Administration of Women’s Education Charity

A charity comprising 110 staff was set up to provide education and training for local women to enable them to gain confidence leading to qualifications.

The Charity offered free quality childcare to the women while they attended the courses and relied on funding from education providers, fundraising, grants and charitable donations to operate.

Due to changes and restrictions in central funding within education, the number of students had steadily dropped over the previous 12 months, which in turn meant the funding from the education providers was reduced as it was based largely on headcount.

The charity had also been unsuccessful in securing some grants that they had previously relied on due to the change in focus of the grant providers. This left them overstaffed but unable to pay the costs associated with making excess staff redundant.

Work Undertaken

We were appointed administrators in the hope that by entering administration, negotiations could be held with various stakeholders in an attempt to rescue if only in part, some of the business.

However, the majority of contracts with education providers had been completed and while the charity was in negotiations with the educational providers for contracts for the new academic year, no new contracts were in place. 

With no significant fund injection available from any source, the directors and administrators had no alternative other than to take the difficult decision to dismiss the majority of the workforce with immediate effect.

Outcome

Two of the senior managers, who were keen to carry the legacy of the charity forward, took over the lease at one of the sites and purchased some fixtures and fittings from the administrators.