Fellows stories: Mike Ruck

We put the phone down and that was it. After the initial shock of ‘what are we going to do now?’, the biggest thing was the realisation of freedom. I was quite lucky in that our transaction was enough to make everybody happy, and it meant that I could then pick and choose what I wanted to do. I was only 47. I had a huge amount of time. I know, it was fantastic, but what did I want out of this?

For me, the best thing was the complete removal of stress and to be able to spend time with my family. I don’t know if my kids would agree, but I get to spend a lot of time with them, and I hope they’d say it was good!

I just want to do my thing. My little things, just to try and make a difference really…

I have done a bit of business consultancy and that turned into process and automation consultancy for a charity, which there’s obviously no charge for, it’s great to be able to give a skill away knowing it’s going to make a difference. For the Cheshire Community Foundation, for example, I helped them work through a transformation project into Salesforce, which will dramatically improve how the team shares and processes information. I would never have had the time to do that before.

Pre-sale, I had found that food poverty was something that I cared deeply about. So, after the sale, I started to volunteer at Warrington Food Bank and there were quite a few things I thought we could do differently… So I ended up becoming the chair of trustees there. We’ve put in new IT systems, new digital systems, and employed new staff. We increased the size of the warehouse. Warrington Food Bank is phenomenal, and it’s got a great bunch of volunteers. They have great supporters and they’re great at providing immediate crisis support. But for me, that’s a plaster fix.

Crisis support is one thing. But we’re not actually solving anything. What can we do to help people before they fall into crisis? After looking at what other areas have done, we’ve picked the best bits and we’ve decided to go down the route of food pantries, and have recently opened two.

Food pantries not only provide access to affordable food but household products and anything classed as essential to get through your day-to-day life. We’re embedding additional services into the pantries too to really help empower people. Mental health and well-being services, cooking courses, basic money management courses, with a financial adviser on a rota. And I’ve managed to talk to a few housing providers, and we’re just about to come to an agreement where they will provide free training: certified first aid courses, forklift/truck driving courses and more. So, while people are at the food pantries, they can access wrap-around services that might help stop them from falling into food poverty or just poverty in general.

One of the things that I found particularly interesting was how education was provided during lockdown, and out of lockdown. I became a governor for Warrington Primary Academy Trust, which has seven schools. You don’t teach teachers how to teach, but you can check that they’re making the most of their finances, and support in loads of different ways. So, for example, in one pilot school, we’ve managed to completely overhaul all their lighting from standard bulbs into LEDs, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but we managed to secure a grant to replace all of their lighting, which will now save them thousands each year. These are savings which they can now reinvest to provide additional learning options for the children via gardening clubs, art therapy through to additional school trips.

We’ve also looked at the energy efficiency of one pilot school and found a company that will provide solar panels to the school for free, and so the school gets reduced electricity. But the most important thing is, the company that provides it, also runs a wraparound educational offering via experiment kits, educational packs, and presentations for the children to explain. What are solar panels? Why are they on the roof? Why are they so important? Because obviously when our kids grow up, it’s going to be a completely different environment for them. The hope is that generating such a conversation with the children now, might translate to an embedded change in understanding of power consumption, conservation, and conversations at home. If conversations at home translates to more homes with solar panels or home batteries, then that is another massive success for the project.

Many children never learn how to swim. I have recently qualified as a swim teacher and am planning to start a swim school…

Towards the end of my Channel swim training, I was probably doing 90 kilometres a week, which is a lot of swimming. My wife said to me: “Why don’t you become a swim teacher?” She said it sarcastically, but I didn’t hear it sarcastically. I heard it as, yeah, why don’t I do that?

I’ve got some free time. What a great way to give back. I have recently qualified, and on Tuesdays and Fridays I teach autistic children to swim. The goal here is to set up my own swim school. This ties up with my work for The Primary Academy trust, as there’s a huge percentage of disadvantaged families where their children don’t know how to swim.

The main reason is schools. While it is on the national curriculum, it does cost a lot of money to send children to learn how to swim. So, we’re exploring this at the moment: free scholarships where every child has the opportunity to learn, no matter what background they’re from. You never know, we could have some future Olympians!

I just want to do my thing. My little things, just to try and make a difference really.