By Barbara Walshe

Carole Attwater works for The Coutts Charitable Trust, handling internal and external applications for charity donations. She began her career 30 years ago as a secretary, until going part-time in 1998 with her current role. These days, she works closely with five trustees, sending donations to hundreds of charities across the UK.

It’s rather nice being on the side of the business where you’re giving something back. The number of thank you letters you get from charities for their donations is unbelievable. Everyone is so grateful.

You see people managing on absolutely nothing in this role and they can still raise a smile.

I couldn’t do my job without everybody else in the bank doing theirs. The Trust’s money is based purely on Coutts profits every year. So everyone working hard and pushing up profits is indirectly doing their bit for charity.

Applications from clients through their private and commercial bankers are increasing to about 10-15 per cent of all applications now. It enhances the relationship because we’re helping with something that is close to their heart.

Coutts employees doing this or that for charity is another thing I’ve noticed with their applications, they are incredibly committed. The rest of our applications come directly to the Trust from many of the 190,000 UK registered charities who either get our details via the Charities Commission website, the Directory of Social Change or by word of mouth.

Causes where a few hundred pounds can make a big difference, those are the ones we try to help. There are ten categories we donate to; Aged, Arts & Music, Cancer charities, Children, Disabled (mentally & physically), Drug & Alcohol addiction programmes, Religion, Education, Heritage and the Homeless.

For the smallest grants, we donate anything from £250 to £1,500. I am authorised to sign cheques of up to £750, anything higher than must be signed off by the trustees.

Being appointed a trustee is quite a formal process. Each one is allowed to serve two terms of five years, and they must be appointed by the board of directors. My five trustees are absolutely marvellous, both for the advice they give me and for being so approachable when people contact them directly about an application in my absence.

I go in with my hand on my heart to our quarterly trustee meetings and tell them what I’ve done with the money so far and, yes; they tend to believe me! That’s also where we decide on larger project donations in those meetings, depending on our budget.

‘You’re a big old softie’ one of the trustees always says to me, because I try to twist the other trustees’ arms into raising the money that we can give. I suppose I am deep down. I just put my heart into it.

If you’re a go-getter and like life in the fast lane, this is not the job for you. Your strengths need to be compassion, being a good listener and communicator, and understanding what makes people tick.

The hardest part? Turning applications down. Although we hardly do that at all these days, I still don’t find it easy. It’s usually a question of not wanting to spread funds so thinly that we’re not achieving anything. In those rare cases we have to decline, I prefer picking up the telephone to explain the situation before sending a decline letter.

Things have changed in my 30 years at and that is partly because everything is so time critical these days and everyone has huge demands on their time. They call it progress!

I love this job. In other jobs you get bogged down with papers, meetings and supporting your team. In a role like this, when you’re meeting goals, you’re helping people in need. It makes you quite humble.

For further information about the Coutts Charitable Trust, please email Carole at carole.attwater@coutts.com or call 020 7957 2822.