2025-03-31-accounts

mySociety Impact report & audited accounts 2024/25 Company no. 03277032 Charity no. 1076346 In order to carry a positive action we must develop here a positive vision. 99 No Problemo LOVAL

We are mySociety

We are working towards a fair society, where people are informed, connected and empowered to shape the future of their communities and the world around them.

Our work is needed more than ever

Since 2003 we have been creating, running and sharing digital services that break down barriers to democratic participation, equipping people to take action and drive meaningful change.

Today, our mission is taking on a new urgency.

Trust in democracy is at crisis level

The British Social Attitudes research finds that trust and confidence in government are as low as they have ever been, while the Edelman Trust barometer shows that, globally, the “ fear that leaders lie to us [is at an] all-time high ”.

The UKʼs Ofice of National Statistics indicates that 57% of people have “ low or no trust in the government ”. Data from the FGS Global Radar report shows that one in five Britons aged 18–45 prefer “ a strong leader who doesnʼt have to bother with elections ” to the current democratic system.

Weʼre working on it

mySociety is not just a monitor of democracy, tracking the activity of our elected representatives: we also actively advocate for systemic improvements, based on our extensive research projects and increasing network of governance experts.

This year, thatʼs meant investigating the failures in transparency and efficacy of the system by which MPs declare their financial interests, via our WhoFundsThem project.

Engagement levels are low

The Ofice of National Statistics reports that in 2023, 21% of the population had not taken part in any political activities in the last year.

From the same study, 44% of people said they had little or no confidence in their ability to participate in politics .

Weʼre bringing people back in

Our Democracy services make it easier for everyone to understand what happens in the UKʼs parliaments and how that affects their own lives.

With its free, low-friction subscription service, TheyWorkForYou places the debates that reflect usersʼ interests directly into their email inboxes. And via WriteToThem , itʼs simple to drop your representative a line.

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The path to Net Zero is not straightforward

The Climate Change Committee used our data from CAPE to highlight that “ Only around one third of the emissions reductions required to meet the 2030 target are covered by credible plans ”, and “Policy reversals and delays in other areas, together with inconsistent messaging, have hindered progress just when acceleration was needed. ”

This is an era of disinformation

We are watching in real time how untruths and misrepresentations can propel bad actors to power , in countries across the world. Disinformation spreads unchecked on social media, and can now be accompanied by false ʻproofʼ in the shape of AI-generated images or videos.

Our services drive climate action

Our Climate services give people the information they need to scrutinise climate action at the local level. From campaigners to council officers, informed people are making smart decisions about where to work most effectively to combat the climate emergency.

Local Intelligence Hub allows the combining of datasets that have not previously been put together, while CAPE , natureemergency.com and Council Climate Action Scorecards are key to councils collaborating on their climate action.

We help people find and share the truth

Our Transparency services WhatDoTheyKnow and Alaveteli allow people both in the UK and globally to access primary sources, while our Democracy website TheyWorkForYou publishes the verifiable record of what was said and how MPs voted in Parliament.

With this yearʼs TICTeC conference focusing on pro-democracy tech, weʼre doing all we can to strengthen the sectorʼs knowledge on how to resist the rise of misinformation.

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This year… …weʼve continued to provide our core services

TheyWorkForYou makes it easier to follow what goes on in Parliament and keep an eye on your own MPʼs activities.

WriteToThem provides a simple way to contact your elected representatives, even if you donʼt know who they are.

Climate Council Action

Scorecards provide data to show how local authorities are doing on their path to Net Zero.

WhatDoTheyKnow guides users through the process of making a Freedom of Information request. Responses are openly published.

FixMyStreet makes it simple to report problems such as potholes and broken streetlights to the right authority to get them fixed.

Local Intelligence Hub

empowers campaigners by making it simple to slice and dice climate-related data by region or across the whole UK.

…and, like every year, weʼve gone further

WhoFundsThem

An in-depth investigation into MPsʼ financial interests, highlighting failures in the reporting system — and making the information openly available to all. See pages 8–10

FOI training in the UK

Hands-on tutoring for campaign groups supporting minoritised communities, showing how Freedom of Information can help with their causes. See pages 19-20

Neighbourhood Warmth

A pioneering digital service enabling a community-led approach to tackling home energy emissions. See page 30

ATI Community of Practice Convening a global group of Access to Information practitioners online, for knowledge exchange and mutual learning. See pages 16-17

New climate tools

Publishing a wealth of data — much of which has never before been used in combination — to inform climate campaigning. See pages 26–28

TICTeC

Our annual conference returned to an in-person event — but with hybrid technology for remote participation too. See pages 37–40

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Welcome

from our Chair of Trustees…

History has not shown human beings to be generally good at forecasting, even in the very short term, or even very quick at picking up the signals that in retrospect seem obvious. In the UKʼs transition from water to steam power in the 1830s and 1840s, the direction of progress really did hang in the balance. Water power was abundant and cheap. Steam was expensive and the coal it relied on known even then to be polluting. The transition happened not because of the competitive efficiency or cost of production of steam power, but despite both.

Technological change follows unpredictable pathways. We all know the fossil economy was a shift with outsized consequences. Abundant renewable power was the path not taken, back then. We might well be at a similar point of technological shift now. Perhaps it is another bad decision. We donʼt know yet, but itʼs possible. Climate overshoot is established. Artificial Intelligence is quickly expanding its reach. Trumpian convulsions in geopolitics and international trade are uprooting 80 years of established norms.

We are unlikely to predict what comes next with any accuracy. What we can do is surface, discuss and debate those changes as widely as possible, drawing on the most reliable information we can get. We can try too, to ensure that new technologies have effective oversight and accountability mechanisms designed into them, to give ourselves a fighting chance to change tack. mySociety may be a small charity, but it can and does play an outsized role in promoting civic engagement with these, and other, political and social questions through its established tools and its continued innovation. This report highlights why that work matters so much.

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… and from our Chief Executive

Iʼm delighted to share mySocietyʼs 2024–5 Impact Report, highlighting the important work we do using digital tools to enable people to take part in democratic decision making and civic life.

Reading this report, Iʼm hugely proud, both of the sheer numbers of people weʼve helped through our services to make positive changes for themselves and their communities, but also of the many different ways weʼve been able to inform, empower and bring people together around those services.

From bringing back TICTeC, our Impacts of Civic Tech Conference to convene practitioners and researchers from around the world taking on some of the biggest democratic and technological challenges facing us; to informing millions of people with voting records and candidate information through TheyWorkForYou and Local Intelligence Hub in the run-up to the general election; to shining a light on MPsʼ financial interest declarations and making the case for systemic change; to working with grassroots groups using Freedom of Information for the first time in their advocacy work — this breadth of impact would not be possible for such a small team without an incredible community of partners, volunteers, collaborators and supporters.

A huge thanks both to the staff team and trustees and to everyone who has been a part of our work this year.

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In 2024–25

mySocietyʼs work reached many millions of people and helped them inform themselves, participate in democracy, and make change

152,567

Freedom of Information requests submitted on the site this year.

7,649,955

Views of requests in the archive.

2,668,874 Visits to debate and MP pages.

Hundreds of thousands

of people received emails when their MPs spoke, or their chosen topics were mentioned in Parliament.

Hundreds of thousands

of alerts sent to people tracking keywords.

135,000

Messages sent by WriteToThem users, to their representatives.

1,020,731

The number of neighbourhood issues reported by users to the authorities responsible for fixing them.

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650,000+

Views of council and constituency data in CAPE, the Council Climate Scorecards, and the Local Intelligence Hub.

academics, activists, funders and technicians came together at TICTeC 2024 to take part in…

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different sessions on civic tech projects and learnings from around the world.

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There were 30 million sessions across all our sites.

In our outreach we learned directly from 22 organisations, and brought hundreds of people together in online seminars and workshops.

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WhoFundsThem

Crowdsourcing hidden information — and putting it into plain sight

We need better data, stronger checks, and tighter rules on our representativesʼ financial interests to rebuild public trust in our political system.

This year we have been working on WhoFundsThem, a deep dive into the financial interests of MPs: donations, gifts and second jobs, and how these fed into the General Election of 2024. Weʼve been creating new datasets, new tools, and new sections on TheyWorkForYou to share the information.

The project involved training up a large cohort of volunteers to look across a variety of information sources, not all of them immediately transparent to the general public. The data they retrieved was then checked in-house at mySociety, with any highlighted industry findings being passed back to the MPs in question, giving them the right to reply.

What we found

Missing data; poor data quality; discrepancies in how (and whether) interests are declared in Parliament … all of which cloud the facts and make it harder for the public to fully understand who is funding their MP.

We also discovered ways we can make things better : how we can build on what is published, and how to shine a brighter light on interests that are disclosed but unpopular with the general public.

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WhoFundsThem: the results

After the concerted period of research, the next job was to turn our findings into useful outputs. This first iteration of the WhoFundsThem project has yielded two results:

• What we now understand about missing and poor quality data fed into an in-depth report on the failings of the Register of Interests system, with recommendations on how it can be improved in order to increase both transparency and public confidence in MPs.

• Our improved, more comprehensive and clearer data on interests can now be accessed on every MPʼs page of our website TheyWorkForYou, making their financial interests easier for the general public to understand.

• As a side-effect, we also created some very informed volunteers.

“I was proud to have volunteered on this … it was a pleasure working with Julia and Alex who are the definition of good people. Read the report. Check your MP. Ask questions!”

— Lloyd Shepherd

Advocating for a better system

OUR RECOMMENDATIONS TO PARLIAMENT:

Better data collection to Stronger checks to make Tighter rules so there are achieve more accurate sure the interests fewer unacceptable @Q, m mYxX interests information information is reliable interests in the first place Systematic reform to A citizens assembly to decrease the role of money ag unblock the public in the political system discussion on MPsʼ interests

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How the public reacted to our WhoFundsThem videos…

Whatʼs next?

When it comes to Parliamentʼs Register of Interests, some changes need to happen from the inside — but we think thereʼs also a lot more we can do from the outside.

Weʼre thinking about how we can build on this work — to go broader by including more registers (weʼve already added the registers for the devolved Parliaments/Assemblies to TheyWorkForYou), or deeper by merging more datasets over the top of this information.

Weʼre also thinking about how we can best act to get Parliament to enforce its own rules, and how we can work with others to call for stronger ones. Stay tuned by signing up for updates on whofundsthem.com.

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Democracy is under threat…

…enter civic tech

The world weʼre in

Right now, we are at the intersection of two global trends:

• democracies around the world are under sustained threat

• there is rapid technological change

These two strands are not unconnected: 21st century authoritarians embrace technology as a means of internal control and external warfare.

The way forward

Democrats and democracies need, in turn, to step up in their use of technology — both defensively and constructively — to build stronger, more effective and popular democracies that are better connected with, and deliver for, their citizens.

• We need informed democratic participation from all kinds of people and communities to create stronger and fairer societies.

• We need reforms and responsiveness from democratic institutions, to convince people that their participation is worthwhile.

“I cannot thank you enough for the work you do to make parliamentary processes legible [...] Total lifesaver for navigating a wildly obfuscated system.”

• TheyWorkForYou user

We need to do more than persuade citizens to participate and policymakers to hear the voices and understand the lives of those theyʼre elected to serve – we need to give them practical, trustworthy and effective ways to do so.

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A reliable champion for democracy

IMPROVING LONG-RUNNING SERVICES

Providing a clearer picture of how MPs have voted

TheyWorkForYou has always provided an accessible path to understanding whatʼs happening in the UKʼs parliaments. This year, weʼve reviewed and refined how voting summaries are calculated, to make them clearer and to provide a fairer representation of each MPʼs record; and having done that, we added more voting categories to reflect the concerns of our age.

“I didnʼt know this existed… omg what a game changer! User friendly and easy… I just used it and will do so again. I hate emailing people normally and this has circumvented my executive dysfunction.”

— First-time WriteToThem user

THERE WHEN NEEDED

“What amazed me on Friday morning was to find that [TheyWorkForYou] had already updated the site as new MPs were confirmed as election results were coming in. It was an impressively agile response.

…Shows how this tech can revitalise democratic institutions.”

— John Naughton, Senior Research Fellow at Cambridge University

Meeting the challenges of a General Election year

A big democratic event always means an increased flow of traffic: over the six weeks leading up to the UKʼs General Election, there were 1.4 million visits to TheyWorkForYou.

But this wasnʼt the only challenge the election brought: when MPs change, and constituency boundaries are adjusted as well, thatʼs a lot of data to amend in a short space of time, across several of our sites: WriteToThem , TheyWorkForYou , Local Intelligence Hub , and MapIt .

We handled it, shoring the sites up for the increased traffic, prepping the boundary changes ahead of time and importing new MPs to our systems as they were announced overnight.

SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER

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Advocating for change

Itʼs not enough to simply record what happens in Parliament: with our unique expertise in digital engagement, weʼre well placed to suggest improvements around data outputs and even the internal mechanisms of the institution. Our Repowering Democracy series of blog posts saw both invited writers and inhouse thinkers examining parliamentary issues in depth.

Repowering Democracy: the most popular posts

----- Start of picture text -----
Improving the register The Big Ben rule: reducing Modernising the House of
of MPs interests Parliamentary jargon Commons and stand-in MPs
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BRINGING NETWORKS TOGETHER

A global sharing of knowledge

We convened the Parliamentary Monitoring Organisations (PMO) community of practice — a space to share experience and learn from others who engage in the rare art of running websites to hold national parliaments accountable.

PARTICIPANT SPOTLIGHT

“I enjoyed the gatherings. Learnings from these are helping with our project planning, and Iʼve connected with organisations similar to us.”

Open Knowledge Brazilʼs Querido Diário initiative meticulously maps, scrapes, extracts, processes, indexes and publishes the official gazettes of 350 cities, rendering them accessible through a user-friendly web interface and API, and has the eventual aim of covering all 5,570 cities in Brazil. Watch their session at TICTeC 2024.

“Itʼs a great way to stay updated on relevant work, trends, and knowledge. TICTeC gatherings are useful to us in that they focus on tech innovation, data policy, how to adopt AI, AI ethics etc., and are global. The in-person meetings make me more comfortable reaching out to contacts Iʼve met online.”

WeVis is a pioneering civic technology initiative dedicated to empowering citizens through open data and digital participatory tools.

One of their most significant endeavours has been the development of a parliamentary monitoring tool — an innovation previously nonexistent in Thailand. Watch their session at TICTeC 2024.

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Helping to set information free A community of transparency activists

The world weʼre in

When misinformation is rife, and lies are the currency of those in charge, the value of facts becomes all the stronger.

Access To Information (ATI) is one means by which we can all ensure that primary sources are in the public domain, not only supporting transparency and disincentivising corruption, but — just as importantly — publishing the verifiable truth.

Like any democracy-enhancing mechanism, ATI risks erosion in the current age: challenges include authorities ignoring requests (at best) or aggressively pushing back on rights to information (at worst), with everything in between, and are often coloured by the local context in which the sites are being run.

Access to Information network

FORGING GLOBAL LINKS

mySocietyʼs Alaveteli sofware is at the rare intersection of open source software with high usage volumes and explicit social good outcomes, supporting individuals and organisations around the world to run their own Freedom of Information websites in the model of WhatDoTheyKnow . As a result, citizens in more than 25 countries and jurisdictions can access information via their local legislation.

Laws vary, and country contexts may be very different, but there is much that these initiatives have in common. We set up the ATI Network so that those running Access to Information projects could exchange support, advice and skills.

Because each organisation that runs an ATI site has emerged from different foundations, they have a variety of skills, from journalism to data visualisation, advocacy and campaigning to fighting legal challenges. Through regular meetings and online tutorials, the ATI Network is levelling its participants up across all of these disciplines.

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Skill-sharing and mutual support

What transparency action looks like

Meeting online…

Over the year, members of the ATI Network have been invited to come together for learning and discussion in nine seminars. The outputs are subsequently shared on YouTube and our blog so that they are accessible to anyone else who can make use of this knowledge, for years to come.

“The opportunity to learn from the successes and failures of others in similar fields, a space to vent frustrations and seek advice in a supportive environment.”

Most viewed videos:

Legal Framework Masterclass Impact Measuring Workshop Funding for Transparency Projects

…and face-to-face

Many of our European partners made presentations at the TICTeC conference — and then stayed a further day for an in-person meet-up in London.

This was the first opportunity weʼd had to meet offline, giving the opportunity to discuss issues and also allowing stronger bonds to form between site members who may not have met each other before. Particular links were made between those running sites in France, Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden and Poland — and the experience was so positive that we did it all over again at TICTeC 2025.

“Hearing about interesting challenges in other countries which prepared me for similar challenges locally.”

“The serendipity of chatting with others and realising we have common issues, and trying to think about how we could tackle them together.”

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Keeping the flame burning

To ensure those benefits keep coming, weʼve now launched a network newsletter which all ATI Network members can contribute to with stories of success or the challenges they are facing.

And because the skillshare meetings have been so welcome, weʼre increasing their frequency, and tying this work more closely with impact measuring.

“This year mySociety felt (and in fact was) closer and more directly involved in the work that we did, as partner and contributor of knowledge, leads and activities.”

Practical transparency

Transparency happens when people have easy access to their rights to information. Thatʼs only made possible when a constant effort is made to keep mechanisms working.

PUTTING IN THE WORK

Data breaches: intercepted

When responding to FOI requests, public authorities sometimes release personal information in error, often as part of large spreadsheets. This type of careless data handling from an authority can have huge repercussions on the people whose data is accidentally put into the public domain. And, while authorities ought to have protections and policies in place to prevent such breaches from happening, for the times when thatʼs not so, weʼve developed a new tool.

The Analyser is a powerful safeguard against such data breaches, now deployed on WhatDoTheyKnow .

“My colleagues have used FOIs but I was really super unclear about the process, where to even begin! This and the introduction to the mySociety tools and resources is a gamechanger!! So accessible.”

This software automatically scans spreadsheets as they are received, identifying metadata types that are often the cause of large data breaches, such as pivot cache data,

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hidden elements, or cached data from external links — and prevents them from being published on the site.

The team can then alert the authority in question that hidden data has been detected in their response, giving them the opportunity to send a replacement file if necessary.

Weʼve also been working with the Information Commissionerʼs Office to help them understand how such breaches happen, and helping review some updated guidance theyʼre working on for authorities.

All in all, thatʼs how weʼre reducing the risk that sensitive information is accidentally published online, and limiting the harm that such releases can cause.

“For the past four years, we have carried out FOI requests to local authorities in England to build up a picture of national domestic abuse commissioning trends. The FOI webinar series was a fantastic opportunity for us to learn how other organisations use this method, and about WhatDoTheyKnow.”

Improvements to Alaveteli

A dedicated run of development work on Alaveteli has given our international community — as well as WhatDoTheyKnow here in the UK — three important new features:

A way to put news where site A way to make it easier to find the users are more likely to see it information youʼre interested in

A way to analyse released datasets more easily.

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FINDING OUR USERS WHERE THEY ARE

Reaching out

Talking with minoritised groups

Weʼve long understood that our services can be game-changers, giving a voice to the unheard, putting campaigns into the national conversation. But good intentions are not enough: people in need are not always going to find our sites unprompted.

One of mySocietyʼs core beliefs is that knowledge is power. Current systems are serving only a few within society, and transparency and accountability are key to regaining trust in our political systems. For movement towards positive change in society, our theory is that putting knowledge into the hands of marginalised groups will start to help redistribute power in a more equitable way.

“This is great, thank you. Itʼs a really good way for me (and others) to see the learning in practice, so I really appreciate it, and you taking the time to explain it all.”

Last year…

…we embarked on research with 22 groups from marginalised communities, to understand what social change they are working towards, and the barriers they face in gathering information to advocate for it. Their causes included youth voice, race, mental health, homelessness, migrant support, human trafficking, research around lobbying, autism support and LGBTQIA+ support.

From the research we produced the report ʻUsing Access to Information to support social changeʼ, and made a series of improvements to our FOI service WhatDoTheyKnow to make it more suitable and accessible for these communitiesʼ needs.

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This year…

…weʼre well into the second phase of this work. We found that organisations working in marginalised communities wanted further training and support — so weʼve been working directly, in depth, with ten organisations, supporting them through the process of making their first FOI requests to help progress their campaigns.

New Economics Foundation

to help residents and community groups to get involved in local planning decisions.

Maternity Engagement Action

to get to the bottom of why Black women are 3.7 times more likely to die in the perinatal period.

Kids of Colour

to understand the issues around police and young people.

Bite Back

to see where local authorities have a healthy food advertising policy.

Alcohol Change

to assess the number of children who are exposed to advertising for alcohol.

Migrant Democracy Project

to understand what sectors of society have registered to vote.

Fuel Poverty Action

to gather data to inform their press campaigns around energy policies and companies that bring about fuel poverty.

AMP Music

to understand how decisions are made around funding allocations for rural and deprived communities in North Yorkshire.

Hudde

Organise

to manage two projects around workersʼ rights — on parental leave across different NHS trusts, and access to arts for working class and disabled artists.

to understand how much of the profits from SEND support provision is going to private companies, and how this is affecting families/the wider community.

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Spreading know-how

It doesnʼt stop with helping these few groups, though. The knowledge weʼve gained from these close partnerships is allowing us to develop resources and improve our software to make FOI easier for everyone.

Weʼve run conferences and workshops, forged project partnerships and shaped online materials.

And the best thing of all? As WhatDoTheyKnow is the UKʼs largest online FOI platform — itʼs closing in on 1.25 million requests! — we can publish these new resources on it, to benefit a vast number of people in the months and years to come.

“I think youʼve done a fab job summarising such a wealth of information and experiences, some great recommendations and food for thought on the barriers and potential of using data for social change.”

FOI videos

We ran a series of online seminars tailored to the specific questions groups working with marginalised communities had. Weʼve started to promote the resulting videos within WhatDoTheyKnow to scale this knowledge-sharing to a broader audience.

Getting the most from FOI – Telling stories with FOI data – Creating datasets with FOI data – looking at what makes a good looking at how to find a story, looking at using WhatDoTheyKnow request, and what to do with using data for campaign insights to analyse data and start to pull rejections and exemptions and getting a story into the media out trends

Online resources

Our new online guides show beginners what FOI is, how to formulate a request, what kind of responses might come back... and perhaps most important of all, why a refusal need not be the end of the story. The aim? To make FOI more accessible to those who need it most.

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We shared our knowledge at conferences

Presenting our research to journalists at OpenDemocracyʼs event.

Informing practitioners, on a panel Telling journalists how Scorecards alongside the ICO and OSIC at the used FOI requests, at the Climate eCase FOI25 conference. Arena conference in Bologna.

Through this period of outreach, consultation and training weʼve learned so much that weʼll be striving to apply the same approach to our other services in the coming years.

Our transparency services are helping people put information in public

The messaging platform Reddit was one ingredient in this push to find out how many doctors are being replaced by less-qualified Physicians Associates.

Parents for Inclusive Education used FOI to get a full understanding of how RE is being taught in Northern Irelandʼs primary schools.

Over in France, Ma Dada obtained the payslip of the PM, Emmanuel Macron — and gave a massive boost to public knowledge about FOI in the process.

We Love Stoke Lodge campaigned to keep a precious piece of ground in Bristol for public use, as one of their members told us in this podcast interview.

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Technology to restore climate and nature

The world weʼre in

Are our leaders taking the climate emergency seriously? With the UK government sidelining the Climate and Nature Bill and going all guns blazing for the expansion of Heathrow airport, and the US withdrawing from the Paris agreement (again) with a cry of “Drill, baby, drill”, the vital global shift to Net Zero has taken several steps back.

Meanwhile weʼve seen severe weather events increase, from Storm Éowyn, the UKʼs most powerful wind storm for over a decade, to seven consecutive days of heatwave in September 2024, the wettest period on record for Scotland in October 2023 and record-breaking warm temperatures in January 2025.

Scoring climate action

PARTNERSHIPS FOR IMPACT

More than 80% of local councils have declared a climate emergency.

To help them achieve the goals theyʼve set — and to encourage them to go further, faster and more efficiently — mySociety works with Climate Emergency UK (CE UK) to create the regular iterations of the Council Climate Action Scorecards.

The Scorecards website presents the results of an in-depth marking exercise across more than 40 actions that local authorities need to integrate into their processes and policies.

Working together

While CE UK oversee the scoring methodology and lead cohorts of volunteers in the marking process, mySociety provide technical expertise, building the scoring platform, crunching the data and building the website that makes it easy for everyone to explore.

A useful overlap

CE UKʼs volunteers look in all kinds of places for the evidence that helps them score councils on their climate action — councilsʼ meeting minutes, policies, news items and more.

And where that information canʼt be found? For this yearʼs scoring, they used our WhatDoTheyKnow Projects software to send Freedom of Information requests to every council, asking about EPC ratings in council-owned properties.

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This academic study noted that “Participation may be ʻhiddenʼ among wider campaigns, as FOI is often used as part of wider work by activists and NGOs. FOI has continued to drive innovations including crowdsourcing analysis of FOI data (such as local government Climate Scorecards) and other forms of public engagement.”

Scorecards are having a real effect

• The first Scorecards project, in October 2023, published councilsʼ action plans. Subsequent iterations have focused on the actual action being taken by local authorities. The project has caused the “biggest shake-up to council climate action in the last 10 years,” according to a local government sustainability consultant — shining a light on council inaction which had previously gone unreported, resulting in improved accountability and driving action.

• Climate Emergency UK have identified that 30% of UK councils are now using, referencing and learning from our Scorecards in their environmental work, using them as a framework to guide their decisions. 76% of councils participated in the Right of Reply stage this year. At least 57 councils have used the Scorecards in cabinet, climate change and scrutiny committees to inform strategy and actions — and theyʼre not just for councils: organisations such as UK100 are using them as part of their Climate Leadership Academy.

• Scorecards data has been referenced in the Scottish Parliament, Climate Change Committee Reports and the Local Mission Zero Network report by Chris Skidmore and Ben Houchen.

• And last but not least: thanks to CE UKʼs training, 215 volunteers have emerged from the marking process with detailed knowledge of council climate action; while more than 500 residents now know how to use the Scorecards to open conversations about climate with their councils.

From information to impact

A need for data

Net Zero is an urgent national mission on a huge scale. The transition will involve institutions across the country in changing policy and practice, with around a third of the work needing to take place at the local level.

If everyone is to understand whether thatʼs happening fast and effectively enough, policy needs to be data-driven and we need progress to be tracked in public. All kinds of actors benefit from a better understanding of what is happening across the country: policymakers, researchers, campaigners and businesses.

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The Scorecards help councils…

…justify climate action

ʻ ʼ …see what good looks like

…engage departments in conversation

…involve local residents in climate action

…make carbon literacy training widespread

…raise awareness, internally and externally

…monitor their Net Zero work

…Embed climate action fully across the organisation

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Joining the dots

Weʼve seen how Local Intelligence Hub and Scorecards both bring disparate data together into one place, as does CAPE, our Climate Action Plan Explorer. Weʼre also advocating for more joined up data at source — while weʼre happy to bring our expertise to providing open, consistent datasets, weʼd love to see a world where that isnʼt necessary.

The examples above are around councilsʼ climate action, but a wealth of key data that is held by public authorities will be needed to inform these changes — not all directly climate-related. Regular and consistent publication of basic data is far from dependable, as noted in our report Unlocking the value of fragmented data (2023), cowritten with the Centre for Public Data.

Powerful insights for climate campaigners

PUTTING DATA AT CAMPAIGNERSʼ FINGERTIPS

Local Intelligence Hub

Local Intelligence Hub, created in collaboration with The Climate Coalition and supported by Green Alliance, lets users join up disparate data related to climate action, making it more accessible to everyone. More than 60 datasets — covering everything from indicators of poverty to support for Net Zero initiatives, grassroots campaign groups and MPsʼ voting records — can be combined, even by data novices, in new ways, creating valuable new insights.

The live local data enhances relationships between MPs and the communities they serve. With this knowledge in hand, itʼs easier for campaigners to understand where to effectively focus their attention, and for decision-makers to see where more work needs to be done (and where to learn from best practice).

“It is an incredibly helpful tool – Iʼve shared amongst our network and we will use for our upcoming campaigns.”

Datasets have been sourced from organisations including Friends Of The Earth, The Wildlife Trusts, and RSPB, as well as our own data on council climate emergency declarations, council net zero pledges, and scores from the Council Climate Action Scorecards, and The Climate

“I use and recommend the Local Intelligence Hub all the time”

“I didnʼt realise that my MP has an interest in nature (which is quite uplifting and encouraging)”

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Coalitionʼs list of local climate groups who signed their 2024 open letter to the government.

Many datasets on the Hub can be viewed within both Westminster constituency and local authority boundaries – allowing us to include local authority-specific data such as climate emergency declarations, net zero pledges, and action plan documents. Slicing data by local authority was a common request from local campaigners using the Hub, to support them in their conversations with local councillors and council officers.

More than 200 organisations are regularly accessing the data in the Hub, from large national charities to local organisers.

From online data to offline impact

40% of survey respondents say that they went on to contact their MP after using Local Intelligence Hub .

It is proving a really useful tool for the sector, with groups like Hope for the Future (who help people have constructive conversations with their elected reps about climate) telling us they now use it in all of their training.

The National Trust, who have five million members, used the Hub to design their place-based engagement and advocacy before and after the election.

“We are planning meetings with new MPs so having any information relating to how people vote, or their attitudes about nature and climate in their constituency is very helpful”

“It was crucial information for how I voted in the general election”

“When I gave a three-minute tour of the Local Intelligence Hub on screen in the auditorium [...] there were audible “oooo”s and gasps of excitement from the audience about what they could do with this tool.”

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Standing up for nature

Nature Emergency UK

Alongside the climate emergency, and inextricably part of it, is the nature emergency — and, sadly, the UK nations are among the most nature-depleted in the world.

A green transition respects — and needs — a full ecosystem of organisms, plants, insect life and animals, and, just as with the climate emergency, much of the most crucial restoration work can be put in place by local authorities.

But, while the majority of councils (84%) have declared a climate emergency and published plans to address it, only 26% have declared a nature emergency, and just 8% have committed to embed nature recovery into their plans and policy areas.

To put that right, mySociety worked with the Woodland Trust and Climate Emergency UK to create Nature Emergency UK, a simple way to check how far your council has committed to action on nature, with a simple path to contacting them if they need some public encouragement.

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Community action on home energy a key part of the Net Zero puzzle

The trouble is…

Home energy is a major source of carbon emissions in the UK.

If weʼre going to reach the UKʼs Net Zero goal, the UK Green Building Council estimates that we need to be retrofitting two homes every minute: that means updating homes that were built with poor insulation and carbon-dependent heating to be more energy-efficient and more climate-friendly. The solutions are there, and our research showed that individuals do want to take action — but home energy action is hard to take alone.

In a codesign workshop, experts and community leaders told us that the current individualised approach to retrofit isnʼt working. Technical expertise, access to finance, limited supply, and trust in solutions and suppliers were all listed as barriers to adoption.

Coming together for a solution

Our initial testing suggested that structured challenges on a digital platform could help householders navigate and understand their options, and feel empowered to take action; and that a digital service could help to foster the upskilling of early adopters across the UK into informal local community leaders on home energy.

Some of the most impactful changes (such as shared loop heating, solar panels, or energy flexibility through demand side response) require coordination and buy-in from a whole community. But even individual actions (home retrofit assessments, draught-proofing, heat pump installations) can be easier when you explore them as part of a group, because of the peer support and access to shared knowledge.

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Neighbourhood Warmth

LEVERAGING THE POWER OF COMMUNITY FOR THE GREEN ENERGY TRANSITION

Neighbourhood Warmth is our digital solution to these barriers; a community-led approach to domestic retrofit. It puts power in the hands of communities to take immediate actions to reduce carbon emissions in their neighbourhoods.

It brings together the pioneering actors in community energy action, supporting communities to organise locally around guided home energy challenges to catalyse action. This community-led model can support the fair distribution of energy transition funding, demand signalling for energy providers, and the scaling of home energy action, which should create more green jobs.

Our ultimate goal is to reduce the UKʼs carbon emissions by supporting communities to take action to make their homes warmer and healthier through increased knowledge sharing, trust, and social connectivity.

Where we are now

This year we worked with Carbon Co-op, exploring how better data on energy use, property factors and householder demand can be useful. This is especially in the context of community energy companies and local authorities looking to plan engagement around issues like retrofit and energy flexibility.

Weʼre now taking this further, by running in-depth research with stakeholders across the energy sector, to see how digital engagement could support a more relational approach to retrofit in the coming years.

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Empowerment starts with your own neighbourhood

Fed up and run down

The governmentʼs Community Life survey of 2023–4 showed that 61% of the people who are not proud of their local area give the reason that it is run down , and 29% feel that their local area had worsened in the previous two years.

24% of people consider vandalism and graffiti to be a serious problem in their area, and 37% rubbish or litter according to the English Housing survey on Wellbeing and Neighbourhoods.

A feeling of pride in oneʼs neighbourhood, as these surveys imply, is an important factor in the nationʼs wellbeing, impacting our sense of health, safety and belonging.

And potholes are the “most visible sign of the public realm crumbling”, says Luke Tryl of More In Common, indicating that when they are not repaired, public trust in local government is affected. But at the same time, the bodies responsible for upkeep of our streets, verges and green spaces are operating with much-diminished budgets.

Seen in this context, mySocietyʼs FixMyStreet service, which helps people to report street issues and routes them to the right body to get them resolved, is not just a nifty civic website: itʼs a way to empower citizens, uplifting their wellbeing; and at the same time itʼs both a money and reputation-saver for councils.

Civic tech turned social enterprise

We may have started FixMyStreet as a service for citizens, but over time, we have developed it to improve the reporting process for local authorities and established an important source of income to support our charitable work.

31 authorities currently use FixMyStreet Pro as their own primary reporting software , benefiting from its unique ability to triage reports between authorities on a nationwide scale.

SocietyWorks , mySocietyʼs commercial arm, is also a hub of innovation, working in partnership with councils to make continuous improvements to FixMyStreet Pro and to develop new council services such as WasteWorks.

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This front-end software simplifies access to all aspects of local authority waste services online, and reduces unnecessary contact. Itʼs already in operation at 7 councils.

For a full picture of how all this commercial activity benefits our charitable work, see our accounts further down this document.

SocietyWorks

Citizen-centred digital solutions for local government and the public sector

Extending our impact

SocietyWorks grew from mySociety, building on our 20+ years of experience developing open source digital civic services to specialise in providing scalable Software as a Service products capable of moulding to authoritiesʼ individual needs and processes. As our commercial arm, SocietyWorks shares our values in its approach to development, retaining our longstanding commitment to putting the user first.

We also share an agile way of working. SocietyWorks is able to take a nimble, problem-solving approach to product development, continually working on new features and functionality in consultation with users. These improvements are made available across all clientsʼ sites, and on our own FixMyStreet.com, by default.

This yearʼs developments

Simple searching

Ever on the hunt for easier site navigation, the team added the ability to search for a category on ~~——~~ FixMyStreet, instead of selecting from a list.

Efficient category management

We introduced the ability to toggle categories on FixMyStreet, to make it easier and quicker to navigate to reports of interest, both for citizens making reports, and the authority staff who deal with them.

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Customisable bins

A ~~a~~ fun new piece of functionality launched this year for SocietyWorksʼ local authority waste service WasteWorks, allowing councils to easily generate their own waste container images according to their branding and bin types — which is, of course, different for each authority.

Per-category duplicate report radius

One of the big benefits FixMyStreet provides for councils is that it can point out when youʼre trying to report something thatʼs already been logged. It does this by picking up similar reports within a specified radius — and now, authorities can set that ~~—~~ radius diferently for each type of issue, giving them valuable added flexibility.

And more…

----- Start of picture text -----
Prototyping image-first
reports – upload a photo and
start your FixMyStreet report
----- End of picture text -----

Tree reporting in Camden – a more responsive process

Hire bikes and e-scooters – data now downloadable within London

Transformative technology

“We used FixMyStreet Pro as a catalyst for change.”

Gloucestershire County Council showed how much of an impact FixMyStreet Pro had brought after just four months.

For lots more detail on SocietyWorksʼ operations, read their annual report.

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FixMyStreet is open source

MAXIMISING THE BENEFIT

Like much of mySocietyʼs software, FixMyStreet is an open codebase that others can adapt for use in their own countries or cities — and it is in use in several domains worldwide, including Australia, Croatia, Norway and Zurich.

An update to the FixMyStreet codebase benefits everyone who uses our UK-wide fixmystreet.com, but also gets pushed out to each FixMyStreet Pro instance, and is available for these international installations too. This year saw the release of FMS version 6.0, introducing several new features to make the service more usable for both reportmakers and site runners.

Fix my زﻧﻘﺔ

Civic tech enthusiast Abdellatif Belmkadem utilised the open source FixMyStreet codebase to build ~~—¥~~ Islah City, reshaping how citizens in Casablanca engage with their local government about local problems. Read the whole story here.

FixMyStreet in the media

FixMyStreet is a frequent topic for local news outlets, but here are some of the more significant mentions we spotted this year:

• Oxfordshire council have created a brigade of FixMyStreet “superusers” to help speed up road repairs, as profiled in this news story, and on BBC South Today.

• mySocietyʼs own Zarino appeared on BBCʼs Morning Live, walking, talking AND demonstrating FixMyStreet all at the same time.

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Millions of happy users, getting results Nick Kocharhook *16 @nickk9.bsky.social Reported a mis-pointed signal to @transportforlondon.bsky.social w #FixMyStreet, wondering if they'd do anything about it. Well, they did: 30min later, they confirmed the issue, saying it was an emergency & wld be fixed w/in 24h! Impressed. www.fixmystreet.com/report/7200935 @mysociety.org Laura Young oresswasteraura Since finding @fixmystreet I've been enjoying the quick and easy community reporting capabilities. In May I reported this bench, and this week I received an email saying the bench has been restored, giving people a place to sit and enjoy their space outside! Thanks @DundeeCouncil Signal in the middle of the road facing the wrong way - Viewing a problem @ www.fixmystreet.com February 27, 2025 at 6:45 PM 8S Everybody can reply 2 likes Q Last edited 10:27 am - 10 Dec 2024 • 3,902 Views 0 5 t7 15 © 113 • 5 Post Martin D + Follow @unixmaisonette.com I love @mysociety.org's Fix My Street tool. I reported a faulty cycle detector at 14:17 and at 14:22 | got a response from @tfl.gov.uk saying that they've investigated, considered it an emergency, and their contractor will deal with it within 24 hours. www.fixmystreet.com/report/7558127 Paul Clarke @paulclarke.com Had a very close call with a huge pothole on Vauxhall Bridge recently - went to report it on FixMyStreet and not only is it reported, it's also reported as fixed by the council (within 48 hrs). This is amazing. Remember the value of a good interface, and making "whose problem is this?" go away November 21, 2024 at 9:53 AM 83 Everybody can reply 1 repost 16 likes Ф 3 • 16 Post DesignSecurityLtd O... @DesignSecultd I saw this on my walk this morning, reported via @fixmystreet and later as I walked back the team from @MonmouthshireCC were there clearing it. So thank you le now let's catch fly tippers and get them off our streets Cycle Detector Angle - Viewing a problem @ www.fixmystreet.com May 12, 2025 at 5:44 PM 83 Everybody can reply 2 reposts 7 likes 0 2 07 1:39 pm - 4 Mar 2025 - 74 Views O 5 35

We loved

Keen FixMyStreet user Shuranjeet Singhʼs video, on how to use the site to get fly tipping sorted:

https://www.tiktok.com/@shuranjeetsingh/video/7468420580081995041

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TICTeC

The Impacts of Civic Technology conference

Democracy is precious

We only need to look at the world around us to understand that democracy is a precious and important commodity. When it is shaken, the social contract is shattered, hard-won rights must be fought for all over again — and people suffer.

For those of us building and maintaining pro-democracy technologies, there are big challenges. But there is one way to find strength — in each other.

“What I gained was not just learning, but a group of people who understand me, are willing to sit down with me and find ways to improve my work or tackle unresolved issues together.”

Revitalising the civic tech community

The annual Impacts of Civic Technology ( TICTeC ) conference is a rare opportunity for our global community to come together, to rediscover the roots of our motivation, to learn from one another and to go back to our own communities with refreshed purpose.

A key tenet of the civic tech movement is the idea that the best advocacy is the demonstration of what is possible — and this is what TICTeC is all about. The conference brings together practitioners, funders and researchers to talk

“To see individuals from various backgrounds unite with a common goal to enhance inclusion within the civic tech realm was a profound experience.”

“What an inspiring & educational week! The talks were global, diverse, thoughtful, & relevant to the challenges we all face.”

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about the impacts of our work and to learn how we can go further.

To counteract the vast resources put into anti-democratic technological advances, pro-democracy tech urgently needs to collaborate globally to share innovations, spark ideas and work together to empower citizens everywhere to push back against authoritarianism, populism and corruption.

TICTeC in London

“It is good to be part of a community that is working hard to make effective use of digital technology for the creation of public spaces, where real and meaningful interaction can take place.”

“A special thank you to mySociety for providing a platform to amplify innovations often overlooked by the international community.”

CONVENING THOSE WITH A COMMON INTEREST

TICTeC took place in London in June 2024: the first chance for an in-person event since the pandemic saw us pivot to an online format in 2020.

The conference asked the broad question: “What is needed to make civic tech on a global scale more successful and impactful, to tackle global problems around democracy and climate change?”

“It was a beautiful and impactful experience to attend TICTeC, listen to civic tech professionals from different countries, with diverse backgrounds and share our work, as well as our ongoing battle to defend our countryʼs independence, freedom and democratic path.”

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Keynote speakers

María Baron (Global Executive Director of Directorio Legislativo) and Nick Mabey (founder director and Chief Executive of E3G) spoke to a rapt audience to kick off each dayʼs proceedings.

● Watch Nick Mabey ~~ee~~ ʼs keynote

● Watch María Baronʼs keynote

In numbers

242 delegates (in person and online) came to TICTeC, from 39 countries.

They had 51 sessions to choose from, with 81 presenters representing 23 countries.

45 attendees (24.3%) and 20 presenters (25%) were from the Global South / less-free democracies.

100% said they generally enjoyed TICTeC 2024, would attend again and would recommend it to a friend.

100% said they made new connections, and 50% said they deepened existing connections at TICTeC 92% feel better connected to their peers after attending.

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Rewatch TICTeC 2024 highlights

Fiquem Sabendo (Brazil) on civic tech for uncovering corruption and championing the climate

PunchUp/WeVis on Thailandʼs first parliamentary monitoring tool

Panel: Civic techʼs role in enabling effective & democratic change to tackle climate change

Ushahidi (Kenya): Transparent and inclusive electoral monitoring and governance

Diagonal (UK): Routing algorithms, 20-minute neighbourhoods and hills in Scottish towns

Teplitsa (Lithuania): The role of civic tech in sustaining Russian anti-war civil society in exile

Ben Worthy (UK): Can robots lobby? AI, democracy and political persuasion

Humanitarian Open StreetMap: Empowering community action through open mapping in disaster response & climate action

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Into the future

In 2025/26, weʼll continue to find focused ways to benefit people who will otherwise be disadvantaged: specifically, ensuring they gain opportunities from advances in technology, including appropriate applications of machine learning, data science and AI across our services.

Weʼll be using WhatDoTheyKnow and Alaveteli to create stronger transparency across institutions by making WhatDoTheyKnow Projects more widely accessible, including in other installations of Alaveteli around the world. Weʼll work with partners and collaborators, using Projects to produce key public interest datasets across climate and other topics. These will include the 2025

Climate Action Scorecards , in partnership with Climate Emergency UK, which will enable tracking of progress in local authority climate action over time, both for individual councils and as a whole, for the first time.

Weʼll complete vital work to mitigate potential harms by increasing our ability to detect and deter breaches of WhatDoTheyKnow house rules, and developing better tooling for removing personally identifiable information from FOI requests and responses.

Weʼll continue our support for groups working with marginalised communities in using FOI in their advocacy, and hope to broaden our training offer, developing training for organisations in using digital tools to present a compelling argument to those in power, and deliver policy change.

On TheyWorkForYou , weʼll be providing clearer explanations of what is happening in Parliament, alongside building our capability to respond quickly to events, such as important votes, with focused communications and explanations. Weʼll also be looking for opportunities to encourage the modernisation of Parliament with new tools and analysis, as we have done in the WhoFundsThem project.

Weʼll be updating WriteToThem to make it a gold standard source of information for representatives

and others on what people are concerned about when they contact them, and what they understand about who to contact on different issues. We will use surveys and machine learning analysis to create a better systematic understanding of the subject of communications and challenges navigating access, closing the loop with higher quality information flowing both ways.

Weʼll also be connecting services to make them more than the sum of their parts: enriching Local Intelligence Hub with pipelines of high quality civic information from Parliament via TheyWorkForYou and on policy issues via WhatDoTheyKnow , and exploring its potential to scale to other sectors.

Throughout the course of the year we will work in public, further developing our framework on AI as we go, and sharing our knowledge and experience with our wide international network of civic technology peers. Through TICTeC and the ATI Network , weʼll be continuing to promote learning, knowledge exchange, and collaboration among civic technology organisations, enhancing their ability to undertake effective, evidence-based, impactful work.

Weʼre making plans for TICTeC 2025, which is in June in Mechelen, Belgium and online. It will bring together people working on defensive technology against threats to democracy, and those who are using technologies constructively to enrich and strengthen the heartbeat of civic and democratic life. Marietje Schaake, former Member of the European Parliament, and Fellow at Stanfordʼs Cyber Policy Center and the Institute for

Human-Centered AI, will give a keynote on navigating a delicate line between the good that tech can do for democracy, and the dangers of letting tech giants dominate the field. Fernanda Campagnucci, Executive Director of Brazilʼs InternetLab, and a global specialist in data governance, digital transformation, and open government, will give a keynote on what is made possible by new forms of technology, particularly in the civic participation space.

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Thank you …to everyone who makes our work possible

Our funders

Thank you to the grantmaking organisations that have given us the backing to turn our visions into reality, for understanding the potential of our projects even when they are little more than words on a proposal document. We couldnʼt do it without you:

The Quadrature Climate Foundation , National Lottery Community Fund , Aurora Trust , and the Climate Coalition , which together funded our Climate programme.

The Patrick J McGovern Foundation , supporting our work to enhance the Local Intelligence Hub and amplify public data collaboration for scalable solutions.

The National Endowment for Democracy and Porticus , supporting our TICTeC Communities programme.

The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust , supporting our work to enable FOI use by marginalised groups.

The JRSST Charitable Trust and the Indigo Trust , supporting the WhoFundsThem project.

The Dulverton Trust , for providing unrestricted funding that supports all our work.

Mr John Cross , for supporting the development and deployment of solutions using AI technology.

The Adessium Foundation , Swedish Postcode Foundation and Isocrates Foundation , supporting our FOI work in the UK and Europe.

Our supporters

If youʼve donated to us — this year, or ever — thank you for valuing our work towards a more informed, empowered and connected world, and a fairer society. We know you could have chosen a thousand other worthy causes, and weʼre grateful that you put your belief in us.

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Our volunteers

To the team who help run WhatDoTheyKnow, and the cohort of folk who helped us analyse MPsʼ expenses for the WhoFundsThem project: thank you for putting in your free time, knowledge and energy into our data and services. Your inputs are magnified many thousands of times over as they ripple through our sitesʼ visitors.

William Buller John Cross Nikki Dekker William Fitzpatrick Gary Godfrey Celeste Gómez Romero Aleksandar Zdravkovic	Natalia Griaznevich Sarah Halford Ryan Harris Matthew Haydon Tom Irwin John Knox Pete McGaughey	Léon McGregor Kevin Nunan Abigail Page-Rumsey Doug Paulley Jenny Pollex Lloyd Shepherd Charlotte Street	Connie Sullivan Inigo Surguy Becca Watts Rosamund Williams And to all our other volunteers who didnʼt want to be named publicly.

Our trustees

Thank you to our board of trustees, whose counsel helps ensure weʼre treading the right course, as effectively as possible. We appreciate your time and wisdom.

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mySociety Financial overview Trusteesʼ annual report and audited accounts

For the year ended 31 March 2025

Company no. 03277032 Charity no. 1076346

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mySociety

Reference and administrative details

For the year ended 31 March 2025

	Company number	03277032
	Charity number	1076346
	Registered ofice and	483 Green Lanes, London, N13 4BS
	operational address

Trustees

Trustees, who are also directors under company law, who served during the year and up to the date of this report were as follows:

Company number	03277032
Charity number	1076346
Registered ofice and operational address	483 Green Lanes, London, N13 4BS
Trustees	Trustees, who are also directors under company law, who served during the year and up to the date of this report were as follows:
	A Adewunmi N Ball appointed 20 June 2024 A Brown A J H Burton resigned 20 June 2024 R Gidoomal appointed 20 June 2024 T Hughes appointed 20 June 2024 G Maitland Hudson D OʼShaughnessy R E Rank resigned 20 June 2024 A Scales appointed 20 June 2024 A Scott appointed 20 June 2024 S Skelton J Thornton A Tibbitt appointed 20 June 2024
Chief executive oficer	L Crow
Bankers	Lloyds Bank 27–31 White Hart Street, High Wycombe, HP11 2HL
Auditors	Godfrey Wilson Limited Chartered accountants and statutory auditors 5th Floor Mariner House, 62 Prince Street, Bristol, BS1 4QD

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mySociety

Report of the trustees For the year ended 31 March 2025

Reference and administrative information set out on page 45 forms part of this report. The financial statements comply with current statutory requirements, the Memorandum and Articles of Association and the Statement of Recommended Practice – Accounting and Reporting by Charities (effective from January 2019).

Structure, governance and management

mySociety is incorporated as a company limited by guarantee under a Memorandum & Articles of Association, and is registered as a charity in England and Wales (registered charity no. 1076346).

mySociety is governed by a board of volunteer trustees. Trustees serve four-year terms, and may be reappointed for one further four-year term after completion of their first. Trustees are generally recruited through an open call for applications, or may occasionally be directly appointed following a period of service as an observer of one of the boardʼs committees. Following their appointment trustees participate in a series of briefings with key staff and fellow trustees as part of their induction; which includes briefings on financial procedures, our priority areas of work, ongoing strategy and organisational setup.

mySociety operates a number of civic and democratic websites, and has a wholly owned commercial subsidiary, SocietyWorks Ltd, governed by its own board of directors comprising a combination of trustees from mySociety, executive directors and independent non-executive directors. Trustees and non-executive directors are not remunerated.

Day-to-day management of mySociety and its subsidiaries is delegated to the Chief Executive except for the following matters which are reserved to the trustees:

• Approval of strategy, values and policy;

• Establishing and disbanding committees of the board;

• The creation, selection and appointment to any post with a total remuneration package of £60,000 p.a. or greater, or FTE;

• Approval of the groupʼs annual report and accounts; and

• Significant financial commitments as set out in a delegations policy.

At any one time, mySociety typically employs around 30 permanent members of staff and a small additional number on temporary contracts. SocietyWorks Ltd employs no staff directly, but buys in labour as required from mySociety.

There is an annual review of pay for all staff members, encompassing two elements:

• Cost of living; and

• Performance.

The Chief Executive makes recommendations to the board of trustees based on performance, affordability and the financial health of mySociety, and changes in averages of salaries for comparable roles, except for the Chief Executiveʼs own pay and that of the Managing Director of SocietyWorks Ltd, which is discussed by the board of trustees alone. The board of trustees either accepts or amends the recommendations, and makes the revised pay offer to the staff.

Salary ranges for new roles are set using both industry benchmarks and salaries of staff members already employed by the organisation in similar roles.

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mySociety

Report of the trustees

For the year ended 31 March 2025

Objectives and activities

Aims and goals

In 2024 we updated our charitable objectives with the Charity Commission to reflect the ways in which our work, and charity law, have changed over the last 20 years. Our updated objectives are to advance for the public benefit:

1. education in the subjects of climate change, citizenship, civic responsibility and community development by, without limitation:

2. a. using information and communication technologies to:

   • i. develop the publicʼs individual capabilities, skills and understanding in these subjects

   • ii. increase the accessibility of information from and about public authorities, building capacity and knowledge within communities

3. b. conducting and publishing research and providing structured information on citizenship and democratic processes

4. civic responsibility, good citizenship and community development in particular but not exclusively by:

5. a. facilitating informed participation by the public in democratic processes and decision-making within their communities

6. b. innovation in the effective use of information and communication technologies for these purposes.

Our ambition is to repower democracy: using our digital and data skills to put more power in more peopleʼs hands.

In 2024/25 we continued working towards the goals defined in our 2022–27 strategy, which we believe will enable us to realise our ambition to significantly and sustainably grow the positive impact our services have for citizens:

Headline goals

1. Reach more, and more kinds of people with our services, focusing on those underserved by democracy and by our services.

2. Get democratic institutions to meet citizensʼ needs, using insights from our services and support from the communities that use them.

3. Help drive the democratic transition we need in response to the climate crisis by developing new services or service changes across our core areas of work.

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mySociety

Report of the trustees

For the year ended 31 March 2025

Supporting goals

1. Build UK partnerships targeting citizen reach or specific institutional change to which we can uniquely contribute through our services.

2. Use our research, international network and events to inform and share our practices.

3. Create and sustain supporter and volunteering programmes to build capacity and strengthen our connection to our wider UK community.

Public benefit

We have referred to the guidance in the Charity Commissionʼs general guidance on public benefit when reviewing our aims and objectives and in planning our future activities. In particular, the trustees consider how planned activities will contribute to the aims and objectives they have set.

Social investment policies

mySocietyʼs ongoing provision of services via its subsidiary trading company, SocietyWorks Ltd, represents a social investment; projects are chosen based on alignment with the charityʼs purposes, as well as with the aim of achieving a financial return.

Achievements and performance

Our impact report on pages 6 to 40 outline our achievements and performance in 2024/25.

Financial review

Total group income in 2024/25 was £2.628m, a decrease of 15% from the £3.093m recognised in 2023/24. Restricted income of £1.008m (2023/24: £1.645m) has dropped by 39% reflecting the challenges in the current philanthropic funding environment that is impacting the charity sector. Unrestricted charitable income has dropped from £0.145m in 2023/24 to £0.116m in 2024/25. While we are seeing a gradual increase in individual giving donations, the funding environment for unrestricted grants continues to follow the trend of recent years and is becoming increasingly challenging to secure.

Income from other trading activities increased by 15% to £1.503m (2023/24: £1.302m) mainly driven by growth in core product revenue in SocietyWorks Ltd alongside an increase in its local authority client base.

Total expenditure of £2.529m is marginally less than the previous financial year (2023/24: £2.558m). We have managed our expenditure budgets closely in an uncertain funding environment and a challenging economic climate with inflationary pressures evident in the rising costs of services.

2024/25 saw a net surplus outturn of £0.099m (2023/24: £0.535m). In the charity, we have spent down restricted grants received in the previous financial year and allocated against activities delivered in 2024/25, and profits from SocietyWorks Ltd of £0.299m (2023/24: £0.159m) have contributed to a surplus in unrestricted funds of

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mySociety

Report of the trustees

For the year ended 31 March 2025

£0.225m (2023/24: £0.122m). Total funds at the year end were £1.305m (2023/24: £1.206m) made up of unrestricted funds of £0.873m (2023/24: £0.649m) and restricted funds of £0.432m (2023/24: £0.557m).

Over the past three years we have focused on increasing our unrestricted reserves through growing our commercial profit contribution from SocietyWorks, in recognition that a number of our larger multi-year grants were ending and amidst an increasingly uncertain philanthropic funding environment. Our increase in unrestricted reserves will provide some security over the next two financial years as we navigate the challenge of securing funding to meet the expenditure required to deliver ongoing impact.

mySocietyʼs major charitable supporters in 2024/25 are listed on page 42.

mySocietyʼs commercial subsidiary, SocietyWorks Ltd, provides sustainable commercial income streams within each of our practice areas, building on and related to the work we do charitably. In particular, our FixMyStreet Pro commercial contracts generate substantial multi-year income streams aligned with our overall mySociety mission and work with local authorities. Profits made from trading activity are distributed to the charity, with income and expenditure from trading activity consolidated in the group accounts as unrestricted funds. On the consolidated statement of financial activities, income from other trading activities and expenditure on raising funds: trading activities, relate wholly to SocietyWorks Ltd. Profit margins for the commercial subsidiary are considered reasonable in comparison to contextually similar SMEs operating in the Software as a Service (SaaS) industry. 2024/25 was the first year of implementation of SocietyWorksʼ three year growth strategy which aims to deliver year on year profit growth, in order to provide mySociety with more certainty on future multi-year income. In 2024/25, SocietyWorks Ltd generated a net profit of £0.299m (2023/24: £0.159m) which has contributed to delivering an unrestricted surplus in mySociety.

Going concern

The trustees consider that the charity will continue as a going concern for a period of at least 12 months from the date on which these financial statements are approved for the following reasons:

• The charity held unrestricted funds of £0.873m at 31 March 2025.

• 46% of funding against the charityʼs budgeted expenditure for the upcoming 12 months was already secured at the financial year end.

• The trading subsidiary has £1.013m of multi-year contract commitments from commercial customers to be recognised in the 2025/26 financial year.

The trustees therefore consider it appropriate to adopt the going concern basis of preparation of the accounts, as detailed in note 1(c) to the financial statements.

Risk management

mySociety operates a comprehensive risk management framework that supports informed decision making around the risks that threaten our ability to achieve our goals. Our risk register is reviewed regularly by the Senior Management Team, with formal review by the board of trustees at least bi-annually. Risks are categorised by type, and assessed by probability and impact creating a gross risk score. Mitigations are

49

mySociety

Report of the trustees

For the year ended 31 March 2025

reviewed and identified as relevant to deliver a net risk score that is within acceptable risk tolerance thresholds of the board of trustees. Contingencies are also identified if mitigations were to fail. Our approach to risk management is designed to manage, rather than eliminate, the risks to delivering our goals.

The key risks, alongside impact, mitigation, and contingency strategies for the organisation are as follows:

• (1) Risk: Failure to acquire sufficient future funding to sustain the organisation. Impact: Failure to deliver mission impact. Mitigation: Charity funding is a primary focus for the organisation; the SocietyWorks team is focused on growing sustainable profits from commercial activity; quarterly financial forecasts are prepared to ensure timely information is available to support critical decision making; relevant consideration will be given to any reductions to the cost base.

Contingency: Reduce the cost base to ensure the charity remains solvent.

• (2) Risk: Cyber attack

• Impact: Failure to meet data protection standards; negative impact to reputation; operational sustainability at risk; failure to meet contractual commitments. Mitigation: Strong password policies; access to servers limited; encrypted hard drives; hosting with suppliers experienced in dealing with DOS attacks; project work underway to segregate systems more comprehensively to prevent potential contagion.

• (3) Risk: Insufficient free cash to meet financial obligations. Impact: Failure to meet financial and operational commitments and deliver to mission. Mitigation: Long-term forward financial planning to enable any failure to be addressed by future cost reductions in a timely manner and ensure the organisation remains solvent; cash flow forecasting; robust credit control processes.

Contingency: Reduce the cost base to ensure the charity remains solvent.

• (4) Risk: Loss of key staff and volunteers

• Impact: Failure to meet commitments and our ambitions for impact due to lack of capacity; loss of critical institutional knowledge for sustaining services.

• Mitigation: Skill sharing across teams to ensure that there is no organisational dependency on a single individual; close line management to identify and address staff concerns; open culture, focus on limiting working hours, and flexible approach to working; Health, Safety & Wellbeing policies and practises implemented and monitored; process mapping and documentation of key knowledge; Service Manager focused on maintaining a healthy culture between staff and volunteer team; funding and resource allocation to reduce the administrative burden on WhatDoTheyKnow; clear guidelines on ways of working.

Contingency: Backfilling functions with remaining staff; recruiting replacement.

• (5) Risk: Capacity planning in our server infrastructure is inadequate

• Impact: If we fail to adequately plan for growth, we may not be able to keep up with demand on our services. The scale of the service and data for WhatDoTheyKnow risks problems for availability and redundancy, which could result in data loss.

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mySociety

Report of the trustees

For the year ended 31 March 2025

• Mitigation: maintenance of multiple server instances and deployment automation allowing quick movement and load balancing of services to manage sudden changes in capacity; monitoring alerts to sudden changes that impact availability, helping to diagnose and manage trends; extensive performance monitoring.

Contingency: Add capacity using on-demand virtual machines; redistribute services to better utilise capacity.

• (6) Risk: Failure to update services to respond to new technical and societal developments makes our services irrelevant.

Impact: Gradual loss of overall impact against goals

• Mitigation: Consideration of projects that will allow us to update services or create new services to reflect new external developments – dependent on capacity and funding, and monitor quantitative and qualitative use of services as indicators of impact.

• (7) Risk: Inadequate capacity in SMT leads to escalation of other risks

• Impact: Significant challenges in capacity in small management team lead to increases in other risk areas due to delayed or inadequate response, or loss of key staff due to burnout Mitigation: Focus on skill and experience development in other staff, flexible trading off of work between SMT members, regular discussion of approaches.

Reserves policy

In 2023/24, the board of trustees undertook a comprehensive review of mySocietyʼs reserves policy.

In order to responsibly and effectively manage the group finances, mySociety holds reserves to manage the financial impact of organisational risk, including working capital commitments. We aim to ensure that our work is protected from the risk of disruption at short notice due to a lack of funds, whilst at the same time ensuring that income is spent appropriately on activities to deliver strategic impact and is not retained for longer than it should be. We operate a tiered approach to financial risk management for monitoring reserves that layers our aims for monthly operating cost cover, cessation costs for mySociety and SocietyWorks, and opportunity reserves.

At a minimum, the charity aims to hold a minimum of three months operating costs plus earmarked cessation costs as free reserves (£0.4m). At a maximum, the charity aims to hold six months operating costs across the group, earmarked cessation costs across the group, as well as an opportunity reserves fund that may be designated to support strategic programmes (£1.4m).

As at 31 March 2025, mySociety held free reserves of £0.840m, which covers three months of group operating costs plus earmarked cessation costs for the group.

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mySociety

Report of the trustees

For the year ended 31 March 2025

Plans for future periods

Our plans for the future are described on page 41.

Fundraising

mySociety solicits donations from the public via its websites, and does not engage in any follow-up activity with individual donors unless consent has been given for further contact. We do not employ outside fundraisers, and are not bound by any voluntary scheme for regulating fundraising, but will keep this under review as our fundraising work develops. No complaints have been received about our fundraising activity.

Statement of responsibilities of the trustees

The trustees (who are also directors of the charity for the purposes of company law) are responsible for preparing the trusteesʼ report and the financial statements in accordance with applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards, including Financial Reporting Standard 102: The Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice).

The trustees are required to prepare financial statements for each financial year, which give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the charity and the group and the incoming resources and application of resources, including the net income or expenditure, of the charity and the group for the year. In preparing those financial statements the trustees are required to:

• select suitable accounting policies and then apply them consistently;

• observe the methods and principles in the Charities SORP;

• make judgements and accounting estimates that are reasonable and prudent;

• state whether applicable accounting standards and statements of recommended practice have been followed, subject to any material departures disclosed and explained in the financial statements; and

• prepare the financial statements on the going concern basis unless it is inappropriate to presume that the charity will continue in operation.

The trustees are responsible for keeping proper accounting records which disclose with reasonable accuracy at any time the financial position of the charity and the group and which enable them to ensure that the financial statements comply with the Companies Act 2006. The trustees are also responsible for safeguarding the assets of the charity and the group and hence for taking reasonable steps for the prevention and detection of fraud and other irregularities.

In so far as the trustees are aware:

• there is no relevant audit information of which the charitable companyʼs auditors are unaware; and

• the trustees have taken all steps that they ought to have taken to make themselves aware of any relevant audit information and to establish that the auditors are aware of that information.

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mySociety

Report of the trustees

For the year ended 31 March 2025

The trustees are responsible for the maintenance and integrity of the corporate and financial information included on the charitable companyʼs website. Legislation in the United Kingdom governing the preparation and dissemination of financial statements may differ from legislation in other jurisdictions.

Members of the charity guarantee to contribute an amount not exceeding £1 to the assets of the charity in the event of winding up. The trustees are members of the charity but this entitles them only to voting rights. The trustees have no beneficial interest in the charity.

Auditors

Godfrey Wilson Limited were re-appointed as auditors to the group and parent charity during the year and have expressed their willingness to continue in that capacity.

Approved by the trustees on 26 June 2025 and signed on their behalf by

GE Maitland Hudson

A. Brown Trustee

G. Maitland Hudson Chair

53

Independent auditorsʼ report

To the members of mySociety

Opinion

We have audited the financial statements of mySociety (the ʻparent charityʼ) and its subsidiary (the ʻgroupʼ) for the year ended 31 March 2025 which comprise the consolidated statement of financial activities, consolidated and parent charity balance sheets, consolidated statement of cash flows and the related notes to the financial statements, including a summary of significant accounting policies. The financial reporting framework that has been applied in their preparation is applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards, including Financial Reporting Standard 102: The Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and the Republic of Ireland (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice).

In our opinion, the financial statements:

• give a true and fair view of the state of the group and parent charityʼs affairs as at 31 March 2025 and of the groupʼs incoming resources and application of resources, including its income and expenditure, for the year then ended;

• have been properly prepared in accordance with United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice; and

• have been prepared in accordance with the requirements of the Companies Act 2006.

Basis for opinion

We conducted our audit in accordance with International Standards on Auditing (UK) (ISAs (UK)) and applicable law. Our responsibilities under those standards are further described in the Auditorʼs responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements section of our report. We are independent of the group and parent charity in accordance with the ethical requirements that are relevant to our audit of the financial statements in the UK, including the FRCʼs Ethical Standard, and the provisions available for small entities, in the circumstances set out in note 9 to the financial statements, and we have fulfilled our other ethical responsibilities in accordance with these requirements. We believe that the audit evidence we have obtained is sufficient and appropriate to provide a basis for our opinion.

Conclusions relating to going concern

In auditing the financial statements, we have concluded that the trusteesʼ use of the going concern basis of accounting in the preparation of the financial statements is appropriate.

Based on the work we have performed, we have not identified any material uncertainties relating to events or conditions that, individually or collectively, may cast significant doubt on the group and parent charityʼs ability to continue as a going concern for a period of at least twelve months from when the financial statements are authorised for issue.

Our responsibilities and the responsibilities of the trustees with respect to going concern are described in the relevant sections of this report.

Other information

The other information comprises the information included in the annual report other than the financial statements and our auditorʼs report thereon. The trustees are responsible for the other information. Our

54

Independent auditorsʼ report

To the members of mySociety

opinion on the financial statements does not cover the other information and, except to the extent otherwise explicitly stated in our report, we do not express any form of assurance conclusion thereon.

In connection with our audit of the financial statements, our responsibility is to read the other information and, in doing so, consider whether the other information is materially inconsistent with the financial statements or our knowledge obtained in the audit or otherwise appears to be materially misstated. If we identify such material inconsistencies or apparent material misstatements, we are required to determine whether there is a material misstatement in the financial statements or a material misstatement of the other information. If, based on the work we have performed, we conclude that there is a material misstatement of this other information, we are required to report that fact.

We have nothing to report in this regard.

Opinion on other matters prescribed by the Companies Act 2006

In our opinion, based on the work undertaken in the course of the audit:

• the information given in the trusteesʼ report, which includes the directorsʼ report prepared for the purposes of company law, for the financial year for which the financial statements are prepared is consistent with the financial statements; and

• the directorsʼ report included within the trusteesʼ report has been prepared in accordance with applicable legal requirements.

Matters on which we are required to report by exception

In the light of the knowledge and understanding of the group and parent charity and their environment obtained in the course of the audit, we have not identified material misstatements in the directorsʼ report included within the trusteesʼ report. We have nothing to report in respect of the following matters in relation to which the Companies Act 2006 requires us to report to you if, in our opinion:

• adequate accounting records have not been kept by the parent charity, or returns adequate for our audit have not been received from branches not visited by us; or

• the parent charity financial statements are not in agreement with the accounting records and returns; or

• certain disclosures of trusteesʼ remuneration specified by law are not made; or

• we have not received all the information and explanations we require for our audit; or

• the trustees were not entitled to prepare the financial statements in accordance with the small companies regime and take advantage of the small companiesʼ exemptions in preparing the trusteesʼ report and from the requirement to prepare a strategic report.

Responsibilities of the trustees

As explained more fully in the trusteesʼ responsibilities statement set out in the trusteesʼ report, the trustees are responsible for the preparation of the financial statements and for being satisfied that they give a true and fair view, and for such internal control as they determine is necessary to enable the preparation of financial statements that are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error.

In preparing the financial statements, the trustees are responsible for assessing the group and the parent charityʼs ability to continue as a going concern, disclosing, as applicable, matters related to going concern and

55

Independent auditorsʼ report

To the members of mySociety

using the going concern basis of accounting unless the trustees either intend to liquidate the group or the parent charity or to cease operations, or have no realistic alternative but to do so.

Our responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements

Our objectives are to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements as a whole are free from material misstatement, whether due to fraud or error, and to issue an auditorʼs report that includes our opinion. Reasonable assurance is a high level of assurance, but is not a guarantee that an audit conducted in accordance with ISAs (UK) will always detect a material misstatement when it exists. Misstatements can arise from fraud or error and are considered material if, individually or in the aggregate, they could reasonably be expected to influence the economic decisions of users taken on the basis of these financial statements.

Irregularities, including fraud, are instances of non-compliance with laws and regulations. We design procedures in line with our responsibilities, outlined above, to detect material misstatements in respect of irregularities, including fraud. The procedures we carried out and the extent to which they are capable of detecting irregularities, including fraud, are detailed below:

1. We obtained an understanding of the legal and regulatory framework that the charity operates in, and assessed the risk of non-compliance with applicable laws and regulations. Throughout the audit, we remained alert to possible indications of non-compliance.

2. We reviewed the charityʼs policies and procedures in relation to:

3. Identifying, evaluating and complying with laws and regulations, and whether they were aware of any instances of non-compliance;

Detecting and responding to the risk of fraud, and whether they were aware of any actual, suspected or alleged fraud; and

Designing and implementing internal controls to mitigate the risk of non-compliance with laws and regulations, including fraud.

1. We inspected the minutes of trustee meetings.

2. We enquired about any non-routine communication with regulators and reviewed any reports made to them.

3. We reviewed the financial statement disclosures and assessed their compliance with applicable laws and regulations.

4. We performed analytical procedures to identify any unusual or unexpected transactions or balances that may indicate a risk of material fraud or error.

5. We assessed the risk of fraud through management override of controls and carried out procedures to address this risk. Our procedures included:

Testing the appropriateness of journal entries;

• Assessing judgements and accounting estimates for potential bias; Reviewing related party transactions; and

Testing transactions that are unusual or outside the normal course of business.

56

Independent auditorsʼ report

To the members of mySociety

Because of the inherent limitations of an audit, there is a risk that we will not detect all irregularities, including those leading to a material misstatement in the financial statements or non-compliance with regulation. Irregularities that arise due to fraud can be even harder to detect than those that arise from error as they may involve deliberate concealment or collusion.

A further description of our responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements is located on the Financial Reporting Councilʼs website at: www.frc.org.uk/auditorsresponsibilities. This description forms part of our auditorʼs report.

Use of our report

This report is made solely to the charityʼs members, as a body, in accordance with Chapter 3 of Part 16 of the Companies Act 2006. Our audit work has been undertaken so that we might state to the charityʼs members those matters we are required to state to them in an auditorʼs report and for no other purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, we do not accept or assume responsibility to anyone other than the charity's members as a body, for our audit work, for this report, or for the opinions we have formed.

Alison Godfrey

Date: 26 June 2025

Alison Godfrey FCA (Senior Statutory Auditor)

For and on behalf of:

GODFREY WILSON LIMITED

Chartered accountants and statutory auditors 5th Floor Mariner House 62 Prince Street Bristol BS1 4QD

57

mySociety

Consolidated statement of financial activities (incorporating an income and expenditure account)

For the year ended 31 March 2025

		Note	Restricted £	Unrestricted £	Total 2025 £	Total 2024 £
	Income from:
	Donations	3	1,007,984	90,886	1,098,870	1,788,156
	Charitable activities	4	–	22,850	22,850	–
	Other trading activities	5	–	1,503,417	1,503,417	1,302,272
	Investments		–	2,711	2,711	2,562
	Total income		1,007,984	1,619,864	2,627,848	3,092,990
	Expenditure on:
	Raising funds: raising charitable donations		–	91,256	91,256	95,247
	Raising funds: trading activity		–	1,204,702	1,204,702	1,142,810
	Charitable activities		1,133,326	99,305	1,232,631	1,319,686
	Total expenditure	7	1,133,326	1,395,263	2,528,589	2,557,743
	Net income / (expenditure) and net movement in funds	9	(125,342)	224,601	99,259	535,247
	Reconciliation of funds:
	Total funds brought forward		557,358	648,756	1,206,114	670,867
	Total funds carried forward		432,016	873,357	1,305,373	1,206,114

All of the above results are derived from continuing activities. There were no other recognised gains or losses other than those stated above. Movements in funds are disclosed in note 21 to the accounts.

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mySociety

Consolidated balance sheets

As at 31 March 2025

		Note	The group	The group	The charity	The charity
			2025 £	2024 £	2025 £	2024 £
Fixed assets
	Tangible assets	12	17,017	21,765	17,017	21,765
	Intangible assets	13	16,783	43,264	–	–
	Investments	14	–	–	1	1
			33,800	65,029	17,018	21,766
Current	assets
Debtors		17	252,399	355,923	521,259	278,643
Cash at bank and in hand			1,878,762	1,691,360	853,684	994,933
			2,131,161	2,047,283	1,374,943	1,273,576
Liabilities
Creditors: amounts falling due		18	(859,588)	(906,198)	(89,343)	(91,983)
within 1	year
Net current assets			1,271,573	1,141,085	1,285,600	1,181,593
Net assets		20	1,305,373	1,206,114	1,302,618	1,203,359
Funds		21
	Restricted funds		432,016	557,358	432,016	557,358
	Unrestricted funds
	General funds		873,357	648,756	870,602	646,001
Total charity funds			1,305,373	1,206,114	1,302,618	1,203,359

These accounts have been prepared in accordance with the special provisions applicable to companies subject to the small companiesʼ regime.

Approved by the trustees on 26 June 2025 and signed on their behalf by:

A. Brown Trustee mySociety

G. Maitland Hudson GE Maitland Hudson Chair

59

mySociety

Consolidated statement of cash flows

For the year ended 31 March 2025

		Total 2025 £	Total 2024 £
	Cash used in operating activities:
	Net movement in funds	99,259	535,247
	Adjustments for:
	Depreciation charges	7,249	6,670
	Amortisation charges	26,481	56,427
	Dividends, interest and rents from	(2,711)	(2,562)
	investments
	Loss on the sale of fixed assets	–	1,530
	Decrease in debtors	103,524	73,056
	(Decrease) / increase in creditors	(46,610)	241,720
	Net cash provided by operating activities	187,192	912,088
	Cash flows from investing activities:
	Dividends, interest and rents from	2,711	2,562
	investments
	Purchase of tangible fixed assets	(2,501)	(8,728)
	Recognition of intangible fixed	–	(16,309)
	assets
	Net cash provided by / (used in) investing activities	210	(22,475)
	Increase in cash and cash equivalents in	187,402	889,613
	the year
	Cash and cash equivalents at the beginning	1,691,360	801,747
	of the year
	Cash and cash equivalents at the end of	1,878,762	1,691,360
	the year

Note: The charity has not provided an analysis of changes in net debt as it does not have any long term financing arrangements.

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mySociety

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2025

1. Accounting policies

a) Basis of preparation and general information

mySociety is a charitable company limited by guarantee registered in England and Wales. The registered office address is 483 Green Lanes, London, N13 4BS.

The financial statements have been prepared in accordance with Accounting and Reporting by Charities: Statement of Recommended Practice applicable to charities in preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102) (effective 1 January 2019) — (Charities SORP (FRS 102)), the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102), and the Companies Act 2006.

mySociety meets the definition of a public benefit entity under FRS 102. Assets and liabilities are initially recognised at historical cost or transaction value unless otherwise stated in the relevant accounting policy note.

b) Group accounts

These financial statements consolidate the results of the charitable company and its wholly-owned (controlled) subsidiary on a line by line basis. Transactions and balances between the charitable company and its subsidiary have been eliminated from the consolidated financial statements. Balances between the two companies are disclosed in the notes of the charitable companyʼs balance sheet. A separate statement of financial activities, or income and expenditure account, for the charitable company itself is not presented because the charitable company has taken advantage of the exemptions afforded by section 408 of the Companies Act 2006.

c) Going concern basis of accounting

The accounts have been prepared on the assumption that the charity is able to continue as a going concern, which the trustees consider appropriate having regard to the current level of unrestricted reserves. There are no material uncertainties about the charityʼs ability to continue as a going concern.

d) Income

Income is recognised when the charity has entitlement to the funds, any performance conditions attached to the item of income have been met, it is probable that the income will be received and the amount can be measured reliably.

Income from the government and other grants, whether ʻcapitalʼ grants or ʻrevenueʼ grants, is recognised when the charity has entitlement to the funds, any performance conditions attached to the grants have been met, it is probable that the income will be received and the amount can be measured reliably and is not deferred.

Income received in advance of provision of invoiced consultancy and software services is deferred until criteria for income recognition are met.

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mySociety

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2025

Recharges of staff costs between the charitable company and its subsidiary SocietyWorks Ltd have not been recognised as income in the charitable companyʼs statement of financial activities, and are instead netted off against expenditure. This has no impact upon the consolidated figures, in which intercompany transactions are eliminated.

e) Donated services and facilities

Donated professional services and donated facilities are recognised as income when the charity has control over the item, any conditions associated with the donated item have been met, the receipt of economic benefit from the use by the charity of the item is probable, and the economic benefit can be measured reliably. In accordance with the Charities SORP (FRS 102), general volunteer time is not recognised.

On receipt, donated professional services and donated facilities are recognised on the basis of the value of the gift to the charity, which is the amount the charity would have been willing to pay to obtain services or facilities of equivalent economic benefit on the open market; a corresponding amount is then recognised in expenditure in the period of receipt.

f) Interest receivable

Interest on funds held on deposit is included when receivable and the amount can be measured reliably by the charity: this is normally upon notification of the interest paid or payable by the bank.

g) Funds accounting

Unrestricted funds are available to spend on activities that further any of the purposes of the charity. Designated funds are unrestricted funds of the charity which the trustees have decided at their discretion to set aside to use for a specific purpose. Restricted funds are donations which the donor has specified are to be solely used for particular areas of the charityʼs work or for specific projects being undertaken by the charity.

h) Expenditure and irrecoverable VAT

Expenditure is recognised once there is a legal or constructive obligation to make a payment to a third party, it is probable that settlement will be required and the amount of the obligation can be measured reliably.

Irrecoverable VAT is charged as a cost against the activity for which the expenditure was incurred.

i) Grants payable

Grants payable are recognised as expenditure on the earlier of a) when the charity has a present obligation to transfer resources; and b) when the charity ceases to control the resource (e.g. via transferring funds to the grant recipient.

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mySociety

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2025

j) Allocation of support and governance costs

Support costs are those functions that assist the work of the charity but do not directly undertake charitable activities. Governance costs are the costs associated with the governance arrangements of the charity, including the costs of complying with constitutional and statutory requirements and any costs associated with the strategic management of the charityʼs activities. These costs have been allocated between cost of raising funds and expenditure on charitable activities on the basis of direct costs, as follows:

		2025	2024
	Raising funds: raising charitable donations	6.9%	6.7%
	Charitable activities	93.1%	93.3%

k) Tangible fixed assets

Depreciation is provided at rates calculated to write down the cost of each asset to its estimated residual value over its expected useful life. The depreciation rates in use are as follows:

Computer equipment 3 – 5 years straight line basis

l) Intangible fixed assets

Product development expenditure is capitalised only if the expenditure can be measured reliably, the product or process is technically feasible, future economic benefits are probable and the company intends to and has sufficient resources to complete development and to use or sell the asset. Otherwise, it is recognised in the profit and loss account as incurred. Subsequent to initial recognition, product development is measured at cost less accumulated amortisation and any accumulated impairment losses.

Amortisation is provided at rates calculated to write down the cost of intangible assets over the estimated period that economic benefit attributable to the asset is expected to flow to the company. The amortisation rates in use are as follows:

Software development 3 years straight line basis

m) Investments

Investments in subsidiaries are held at cost less impairment.

n) Debtors

Trade and other debtors are recognised at the settlement amount due after any trade discount offered. Prepayments are valued at the amount prepaid net of any trade discounts due.

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mySociety

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2025

o) Cash at bank and in hand

Cash at bank and cash in hand includes cash and short term highly liquid investments with a short maturity of three months or less from the date of acquisition or opening of the deposit or similar account.

p) Creditors

Creditors and provisions are recognised where there is a present obligation resulting from a past event that will probably result in the transfer of funds to a third party and the amount due to settle the obligation can be measured or estimated reliably. Creditors and provisions are normally recognised at their settlement amount after allowing for any trade discounts due.

q) Financial instruments

The charitable company only has financial assets and financial liabilities of a kind that qualify as basic financial instruments. Basic financial instruments are initially recognised at transaction value and subsequently measured at their settlement value with the exception of bank loans which are subsequently recognised at amortised cost using the effective interest method.

r) Pension costs

The charitable company operates a defined contribution pension scheme for its employees. There are no further liabilities other than that already recognised in the SOFA.

s) Foreign currency transactions

Transactions in foreign currencies are translated at rates prevailing at the date of the transaction. Balances denominated in foreign currencies are translated at the rate of exchange prevailing at the year end.

t) Accounting estimates and key judgements

In the application of the charityʼs accounting policies, the trustees are required to make judgements, estimates and assumptions about the carrying values of assets and liabilities that are not readily apparent from other sources. The estimates and underlying assumptions are based on historical experience and other factors that are considered to be relevant. Actual results may differ from these estimates.

The estimates and underlying assumptions are reviewed on an ongoing basis. Revisions to accounting estimates are recognised in the period in which the estimate is revised if the revision affects only that period, or in the period of the revision and future periods if the revision affects both current and future periods.

The key sources of estimation uncertainty that have a significant effect on the amounts recognised in the financial statements are described below.

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mySociety

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2025

Depreciation

As described in note 1k to the financial statements, depreciation is provided at rates calculated to write down the cost of each asset to its estimated residual value over its expected useful life.

Amortisation

As described in note 1l to the financial statements, amortisation is provided at rates calculated to write down the cost of each asset to its estimated residual value over its expected useful life.

65

mySociety

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2025

2. Prior period comparatives: statement of financial activities

For the year ended 31 March 2025

	For theyear ended 31 March 2025
		Restricted £	Unrestricted £	Total 2024 £
	Income from:
	Donations	1,645,320	142,836	1,788,156
	Other trading activities	–	1,302,272	1,302,272
	Investments	–	2,562	2,562
	Total income	1,645,320	1,447,670	3,092,990
	Expenditure on:
	Raising funds: raising charitable	–	95,247	95,247
	donations
	Raisingfunds: tradingactivity	–	1,142,810	1,142,810
	Charitable activities	1,231,674	88,012	1,319,686
	Total expenditure	1,231,674	1,326,069	2,557,743
	Net income and net movement in	413,646	121,601	535,247
	funds

3. Income from donations

	3. Income from donations
	Donor	Restricted £	Unrestricted £	Total 2025 £
	Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust	69,289	–	69,289
	The National Lottery Community Fund	123,960	–	123,960
	National Endowment for Democracy	143,603	–	143,603
	Isocrates Foundation	74,890	–	74,890
	The Indigo Trust	25,000	–	25,000
	Adessium Foundation	82,950	–	82,950
	Patrick J. McGovern Foundation	231,533	–	231,533
	Swedish Postcode Foundation	76,645	–	76,645
	JRSST Charitable Trust	31,114	–	31,114
	The Dulverton Trust	–	35,000	35,000
	J and H Cross	35,000	–	35,000
	John Ellerman Foundation	50,000	–	50,000
	Porticus	63,000	–	63,000
	Other donations	1,000	55,886	56,886
	Total income from donations	1,007,984	90,886	1,098,870

66

mySociety

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2025

3. Income from donations

Prior period comparative

	Prior period comparative
	Donor	Restricted £	Unrestricted £	Total 2024 £
	Quadrature	570,000	30,000	600,000
	Swedish Postcode Foundation	82,883	–	82,883
	The National Lottery Community Fund	196,480	–	196,480
	Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust	64,532	–	64,532
	Adessium Foundation	85,835	–	85,835
	National Endowment for Democracy	105,422	–	105,422
	J and H Cross	–	10,000	10,000
	Patrick J McGovern Foundation	237,633	–	237,633
	Global Black Thrive CIC	45,980	–	45,980
	The Climate Coalition	45,000	–	45,000
	Isocrates Foundation	161,555	–	161,555
	Aurora Trust	50,000	–	50,000
	Porticus	–	65,000	65,000
	Other donations	–	37,836	37,836
	Total income from donations	1,645,320	142,836	1,788,156

4. Income from charitable activities

	4. Income from charitable activities
	Activity	2025 £	2024 £
	TICTeC ticket sales	12,850	–
	Research consultancy	10,000	–
	Total income from charitable activities	22,850	–

All income from charitable activities in the current and prior period was unrestricted.

67

mySociety

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2025

5. Income from other trading activities

Activity	Total 2025 £	Total 2024 £
Sale of sofware and IT consultancy	1,503,417	1,302,272

All income from other trading activities in the current and prior period was unrestricted.

6. Government grants

The charitable company receives a government grant, defined as funding from The National Lottery Community Fund to fund charitable activities. The total value of such grants in the year ending 31 March 2025 was £123,960 (2024: £196,480). There are no unfulfilled conditions or contingencies attaching to these grants in the current or prior year.

68

mySociety

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2025

7. Total expenditure

	7. Total expenditure
		Raising funds: charitable	Raising funds: trading	Charitable activities £	Support & governance
		donations £	activity £		costs £	Total 2025 £
	Staf costs (note 10)	81,093	1,014,155	822,728	48,252	1,966,228
	Servers and subscriptions	–	49,517	29,975	–	79,492
	TICTeC	–	–	80,953	–	80,953
	Team meetings and retreats	–	22,021	–	20,068	42,089
	Legal, financial and insurance	–	13,190	–	27,686	40,876
	General administration costs	–	1,359	–	8,576	9,935
	Partner payments (note 8)	–	–	168,016	–	168,016
	UK travel and subsistence	–	15,183	–	10,457	25,640
	Desk rentals and meeting rooms	–	13,872	–	14,744	28,616
	Amortisation	–	26,481	–	–	26,481
	Depreciation	–	–	–	7,249	7,249
	Training	–	–	–	3,621	3,621
	Loss on disposal of fixed assets	–	2,592	–	–	2,592
	Marketing	469	46,332	–	–	46,801
	Sub-total	81,562	1,204,702	1,101,672	140,653	2,528,589
	Allocation of support and governance costs	9,694	–	130,959	(140,653)	–
	Total expenditure	91,256	1,204,702	1,232,631	–	2,528,589

Total governance costs were £14,160 (2024: £12,852).

69

mySociety

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2025

Prior period comparative

	Prior period comparative
		Raising funds: charitable	Raising funds: trading	Charitable activities £	Support & governance	Total 2024 £
		donations £	activity £		costs £
	Staf costs (note 10)	69,417	950,391	868,469	108,035	1,996,312
	Servers and subscriptions	–	37,524	31,433	–	68,957
	Team meetings and retreats	–	17,348	–	18,420	35,768
	Legal, financial and insurance	–	11,995	–	30,336	42,331
	General administration costs	–	7,979	–	11,944	19,923
	Partner payments (note 8)	–	–	229,218	–	229,218
	UK travel and subsistence	–	10,971	–	9,791	20,762
	Desk rentals and meeting rooms	–	15,230	–	12,999	28,229
	Amortisation	–	56,427	–	–	56,427
	Depreciation	–	–	–	6,670	6,670
	Training	–	–	–	4,594	4,594
	Loss on disposal of fixed assets	–	–	–	1,530	1,530
	Marketing	12,077	34,945	–	–	47,022
	Sub-total	81,494	1,142,810	1,129,120	204,319	2,557,743
	Allocation of support and governance costs	13,753	–	190,566	(204,319)	–
	Total expenditure	95,247	1,142,810	1,319,686	–	2,557,743

70

mySociety

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2025

8. Grants payable

Included within ʻpartner paymentsʼ in note 7 are sub-grant ʻpartner paymentsʼ made to the following institutions:

		2025 £	2024 £
	Access Info Europe	69,908	71,285
	Atlatszo	6,475	–
	Climate Emergency UK	–	50,000
	Open Knowledge Foundation Deutschland	48,476	47,226
	Open Knowledge Foundation France	8,352	–
	Public Association Lawyers for Human Rights	–	8,294
	OpenUP South Africa	7,909	–
	Superbloom Design	10,691	8,251
	Vouliwatch	–	16,305
	SPOON	16,205	–
	Nil (2024: 10) grants payable <£5,000	–	27,857
	Total	168,016	229,218

No grants were paid to individuals in the current or prior period, and no support costs have been allocated to grant-making activities.

9. Net movement in funds

This is stated after charging:

	2025 £	2024 £
Amortisation	26,481	56,427
Depreciation	7,249	6,670
Loss on disposal of fixed assets	–	1,530
Trusteesʼ remuneration	Nil	Nil
Trusteesʼ reimbursed expenses	618	Nil
Foreign exchange gains	3,073	3,750
Auditorsʼ remuneration
Statutory audit	11,450	10,360
Other services	350	350

Trusteesʼ reimbursed expenses comprised payments to 2 (2024: nil) trustees for travel expenses.

In common with other charities of our size and nature we use our auditors to assist with the preparation of the financial statements.

71

mySociety

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2025

10. Staff costs and numbers

	10. Staf costs and numbers
		2025 £	2024 £
	Salaries and wages	1,710,591	1,760,746
	Social security costs	180,913	199,403
	Pension costs	67,163	37,852
	Contractors	7,561	14,620
	Less: capitalised product development within SocietyWorks Ltd	–	(16,309)
		1,966,228	1,996,312

The number of employees whose annual emoluments were £60,000 or more were:

Salary band	2025 (No. of employees)	2024 (No. of employees)
£60,001 to £65,000	2	1
£65,001 to £70,000	7	7
£80,001 to £85,000	1	1
£85,001 to £90,000	1	1
£90,001 to £95,000	1	1

The key management personnel of the charitable company comprise the Trustees and the Chief Executive Officer. The total employee benefits of the key management personnel were £107,133 (2024: £104,762).

Description	2025 (No.)	2024 (No.)
Average number of employees (full-time equivalent)	32	35

Redundancy and termination payments of £15,000 were paid during the year and included within staff costs above (2024: £7,370).

11. Taxation

The charity is exempt from corporation tax as all its income is charitable and is applied for charitable purposes. The charityʼs trading subsidiary, SocietyWorks Ltd, has gift aided its available profits to the charity.

72

mySociety

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2025

12. Tangible fixed assets (Group and Charity)

	Computer equipment £
Cost
At 1 April 2024	35,940
Additions in year	2,501
At 31 March 2025	38,441
Depreciation
At 1 April 2024	14,175
Charge for the year	7,249
At 31 March 2025	21,424
Net book value
At 31 March 2025	17,017
At 31 March 2024	21,765

13. Intangible fixed assets (Group)

	Sofware Development £
Cost
At 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025	181,509
Amortisation
At 1 April 2024	138,245
Charge for the year	26,481
At 31 March 2025	164,726
Net book value
At 31 March 2025	16,783
At 31 March 2024	43,264

All intangible assets are held within the trading subsidiary, SocietyWorks Ltd.

73

mySociety

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2025

14. Investments

14. Investments
	The group	The group	The charity	The charity
	2025 £	2024 £	2025 £	2024 £
Investment in subsidiary company	–	–	1	1

The investment represents 100% of the ordinary share capital of SocietyWorks Ltd, whose principal activity is to carry out trading activities in support of the charity. A summary of the financial results and position of SocietyWorks Ltd is given below (see note 15).

15. Subsidiary undertakings

SocietyWorks Ltd (company number 05798215) is a wholly owned trading subsidiary of mySociety. It trades in software and IT consultancy.

	2025 £	2024 £
Turnover	1,503,417	1,302,272
Cost of sales	(722,656)	(707,362)
Gross profit	780,761	594,910
Administrative expenses	(482,045)	(435,448)
Profit on ordinary activities	298,716	159,462
Corporation tax	–	–
Profit for financial year afer taxation	298,716	159,462
Changes in equity
Total retained profit brought forward	2,755	2,755
Total comprehensive income for the year	298,716	159,462
Gif aid distribution to parent charity	(298,716)	(159,462)
Total retained profit carried forward	2,755	2,755

	The aggregate of the assets, liabilities and funds was:
	Assets	1,157,872	1,062,903
	Liabilities	(1,155,116)	(1,060,147)
	Funds	2,756	2,756

74

mySociety

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2025

16. Parent charity

The parent charityʼs gross income and results for the year are disclosed as follows:

	2025 £	2024 £
Gross income	1,423,148	1,950,180
Results for the year	99,260	535,247

17. Debtors

17. Debtors
	2025 Group £	2024 Group £	2025 Charity £	2024 Charity £
Trade debtors	104,640	307,365	–	4,000
Accrued Income	117,083	–	117,083	–
Prepayments	29,777	46,064	18,407	26,218
Amounts owing by group undertakings	–	–	384,870	245,931
Other debtors	899	2,494	899	2,494
	252,399	355,923	521,259	278,643
18. Creditors : amounts falling due within 1 year
	2025 Group £	2024 Group £	2025 Charity £	2024 Charity £
Trade creditors	2,505	1,870	615	1,571
Accruals	28,360	11,360	24,360	7,560
Other taxation and	136,924	155,277	44,460	57,034
social security
Grants payable	–	15,581	–	15,581
Other creditors	19,907	10,237	19,908	10,237
Deferred income	671,892	711,873	–	–
(Note 19)
	859,588	906,198	89,343	91,983

75

mySociety

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2025

19. Deferred income

		2025 Group £	2024 Group £	2025 Charity £	2024 Charity £
	At 1 April 2024	711,873	528,474	–	–
	Deferred during the year	671,892	711,873	–	–
	Released during the year	(711,873)	(528,474)	–	–
	At 31 March 2025	671,892	711,873	–	–

Deferred income relates to contract income invoiced by SocietyWorks Ltd in advance of provision of services.

20. Analysis of group net assets between funds

		Restricted funds £	General funds £	Total funds £
	Tangible fixed assets	–	17,017	17,017
	Intangible fixed assets	–	16,783	16,783
	Current assets	432,016	1,699,145	2,131,161
	Current liabilities	–	(859,588)	(859,588)
	Net assets at 31 March 2025	432,016	873,357	1,305,373

Prior period comparative:

		Restricted funds £	General funds £	Total funds £
	Tangible fixed assets	–	21,765	21,765
	Intangible fixed assets	–	43,264	43,264
	Current assets	572,939	1,474,344	2,047,283
	Current liabilities	(15,581)	(890,617)	(906,198)
	Net assets at 31 March 2024	557,358	648,756	1,206,114

76

mySociety

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2025

21. Movements in funds

	Fund	At 1 April 2024 £	Income £	Expenditure £	Transfers between funds £	At 31 March 2025 £
	Restricted funds
	ATI in Europe	117,393	234,485	(258,661)	–	93,217
	Aurora Trust	50,000	–	(50,000)	–	–
	J and H Cross	–	35,000	–	–	35,000
	John Elllerman Foundation	–	50,000	–	–	50,000
	The Indigo Trust	–	25,000	(12,548)	–	12,452
	Porticus	–	63,000	(2,061)	–	60,939
	WhoFundsThem	–	1,000	(1,000)	–	–
	Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust	(4,238)	69,289	(63,350)	–	1,701
	JRSST Charitable Trust	–	31,114	(31,114)	–	–
	National Endowment
	for Democracy – TICTeC	9,303	143,603	(145,579)	–	7,327
	Communities
	Patrick J McGovern Foundation	237,633	231,533	(297,786)	–	171,380
	Quadrature / National
	Lottery Community	147,267	123,960	(271,227)	–	–
	Foundation
	Total restricted funds	557,358	1,007,984	(1,133,326)	–	432,016
	Unrestricted funds
	General funds	648,756	1,619,864	(1,395,263)	–	873,357
	Total unrestricted funds	648,756	1,619,864	(1,395,263)	–	873,357
	Total funds	1,206,114	2,627,848	(2,528,589)	–	1,305,373

77

mySociety

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2025

Purposes of restricted funds

ATI in Europe	A project co-funded by grants from Adessium Foundation, Swedish Postcode Foundation
	and Isocrates Foundation. The project aims to build a cohesive, wide and activated
	community that is working to strengthen the right of access to information across the
	European region, so that Access to Information (ATI) delivers the information needed for
	democratic debate and accountability.
Aurora Trust	A grant towards mySocietyʼs Neighbourhood Warmth programme.
J and H Cross	A fund from a private donor which is restricted for use on the development, acquisition,
	maintenance, licensing, and access of Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) technology in support
	of the charityʼs work on transparency and democracy.
John Ellerman	A grant to deliver a project encouraging councils to create sustainable communities.
Foundation
The Indigo Foundation	A grant restricted for use on the WhoFundsThem project.
Porticus	A grant towards the delivery of The Impacts of Civic Technology (TICTeC) Conference
	2025.
WhoFundsThem	A restricted donation from an individual for use on the WhoFundsThem project.
Joseph Rowntree	A grant that funds mySocietyʼs transparency programme, ensuring the right to
Charitable Trust	information can be used by all.
JRSST Charitable Trust	A grant restricted to WhoFundsThem – a project to bring information about MPsʼ financial
	interests to the public in an accessible way, resourcing campaigns for transparency and
	public accountability across the sector.
National Endowment	A grant to promote learning, knowledge exchange, and collaboration among civic
for Democracy –	technology organisations to undertake efective, evidence-based, impactful work
TICTeC Communities	enhancing public participation, transparency, and accountability via Civic Tech Field
	Guide, Communities of Practice and two hybrid TICTeC Conferences.
Patrick J McGovern	A grant to enhance the Local Intelligence Hub and amplify public data collaboration for
Foundation	scalable solutions.
Quadrature / National	Grants to accelerate local climate action through data and digital services.
Lottery Community
Foundation
Transfers between
funds:
Reserve fund	A target level of unrestricted funds to enable mySociety to: cover emergency cash flow
	shortfalls; respond to an extraordinary event, campaign or project; or wind down the
	organisation in an orderly fashion should this become necessary. In the previous year,
	this reserve was transferred to general funds during the year to reflect the new reserves
	policy.

78

For the year ended 31 March 2025

mySociety

Notes to the financial statements

Prior period comparative

		At 1 April 2023 £	Income £	Expenditure £	Transfers between funds £	At 31 March 2024 £
	Restricted funds
	ATI in Europe	37,856	330,273	(250,736)	–	117,393
	Alaveteli	25,000	–	(25,000)	–	–
	Aurora Trust	–	50,000	–	–	50,000
	Black Thrive CIC	–	45,980	(45,980)	–	–
	The Climate Coalition	–	45,000	(45,000)	–	–
	Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust	17,247	64,532	(86,017)	–	(4,238)
	National Endowment for
	Democracy – TICTeC	–	84,863	(75,560)	–	9,303
	Communities
	National Endowment for Democracy – TICTeC Labs	8,956	20,559	(29,515)	–	–
	Patrick J McGovern Foundation	–	237,633	–	–	237,633
	Quadrature / National
	Lottery Community	54,653	766,480	(673,866)	–	147,267
	Foundation
	Total restricted funds	143,712	1,645,320	(1,231,674)	–	557,358
	Unrestricted funds
	_Designated fund:_Reserve fund	240,482	–	–	(240,482)	–
	General funds	286,673	1,447,670	(1,326,069)	240,482	648,756
	Total unrestricted funds	527,155	1,447,670	(1,326,069)	–	648,756
	Total funds	670,867	3,092,990	(2,557,743)	–	1,206,114

22. Related party transactions

mySociety has a wholly owned subsidiary SocietyWorks Ltd, a company limited by shares (company no. 05798215). At 31 March 2025, SocietyWorks Ltd owed mySociety £384,869 (2024: £245,931).

There were no other related party transactions in the current or prior reporting period.

79

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