JST staff have been working extended hours unpaid, together with trustees, to do all we can to continue the charity’s unique mission which has delivered life changing voyages for more than 50,000 people.
We are dedicated to doing all we can to secure a sustainable long-term future and to get Tenacious sailing. Once sailing, Tenacious will enable us to sell more voyages and increase awareness so we can raise more funds.
We do apologise to those people who have found our communication to be misleading.
The Covid Recovery Campaign was launched with clear messaging and a target of £500k to be raised by April 14. Funds raised were to be ring-fenced until the £500k target had been reached. The response to the campaign was extraordinary and many loyal donors asked us to extend the appeal to get us to the target. After seeking advice we agreed to do that.
Today we are at £440k and donations continue to come in.
Ahead of reaching the target we have sought support from donors to use some of the funds raised to meet payment of unpaid wages and support for Tenacious to deliver the current voyage to Jersey. These aims were clearly stated as part of the original purposes of the Covid Recovery Campaign.
We would ask anyone not supporting this and wishing to have the donation returned to contact us at: covidrecoverycampaign@jst.org.uk.
The long-term financial strategy of the JST is to continue to raise funds in the form of donations to get to a total of £1.2m by the end of September 2022 and to complete the sale of Lord Nelson. We also wish to explore the potential for a sale and leaseback arrangement for Tenacious.
Over many years the trust has been supported by incredible generosity through donations and loans from individuals. These are always referenced openly in our annual report. In response to the campaign, loans to the sum of £500k have been forgiven as have some outstanding invoices.
JST needs to raise £2.5m per year to keep delivering the mission. The pandemic forced us to stop sailing and caused a loss in income of £1.5m and sadly we lost donors who were victims of Covid. Despite the challenges, the trust did succeed in getting Tenacious through her special survey and navigated through the last two years but like all small charities and businesses cash flow is critical to survival.
We continue to work with our advisers Grant Thornton and Hill Dickinson and Nat West bank to move JST forward.
