Even among the people that already know a little about the charity’s work, that fact may come as a surprise. Because many still think of the charity as a dusty organisation that runs a few sheltered housing projects for silver-haired former printers.

In fact, the charity supports the industry in a wide variety of ways – from kick-starting people’s print careers via Print Futures and helping people get back into work after redundancy, to offering long-term financial support to retired or disabled ex-print workers and one-off payments to people in distress.

However, the biggest single challenge facing the charity’s chief executive Stephen Gilbert is finding more people for the charity to help and new ways to help them.

You might think that struggling to spend enough money is a nice problem to have, but Gilbert doesn’t agree. So after completing the charity’s rebrand and securing its new Royal Charter, the third in its 187-year history, his next grand ambition is for the charity to more than triple the number of people it helps over the next three years – and key to doing that is industry engagement and increasing the charity’s profile among the people that need it the most.

Darryl Danielli Some people reading this probably don’t know much about the charity; so can you tell me a little about it? 

Stephen Gilbert The charity was founded in a pub in 1827 near the Bank of England in London. In fact, that’s the reason that we know that we are the second-oldest occupational charity after the National Benevolent Society of Watch and Clock Makers, because when you set up a pension, which is what we were, you need a book of rules and if you need a book of rules, you need a printer. The [Watch and Clock Makers] job went to a city printer and the two guys setting the type said ‘wouldn’t it be good if we had a pension’. Their employer overheard and agreed, so they went over to the pub and set up a charity.

It seems quite apt that the printers’ charity was formed in a pub?

I don’t think the irony has been lost on many. About 20 years later the printers’ almshouse came into being in Wood Green – there’s an engraving of it in the Guildhall Art Gallery – and then around 15 years after that the orphan asylum – which clothed and educated children if a printer parent had died. We actually have the books going back to 1847 listing the subscribers [donors] who could donate either weekly or make a one-off donation.

Were the donors typically employers rather than employees?

Well, it started off with the great and the good, but actually employees became involved too, and at its height we had thousands of donors. They were all listed and they would put in a penny a week out of their wages to the Printers Pension Corporation.

Because you were actually providing pensions?

Precisely. Because back then there were no pensions and if you were old or infirm you would most likely end up in the workhouse. Well, the alms-house was a damn sight better. We built these in 1847 and they actually had inside toilets in each flat, which at the time was extraordinary, because up until 1925 you didn’t have to have an inside toilet, a bathroom or hot and cold water.

And they had bathrooms?

Well no, not bathrooms – they weren’t five-star hotels – but they were advanced designs. And we didn’t have any state support; it was very much owned by the members and they decided who got a pension, who got a place in the almshouse and whose child was supported. Of course the latter fell away after the Butler Act of 1945, when the state provided education and the welfare state took over.

But I suppose in some ways it shows how things have come full circle, and now you once again support the younger generation through Print Futures?

True; in some ways Print Futures comes out of the past. If we imagine we had the donors to the orphan asylum today what would they want us to do? I imagine many of them would want us to support the industry’s younger generation. So in some ways we’ve gone back to our roots. 

Speaking of donors, you’re no longer a pension provider, so how is the charity funded today?

We have a large investment portfolio.

How large?

£30m, it’s all in the public domain. That provides 66% of all funding, which is why we don’t necessarily need to go out and rattle tins in people’s faces. 

So is fundraising not particularly important then?

It’s incredibly important. We do need to fundraise because we want to do more. As a charity one of the things we’re all very passionate about is our ‘2,000 by 2017’ goal. And once we achieve that we want to make sure it’s sustainable, so that we can continue to increase the number of people we help. We’re not looking to add to that £30m reserve, we’re looking to raise more so that we can spend more. The reserve allows us to plan for the future and is a sign of security for the people that we help, that we will be around tomorrow.

So the charity lives off the earnings of the investment portfolio and donations?

Yes.

Where do your donations come from?

Individuals, the industry, things like the PrintWeek Awards... Donations aren’t a huge part of our income, but they are growing. But fundraising is one of the key ways that people get involved with the charity and it makes it feel like ‘their’ charity. And then they will talk to people about it – so not only do they raise money for people in need, they also raise the profile of the charity, which means that more people in need will hear about us and come to us for help.

So it’s a virtuous circle then?

Yes. There’s no point in this charity existing if it doesn’t help people. I was talking to someone earlier and she asked what would we do if 1,000 young people came to us for support to help them get training and I said I would shout ‘whoopee!’ Okay, it wouldn’t be sustainable in the long term, but if I went to the industry and said that I had 1,000 people that wanted to be trained in printing, I’m sure they would welcome it.

Is spending the money harder than raising the money?

Yes. And that’s where PrintWeek was great in highlighting the sad situation at Global MP to us. I’m really pleased we could help, and so is Henry [Smith, the charity’s grants officer]. He comes to work to help people, that’s what makes him happy. If you met him then you would know that helping people is what makes him tick. We’re fortunate in the team we have, because they all believe in this – even our accountant encourages us to spend money.

How many people does the charity help then?

We helped 601 last year, which is slightly down on the previous year.

But that doesn’t include things like the one-off payments presumably?

That’s everyone.

I thought it would be much higher?

That’s the problem; that’s why we need the support of the industry and the media. The big employers have gone. With 80% of companies in the industry having fewer than 25 employees, it’s hard to get information out to them. They’re not unionised, so we can’t use the union to stay in touch with people, and the smaller businesses often have a higher turnover of staff – so we just miss people and they don’t know about us.

So has the number of people you help been falling for a while?

Not at all. It only dipped by 11 last year, but when I joined in 2003 it was half what it is today – we were seriously in decline.

But if it has only doubled in 11 years, then surely the goal of helping 2,000 people in 2017 is incredibly ambitious?

That’s why things like the Awards are important to us. All I want is for people to talk about the charity to raise awareness so that if people need help, they know where to come. 

Why 2017 though?

Because I will be 65 in 2017. I will probably stick around at the charity for a few years after that maybe, but I thought if I get to 65 and leave this charity sustainable, helping 2,000 people and growing, then I can walk away knowing that it’s a job well done. It’s personal really, but all of the trustees want to do it, the staff all want to do it – Henry most definitely wants me to do it. He’s always badgering me to get out and bang the drum for the charity so that more people come to us.

What did you do before joining the charity? Had you been in the third sector for a long time?

My first career was in banking and building societies. I was made redundant twice in the early 1990s and so decided to build an entirely new career in the charity sector. I was qualified as a chartered secretary, so I knew governance and had a good solid financial grounding. I did various bits and pieces and then my first proper job was with my local hospice, where I handled all the non-clinical stuff. I worked there for five wonderful years.

It must have been tough though?

I’m guessing you’ve never been to a hospice? They’re bizarre places, because they’re not miserable – quite the opposite. It was a great institution and did fabulous work and I was immensely proud to be part of it, but after five years I felt the time was right to move on. I then saw an advert for the role of chief executive of the Printers’ Charitable Corporation, as it was then. My grandfather was a printer, and my big sister and I had the run of a printworks from when I was about six until 11. So I love print, because it reminds me of what was my playground.

I’m not sure that the Health & Safety Executive would be too happy about that nowadays.

Probably not, but he retired in 1964 so it wasn’t really a problem then.

What was the company?

It was Thanet Press and at the time they were part of Eyre & Spottiswoode. He printed the orders of service for the weddings of Princess Margaret and Princess Alexander – we have copies. He also printed copies of the Beatles Magazine, which we ended up throwing away. Argh! But when I got the job, my sister Diane phoned me and just said: “You’re coming home.”

But the family connection with print, until you joined the charity, ended in 1964?

It did.

What were the challenges facing the charity when you joined?

Financially, none, it was incredibly robust. But it had two challenges: the first was the nursing home, which was losing a lot of money and 70%-80% of the residents weren’t actually former printers. The second and bigger problem was the reducing number of people we helped year-on-year. We tried to turn the nursing home around, but in the end it was scuppered by its scale, the fact it was fixed to one location – whereas people understandably wanted to be in a nursing home that was near to their family – and the complexities of the residents’ needs. In the end it just made sense to sell it. However, we still support the printer residents in the home.

How many people did the charity help at its peak?

Thousands. I think it was more than 6,000 in the 1960s. At that point you had big employers and strong unions. So basically the FOC would go up to people on his or her first day and ‘persuade’ them to sign a form so that they would donate a percentage of their salary to the charity – so everyone knew about us.

And when did you stop providing pensions?

In the mid 1960s. Basically as the welfare state grew it started to affect social security benefits. What we offer now is ‘regular financial assistance’; if someone could come up with a better name I would grateful. It works out as £25 per week and we pay it as a lump sum twice a year; it’s the successor to the pension – but it’s a grant, so it’s not for life and it’s means tested. We’re governed by Charity Commission rules, but we also have this wonderful catch-all term ‘people in distress’ that has no legal definition – so that gives us much-needed flexibility to help people. Some of the cases are really heart-breaking.

I can imagine.

You probably can’t to be honest. But it’s wonderful when we can help, which is more often than not.

Who are the trustees?

They’re all people with a strong industry connection. The other
thing they have in common is that they’re incredibly passionate about what we do.

And what do they do?

A trustee’s job is governance, strategy and leadership – but they’re not operational. They set the targets and I report to them.

Who do you help, and how? Does it have to be quite prescriptive?

On our website we list all of the areas we can help with, but we also have another great catch-all phrase: ‘any other purpose’. Because not every problem fits into a neat little box, and we want to encourage people to apply; we would far rather people contact us to see if we can help, because even if we can’t we can hopefully point them in the direction of someone who can.

What sort of things do you do beyond financial help?

We do a lot of signposting. For example, we can point people to Turn2us, which has a website that has a benefits calculator on it, and also you can search for other benevolent charities. We’re also seeing a lot of debt problems and people are calling us about that and we can put them in touch with charities that we know about where there is no skimming of fees. Everyone knows about Citizens Advice Bureaux and they have a fantastic service, but they’re really stretched. There’s also the National Debt Line, which is backed by charity. Then there’s StepChange, which is run by a charity. Those three organisations are where we direct most people. There’s a mass of advice out there, but people don’t always know about it.

Do you offer careers advice for people who are out of work?

No, you have to be careful and stick to what you know. So we use [HR consultancy] Chiumento for support. If a firm goes under or cuts staff and you’re at the top of the tree then you’re generally looked after and offered support to find something else. But if you’re Fred or Freida on the shop floor then you might get a cheque, but often that’s it. So we will buy that [back to work] service from Chiumento and they can help in a number of ways; either one-to-one or we can get up to 10 people together and organise a day course on CV writing and other skills on how to find a new job. Because often the people haven’t had to apply for a job for decades.

Getting back to the history of the charity, what have been the historical highlights?

It would have to be the number of people we have helped in the industry and the level of engagement that we used to have with the industry.

How many people could you technically support today? Is 2,000 the maximum?

I don’t think so. But it really depends on us pulling in extra funding. It might depend on us doing things in a very different way – I just wouldn’t want to put a number on it because I would like to think we would be in a position to help anyone who needed it.

What have been your personal highlights?

The fact that we checked and then reversed the decline in the number of people we helped. Second would be rebranding the charity and developing the ‘four cornerstones’...

And they are?

Homes, help, links and future. And the third highlight was renewing the Royal Charter – because that really sets us up for the future.

Well done for reeling them all off so easily. Can you do the same for some famous past presidents though?

Is this turning into a test? There are too many to list, but we’ve had every Prince of Wales – from Edward VII, including the current one and his first wife – Charles Dickens twice, Disraeli, Gladstone, governors of the Bank of England, Archbishops of Canterbury. We’ve even had an American Ambassador – I’ve no idea how he got in. 

Were there any less than savoury characters in the charity’s almost 200-year history?

Well Robert Maxwell asked to be president and the trustees wouldn’t have it. This was when he was at his zenith too. We’ve had Rupert Murdoch though.

On the bright side, I don’t think he’s swindled any pensioners.

True. But nonetheless, that’s probably a good place to end – before I get into trouble.