The Rainbow Fund has appointed Daniel Brookbank as its Independent Treasurer. The voluntary position will provide additional professional expertise and scrutiny for Rainbow Fund’s financial procedures and practices. The Rainbow Fund recently re-established itself as an independent grant-giving group
The voluntary position will provide additional professional expertise and scrutiny for Rainbow Fund’s financial procedures and practices.
The Rainbow Fund recently re-established itself as an independent grant-giving group, after three years with the Sussex Community Foundation. During that time it gave out over £100,000 in grants to the city’s LGBT volunteer-led groups providing frontline services to the LGBT community.
Daniel Brookbank has worked extensively in the voluntary sector as well as the NHS, and will provide external scrutiny to all of the Rainbow Fund’s financial processes. He is the current Chief Executive of the East Sussex Association Of Blind and Partially Sighted People.
Rainbow Fund Chairman Paul Elgood welcomed the appointment saying: “As we looked to the future we felt it absolutely critical to remain fully signed up to the principles of transparency and openness in all of our dealings. We need to give our donors the full assurance that their money is collected in a safe and timely way, and used in an appropriate manner. I have told Daniel that he is to act as a whistleblower should we ever fail to live up to these principles.
“I am delighted that the Rainbow Fund has attracted such high calibre interest. It really is an exciting time for the Rainbow Fund and the potential its work can do in supporting the local LGBT volunteer-led groups and organisations.”
Daniel added: “For fifteen years I worked in the NHS running GP practices and latterly setting up one of the first clinical commissioning groups. I was particularly proud to have launched programme of ‘gay awareness’ training in the city in the mid 1990’s as it was obvious that a lot LGBT people in those days were very wary of telling their GP anything very personal. Our scheme helped a lot of people access medical services in a new safer environment. I took over at the helm of East Sussex Association Of Blind and Partially Sighted People in January 2011. I am pleased to say that three years later it is going from strength to strength.
‘To be able to work with the LGBT community in the city I love ticks all the boxes for me. Brighton has always been my spiritual home and the LGBT community the heart of that so I am very excited and honoured that they have chosen me.”
There are no salaries or expenses attached to any role at the Rainbow Fund so that the maximum amount raised is given out in grants each year to deserving LGBT groups and organisations.
