Accounts for year to 5th April 2009

Financial review

During the year, fundraising and donations from the general public produced £2,281 net, half last year’s record total, but still creditable for a charity that was not set up primarily for fundraising. Our charitable status enabled us to recover £3,910 from HM Revenue and Customs; this arose from last year’s record donations which included the final payment from the family of Sheena Booth, and so next year’s Gift Aid repayment will be very much less. We won a prize of £750 in the CAF Bank’s annual ‘Online Accounts’ award, not a bad achievement for an amateur accountant. Investment in some fixed rate bonds before the collapse of interest rates resulted in interest payments of £919, giving a total income of £7,960. We distributed £1,037 to a wide variety of projects in London, listed on page 7, which left us with financial reserves of £9,221 at the end of the financial year. Given our intention to use both capital and income to support grant making at a rate likely to exhaust reserves by the middle of 2010, we propose to continue holding all our reserves as cash and short term bonds. We are proud of the fact that our only significant expense was the legal cost of establishing the trust in 2003; 99% of the money donated to date has been spent on grants.

Figures 1 and 2 give a summary of our financial affairs over the last 5 years, and show our budgeted proposals for 2009 to 2010.

Figure 1: Actual and projected income and grants, 2003-2009 (point to enlarge)