Crime Reduction Initiatives, the service delivery charity, grew its income by 21 per cent to over £140m in the last year and has announced a "fundamental rebrand" to help it become better known.
CRI's large increase in income, from £116.8m to £141.3m, can be seen in its annual accounts for the year ending March 2015. It is largely due to an increase in income from its social care and health initiatives. This increase follows on from a five year period which saw the charity double its income.
The charity had aimed for an 11 per cent growth in income for the year, but saw almost double that.
The charity’s growth in income is in part down to the change to the health and social care agenda in recent years, partly driven by the Government’s austerity programme.
The charity said: “We responded to this by restructuring our organisation to enable us to play a much bigger part in the delivery of future health care services and to respond to key public health priorities.”
The accounts state: “We believe growth in income reflects our commissioners’ confidence in our ability to provide innovative, safe and effective services in the current economic environment.”
It says that its aim for the next year is to grow its health care contracts and "broaden its service offer into
wider areas of public health concern, such as mental health,
diabetes and smoking cessation, as well as addiction in its
various forms".
One employee had remuneration of between £180,000 and £190,000 in the year. This is likely to be the charity’s chief executive David Biddle.
A total of 39 employees earned over £60,000 throughout the year, up by five on the previous year.
Fundamental rebrand to raise awareness
CRI announced in its accounts that its marketing team communications team was working in a "fundamental rebrand of the organisation over the coming year", this is to ensure that the brand is "fully aligned with its vision and values" and effectively supports its business.
The accounts say that CRI willbuild on work undertaken over the past year to publicise its successes to ensure that it becomes "widely known" for what it does.
The charity also continued to implement a “major, two-year, IT transformation project”, which is expected to be completed next month. This involved investing in an “industry-standard, state of the art ‘private cloud’ IT system to support agile working”.
CRI has also established a research and data department, which is “producing robust data on service delivery and leading a spread of research projects, in partnership with universities”.
The charity has accumulated reserves of £18.4m, up from £16.9m in the previous year. A total of £18.2m of that is unrestricted “as a result of generating annual surpluses on its activities”.
CRI is hoping for a further growth in income of 18.1 per cent in 2015-2016.
