Children with Cancer UK (CCUK) cut its expenditure by more than a third in 2021, while increasing its income, recently published documents show.
CCUK’s accounts for the year ending 31 December 2021 show the charity cut its expenditure from £15.3m in 2020 to £9.9m, while its income increased from £13.8m to £14.8m.
As a result, the charity increased its reserves by more than £5m to £14.5m in unrestricted funds.
“The continued impact of the pandemic, and the effect on our income streams and risk profile, has meant that we have carefully considered our cost base and completed various cost saving initiatives. We were therefore able to manage our expenditure down from £15.3m to £9.9m,” it said in its accounts.
“The Covid-19 pandemic had a significant impact on research in the UK and resulted in delays for many existing research projects. As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic we were limited in our efforts to fund new projects and as a result our total grant awards decreased from £7.4m to just over £2m.”
The Commission website shows it was the second year of late filing from the charity, and it engaged with the trustees once the charity was in default of its reporting requirements for the year end 31 December 2021, with a warning of potential further regulatory action if they were not submitted by a certain date. The trustees have since submitted their annual return by that deadline.
Spending plans
The charity wrote that it planned to use £7m of the reserves to fund the next year’s charitable spend, “with a further £1m set aside to invest in to a digital transformation project to help secure existing and future fundraising potential”.
“This leaves approximately £6m as a reserve for operational expenditure,” it said in its accounts, which the Charity Commission website says were received 91 days late.
“Although a £6m buffer is a slight increase from the previous financial year this will enable the charity to operate without any income for approximately five months.”
Staff cut
The highest paid member of staff in the year received between £90,000 - £100,000 which was lower than the year prior, at £130,000 - £140,000.
An employee that is connected to a trustee was paid £93,750 gross salary and £8,438 pension contributions, and the accounts state there is no interdependence between the trustee and the connected person.
The average weekly number of contracted employees during the year was 40, which was down from 55 the year prior.
Fundraising recovery
The return of sporting events, after a number of lockdown limitations, has helped raise the charity’s income.
The accounts say “although we continue to feel the longer-term impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on our fundraising operations”, the increase of over £1m in income can be attributed to a recovery in sporting events.
The 2021 Virgin Money London Marathon was the charity’s “first major event back following the pandemic” and it raised more than £2m from it which was “higher than expected”.
The accounts state: “The return of this live event during the end of 2021 helped increase the income from our sporting events from £1.7m to £2.7m.”
The charity also observed a 20% increase in money from its community fundraisers and it “plans to build on this growth area”.
CCUK raised £1.6m from gifts in wills, £2.8m from regular givers and more than £1m from cash appeals to existing supporters.
The accounts add: “We continued to recruit committed regular givers in 2021 via our TV advertising and other digital campaigns, taking our total number of active cause regular givers at the end of the year to over 50,000.
“The Christmas TV advert in particular performed exceptionally, and we received nearly double the expected number of responses to the TV adverts,” it said.
Income from corporate and philanthropy “continued to struggle” during 2021 with no growth from 2020.
The accounts state these income streams continued to be impacted with organisations not being able to run face-to-face fundraising events and the financial disruption faced by corporate supporters due to Covid-19.
CCUK received £5m through individual giving, a similar level to the year prior.
“This reflects the tough fundraising environment of our appeals programme, raffles and acquisition campaigns. Last year our legacy income at £2.1m was the highest in the charity’s history,” it said.
Related Articles
