation award.

Brian says, “Fundraising income has become completely unpredictable and charities can no longer rely on traditional methods of fundraising to continue to support the cost of providing their services. This is why, eights year ago, we started to work on ideas to find alternative sustainable commercial income streams to provide Aspire with greater and more reliable financial security.  

“Aspire has invested a considerable amount into Aspire Law and will benefit from 50% of all operating profits, now and in the future.  By 2021, the value of this profit share is set to exceed £1m a year and will provide Aspire with financial stability and opportunities to support the vast majority of people with Spinal Cord Injury who will never benefit from a compensation claim.”

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