I am privileged to be part of the 11th generation of family involved in the running of Hoare’s Bank in Fleet Street. We have for over three centuries sought to care for our customers, including many charities and philanthropists. We are not profit maximising but at the same time we have steadfastly sought to help those who are less fortunate, which in itself is a fascinating evolutionary journey in philanthropy.
Our founder, Sir Richard Hoare, was apprenticed as a goldsmith in the 1660s and the banking business later grew out of this trade. At this time, charitable giving tended to be concentrated on individual small scale bequests and he was no exception leaving numerous ones to various City institutions. However, the growth in overseas trade and advent of joint stock companies lead to significant wealth creation in the late 17th century. In parallel with our times, this lead to an upsurge in philanthropy. Richard’s son, Henry, pioneered such ideas as subscription giving, most notably in the establishment of the Westminster Hospital in 1716.
Activity of this nature combined the family’s deep religious sentiments with the ability to have a beneficial role in society that was not ‘party political.’ Hoare also acted as bankers to innumerable charitable bodies such as hospitals, dispensaries, schools, libraries, churches and missions. By the 19th century, benevolence had taken on a much more organised character and we were able to act for such institutions as ‘The Society for Bettering Habitations of the Industrious Poor’ and the ‘Society for the Suppression of Vice’. In the early part of the century the family itself had close links with the Clapham Sect and in 1891 a family member founded Trinity Hospice, coincidentally by Clapham Common, the UK’s oldest hospice, which flourishes to this day.
Today, a strong philanthropic thread still runs through everything that we do. Some 10% of our profits are given to charity each year and there a numerous family-related charitable trusts, some venerable and some new. Furthermore, the family are all actively involved with the Bank’s main charity, the Golden Bottle Trust, and through this we support numerous other causes, with a particular emphasis on such areas as education, the environment and microfinance. We also encourage and support members of staff in their charitable aims. A more recent development has been to connect with and support a large circle of wider family members and their charitable activities. As a unifying force this has had many positive unintended consequences, such as the establishment of a family web-site.
In our present times it is a great privilege for us also to act for numerous other charitable trusts, be it managing their banking arrangements, investment portfolios or acting as trustee. Some of these relationships date back to the 18th century but a great many more are new. It is interesting to note this area of focus in our business is enjoying rapid growth today. It is perhaps a simple alignment of values which speaks for itself.
There can be few among us that have not found ourselves pondering recent global economic events. They have highlighted more than ever the imbalances in our world and its many seemingly intrinsic paradoxes. Following a time of unprecedented wealth creation, the gap between rich and poor has grown ever wider. Now, a reversal of fortune in the former looks set merely to compound the problems of the latter with depressing inevitability.
In facing this, philanthropic families and their trustees have a very challenging path to navigate but there is cause for optimism.
The era of large corporations, globalisation and the welfare state have done much to blunt our sense of selfhood and personal accountability. It is arguably out of effective small scale, personal commitment and endeavour, in both a charitable and business sense, the way forward arguably lies. At the centre of the framework for this, the western world for the most part seems to have forgotten, rests the family.
