News
Meet the Board: Andrew Wauchope
“We need to make The Solicitors’ Charity less of a well-kept secret and become better known so that we can help more people.”
“We want people in the legal profession to know we are here to support them, so that when anybody ends up in trouble or finds a colleague needing help, they have us on their dashboard.”
Andrew is a Chartered Fellow of The Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment and has over 30 years of investment experience, including sitting as an investment committee chair and finance committee member with a number of charities.
Having worked in the charity sector and wanting to ‘give something back’ Andrew has been a ‘non-solicitor’ Trustee at the Solicitors’ Charity for the past two years.
He was brought in to chair the Investment Finance and Audit Committee, using his investment and finance skills, and he is pleased to be able to offer his considerable career experience in managing investments for charities to the Board.
“I enjoy being able to share ‘best practice’ and provide external feedback. I think, where I am a Trustee, I’ve injected is a greater professionalism in the investment field.
I think the Trustees have been bringing constructive challenges, making sure we are being effective, making the best use of our resources and finding the right people who need help.
The Solicitors’ Charity was helping people with mental health issues early on, but the real question is how are we delivering this support and whether there are people who are slipping through the net.
One of the crucial things we do as Trustees is to keep questioning, analysing and keeping an open mind. We should keep asking is there anything else we can do, other partnerships we should look at and how can we deepen our relationships with other charities in the sector.”
Andrew enjoys the interaction with the lawyers on the Board, who work at various-sized legal practices around Britain, and the focus they give to the charity’s aims.
“We all get together with a uniformity of purpose to do our very best,” he says.
“It is important to keep a sense of energy and urgency – there are people out there who need our help and we must ensure we keep doing a good job.”
Looking to the future, Andrew says:
“In the short term, our aim is to help more people. There are 200,000 solicitors in Britain and last year we supported around 270 – I’d like that number to go up significantly. This means greater spending and successful fundraising. We need to find ways to encourage more of the profession to give to the charity and support their colleagues in need.
Ultimately, I would like to see The Solicitors’ Charity as an exemplar charity – I’d like people to want to model their charity on us.”
His message is:
“The Solicitors’ Charity is here to support you and if you want to support people in the profession, please support us.”
Andrew’s wife is a Partner at a legal firm, so he is well aware of the stresses and strains those in the legal profession face. He is a Trustee of several other charities, providing support and education for those in need, including his Livery Company, where he is a former Master.
When not focused on Finance and Investment issues, he keeps up to date with developments in his chosen degree fields of History & Politics, by reading on both subjects.
