Cats Protection, which made nearly 100 staff redundant last year, grew its income by £1m to £37m.

And the charity's latest accounts reveal that a £1m investment in fundraising has already generated an extra £200,000.

Cats Protection’s accounts for the year ending 31 December 2012, say that between October and December of last year, nearly 100 staff accepted voluntary redundancy. This will reduce future salary costs by about £1.6m per year. Cats Protection employs around 500 staff.

Cats Protection also invested an extra £1m into fundraising last year in a bid to grow its legacy pipeline and start other new fundraising initiatives. A large chunk of its income comes from legacies - £20.4m last year – almost 55 per cent of its total income. The charity has developed a toolkit to help local promotion of legacies in all branches and adoption centres, and it has joined the Remember a Charity consortium.

Last year, enquiries about legacies and legacy pledges both doubled. Some 250 pledged a legacy in 2012, compared with 108 in 2011.

The charity also recruited over 6,000 new monthly supporters through face-to-face fundraising in 2012, and opened three new shops.

Going forward, the charity plans to continue face-to-face fundraising, grow legacies, open more shops, introduce a cat sponsorship scheme and introduce a weekly lottery.

It says its £1m investment in fundraising has already generated an extra £200,000 for the organisation.

VAT reimbursement

Elsewhere, Cats Protection’s account reveal that after a significant fall in its investment portfolio value since 2008, the charity has managed to get investment values back to similar levels prior to 2008. The charity withdrew £4.5m from its investment portfolio during 2012 to support its operations. The charity’s investment portfolio is currently worth around £29m.

Cats Protection also benefitted from a one-off receipt of £4.2m of under-claimed input VAT and received a one-off repayment of £1.1m of gift aid originally claimed.