A win for ‘my’ Trustee at the Charity Times Awards 2013!

Accredited to Charity Times

Small Charities Coalition Trustee and Chief Exec of Anthony Nolan Henny Braund– Charity Principal of the Year 2013

On the 16th of October I was lucky enough to attend the Charity Times Awards 2013. It was a memorable occassion for a number of reasons. Firstly it was a great opportunity to catch up with a few colleagues across the Sector and to meet some new people. The event was hosted by Andrew Holt (for those of you who don’t know him, he’s the nice chap with the black tie above- and I don’t know where he gets his energy from). The compere was Marcus Brigstocke who managed to cleverly skirt the line between making us laugh and insulting us- or even doing both at the same time so we didn’t notice.

My wonderful Trustee Henny was up for a major award, Charity Principal of the Year- and as you can tell from the photo, she won! Not only is Henny clearly a fantastic Chief Exec she is a real source of support to me in my role, and impossibly modest to boot! As I was presenting an award I had actually been told to make my way backstage when Henny’s category came up, but I ignored this long enough to be able to give her a big clap and some sort of strangled scream, as I was so happy she had won.

I have never had the opportunity to present an Award at such a big event before, and was so humbled that I was able to do so for the Small Charity category. The winner was Yorkshire MESMAC:

Accredited to Charity Times

Me with the prize winner for Charity under £1 million income for 2013, Yorkshire MESMAC

As I have stated a number of times, including here, I don’t always think that small charities get the recognition that they deserve, so it was great to see such a brilliant one get rewarded. I was very pleased that I neither fell up nor down the steps, despite being slightly blinded by all the lights focused on the stage, and I thought that the aforementioned Marcus was a real gentleman, he clearly tried hard to make everyone, including the Award presenters, feel at ease.

So, many congratulations to all the winners and please think about entering next year!