Barings Foundation 1

For those too young to remember Barings foundation was linked to Barings bank, who were ruined by the combination of an expansion to Asia and the reckless speculation of an employee: one Nick Leeson. The foundation, however, survived and allocates funding which it identifies as Arts based, Strengthening Civil Society and International Development. Barings is a private charitable foundation so whilst this gives them control over the allocation of their funds it does have obligations, as a charity, to submit information to the Charity Commission.

This is legal advice about the responsibilities of charities 👇

This is the link to the Baring Foundations website where the information about its priorities is available. 👇

Baring Foundation:Grant Making

The inspiration for my inquiry was the revelation that Barings Foundation fund the All Parliamentary Group on LGBT issues. This group is chaired by Crispin Blunt and its vice chair is Michael Cashman. Crispin is an MP who came out, as a gay man, relatively late in life. Cashman is one of the original founders of Stonewall, a once great organisation now better described as a controversial lobby group.

Crispin Blunt was recently sanctioned for attempting to broker a back room deal on the controversial proposals to reform of the Gender Recognition Act. This despite opposition from feminist organisations concerned about the detrimental impact on women’s sex based rights. You can read an account of this here 👇. (You can also sign up as a supporter Sex Matters to defend sex based rights on the same site)

Sex Matters

So I determined to have a look at the funding Barings made to this APPG, Stonewall and the Kaleidoscope Trust since they all figure in this story.

Barings have been funding Kaleidoscope Trust since 2015. 👇 (CHOGM is the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting).

They also provided £40,000 to the Kaleidoscope Trust to fund administrative support for the APPG LGBT. In addition they provided a further £148,415 direct payment, to the APPG LGBT+ group, to cover coordinator costs from 2020 to 2023.

This makes it clear that Stonewall were closely linked to APPG LGBT from the beginning. Also take a look at the origins of the person providing the support!

Anna Robinson was co-chair of the youth wing of IGLYO. You can learn more about this group in an earlier blog I did on The Denton’s Report

That Denton’s Document

A quick look at the links ,the Barings Foundation has, with Stonewall shows the international reach of its activity in embedding LGBTI issues in government infrastructure.

Funding for Stonewall ,from this Foundation, also allowed them to embed a Stonewall advisor in what was then the Department for International Development. (DFID).

Paul Twocock reports on the project. Paul was interim CEO of Stonewall after the departure of Ruth Hunt. The funding allowed them to lobby the government to further their agenda. 

Arundhati Roy called charitable foundations a way to “parlay wealth into power”. Charitable Foundations, with a pro-social justice agenda should be subject to as much scrutiny as any wealthy individual/group. When they are working with Lobby Groups who are committed to social engineering, on the basis of their own ideology, they should be investigated with as much vigour as #BigPharma.

Many former supporters of Stonewall are extremely concerned about the impact of Transgender Ideology on our gay youth. I cannot begin to imagine how this might play out in an International context where the rights of Gay males and Lesbians are fledgling or non-existent. Organisations working across different cultural contexts should be aware of the perils of this neo-colonialism.

Next up I will scrutinise all 163 grants from the Baring Foundation but, in particular, I will be looking at what they are funding under the heading International Development.