Income and Expenditure

Our external grants programme supported a plethora of needs including, but not exclusively, elderly care, the provision of mental health services, employment and training, bereavement services, housing, and facilities providing advice and guidance. Grants included significant awards to the likes of Broughton House (£96,000), Royal Commonwealth Ex Services League (£200,000), Combat Stress (£250,000), SSAFA (£295,000), RFEA The Forces Employment Charity (£398,146) and smaller discrete grants to organisations such as the Army Widows’ Association (£32,000) and the Rainbow Trust Children’s Charity (£15,000).

Income and Expenditure

The total cost of raising funds was £5.9m (FY18-19: £5.7m) as we invested slightly more in income-generating activities. We continue to bear the entire cost of raising and administering funds, which we then pass on for free to our 89 delivery partners.

Total expenditure decreased to £18.1m (FY18-19: £22.9m), largely due to last year’s substantial grant to the Defence and National Rehabilitation Centre (more than £7m). Regarding our investment portfolios, they showed a significant loss of £3.62m at year end (FY18-19 gains of £5.05m), given the market reductions in March 2020 (the final month of the reporting period). Since then the funds have regained much of their value –we continue to take a long-term view and manage our resources accordingly.

Case studies

Here are two examples of the support we have provided over the past year, via our individual grants programme (Holly) and via our grants to other charities and organisations programme (Combat Stress).

How we helped Holly

Holly was 19 when she joined the Army. She served with the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers for seven years, including an operational tour of Iraq in 2003. After leaving the Army, Holly struggled with her mental health and found it difficult to hold down a job. But with the help of the Poppy Factory –one of 89 charities funded by our charity this year –she decided to launch The Hangry Lemons café in the indoor market of her hometown of Carlisle.

Holly runs the café with her partner, Hannah. They applied to our charity for help with a kitchen refurbishment to get the café up and running, and the business got off to a great start. The café was closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, but Holly and Hannah look forward to welcoming customers back as social distancing restrictions lift.

Supporting Combat Stress

This year, we were delighted to continue our substantial support for Combat Stress with a £250,000 grant towards its work with veterans battling complex mental health conditions.

Formed in the aftermath of the First World War, the charity offers therapeutic and clinical community and residential treatment to former members of the British Armed Forces who are suffering from a range of mental health conditions, including Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Our grant will support Combat Stress as it adapts its service provision in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes its 24-hour helpline, alongside a new programme that provides holistic and flexible therapy via video link.

In the past year, Army veterans attended 11,719 appointments at Combat Stress, including individual counselling, group sessions and residential treatment.

COVID-19: Our Response

Our response to the pandemic is that our support to the Army family must continue unabated –as you would expect from the Army’s national charity. Despite working remotely, our grants office continues to operate as normal, although the provision of casework has required some adjustment.

Since lockdown began in March, we have distributed in excess of£1m to over 1,100 individuals in need. A further £1.8m plus has been provided via our grants programme to some 20 other charities and organisations that support the Army family; and this has included some substantial six-figure grants. Current levels of need appear suppressed as individuals hunker down and the other charities and organisations we support postpone or cancel programmes so do not need to draw down funding from us. That said, our sector is quite clear we will face an autumn bow-wave of grant applications as furlough ends and the real scale of economic damage becomes more apparent.

The onset of COVID-19 and lockdown has caused us significant difficulties –not least that our annual programme of some 600 events nationally and regionally was effectively closed, leading to a 50% reduction in our core fundraising income. That said, we have been hugely grateful for tremendous continued support and a real growth in ‘virtual’ events. Noting a more difficult context for the sector at large, and some nervousness over market valuations, we had already taken steps to move a substantial tranche of capital into cash towards the end of the last financial year and so entered the crisis in good shape with adequate liquidity.