Twenty-four hundred pounds buys somebody else a year.
The apprenticeship crowdfund. Not the training itself, which is funded, but the four things that are not and that quietly stop people from taking an agricultural apprenticeship at all: the tickets, the kit, the travel and the boots.
What the £2,400 actually pays for.
| Item | Cost | Why it is not otherwise funded |
|---|---|---|
| A telehandler ticket | £450 | Training funding covers the qualification, not the plant tickets employers require |
| A PA1 and PA6 sprayer ticket | £620 | Same. Nobody sprays anything commercially without one |
| Boots, waterproofs and a helmet | £180 | Personal kit. Provided by good employers and not by all of them |
| Travel to college and back, a year | £1,150 | The biggest single line, and the one nobody expects |
| Total | £2,400 | None of which is tuition, because tuition is already paid for |
Why this is on a gifting page.
Because it is a present, and treating it as charity would be both inaccurate and less effective. Somebody buys it, somebody receives a card saying it has been done in their name, and somebody entirely different gets a year of their life made easier.
It is the only thing on this site where the recipient of the card and the beneficiary are different people, and it is by a distance the best present here for somebody who genuinely has everything. It is also the only one that produces content — each funded apprentice writes up their year, four times, and those write-ups are the most read pages in Schooling.
The uncomfortable part, which we may as well say out loud: this is good for us. It produces goodwill, it produces writing, and it produces trained people in an industry that badly needs them and that we happen to be in. All three of those are true at once and none of them makes it less worth doing.
- £2,400
- a year
- 3
- funded so far
- 4
- write-ups each
How to give one.
A whole year, or a share of one
Forty pounds upwards. Sixty people at forty pounds funds a year, which is roughly one workplace.
In somebody’s name, or anonymously
A card either way, and about a third of these are anonymous, which is a higher proportion than anything else here.
It goes into the fund, not to a person
Shares are pooled. Nobody sponsors a named individual, for reasons set out below.
The fund pays the college and the supplier directly
Never the apprentice in cash. Tickets, kit and a travel pass, invoiced to us.
You get the write-ups
Four a year, from whoever the fund is supporting, whether or not you funded them specifically.
And an annual account
What came in, what went out, and what is left. Published rather than sent.
Why the money never touches the apprentice.
Every payment out of this fund goes to a college, a training provider, a bus company or a kit supplier, against an invoice. Nothing is ever paid to an apprentice in cash.
That is partly for the obvious reason and mostly for a less obvious one: a cash payment to somebody on an apprenticeship wage is potentially income, potentially affects benefits, and turns a straightforward good thing into a conversation with a tax office. A paid-for bus pass is not.
It also means the fund cannot quietly become a wage subsidy for an employer, which is the failure mode of almost every scheme of this shape. Tickets, kit and travel are things the apprentice keeps and takes with them to the next job.
The scholarship, questioned.
No, and we are careful not to imply otherwise. It is a ring-fenced fund with published accounts, run by a business. If it grows past about twenty thousand a year it should become a charity properly, and it would.
No. Shares are pooled and the selection is made by the college with us in the room rather than the other way round.
It happens, and it has happened once. The kit stays with them, the travel pass stops, and the remainder goes back into the fund. It is reported in the annual account rather than quietly absorbed.
For you, no. It is a purchase rather than a donation, and describing it as deductible would be wrong.
Three apprentices, twelve write-ups.
Their years, in their own words, including the bits about the weather.
Elsewhere on the estate.
/estate/the-money/
/estate/recording/
/estate/sitemap/
