2024-12-31-accounts

PEACE DIRECT ANNUAL REPORT 2024 eè PEACE DIRECT

Trustees’ report for year ended 31 December 2024

The Trustees are pleased to present their annual Trustees’ report together with the financial statements of the charity for the year ended 31 December 2024 which are also prepared to meet the requirements for a directors’ report and accounts for Companies Act purposes.

The financial statements comply with the Charities Act 2011, the Companies Act 2006, the Memorandum and Articles of Association, and Accounting and Reporting by Charities: Statement of Recommended Practice applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102).

Officers and financial advisers

Trustees

Anthony Smith (Chair)

Howard Mason (Treasurer) (appointed 28/03/2024) (resigned 11/11/2024)

David Cutler (resigned 28/03/2024)

David Loyn

Jennifer Larbie

Martine Kessy Ekomo Soignet (resigned 27/06/2024)

Peace Ashenafi

Maryam Mohsin

Bridget Moix (appointed 27/06/2024)

Mohammad Haider (Treasurer) (appointed 27/03/2025)

Sukanya Podder (appointed 27/03/2025)

Aleema Shivji (appointed 27/03/2025

Patrons

Dame Emma Kirkby Sir Mark Rylance Scilla Elworthy

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Senior Leadership Team

Dylan Mathews (Chief Executive)

Harriet Knox Brown (Head of Partnerships, Programmes and Research / Deputy CEO)

Gemma Britton (Joint Head of Fundraising and Communications)

Grace Rowley (Joint Head of Fundraising and Communications)

Valerie Bloomfield (Head of Finance and Operations)

Company Secretary

Valerie Bloomfield

Charity Number

1123241

Company Number

06458464

Registered Office

Peace Direct, 1st Floor, Dynamis House, Sycamore Street, Barbican,

London EC1Y 0SW, United Kingdom

Bankers

Co-operative Bank. PO Box 101, 1 Balloon St, Manchester M60 4EP.

Ebury Bank, 42-44 Grosvenor Gardens, London SW1W 0EB

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Statutory auditors

Sayer Vincent LLP 110 Golden Lane London, EC1Y 0TG

Solicitor

BDB Pitmans LLP, 1 Bartholomew Close, London EC1A 7BL

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Executive summary

For local peacebuilders around the world, 2024 was a difficult year. Devastating violence continued to rock Palestine, Sudan, Lebanon, DRC and Myanmar, as well as many other countries, while international solidarity eroded.

Against this backdrop, the biggest election year worldwide tested the strength of our democracies and saw alarming political shifts to the right – notably in the US, where Donald Trump secured a second term that would, in early 2025, enable him to significantly cut the capacity of our sector. In Syria, meanwhile, an oppressive regime was ended, bringing opportunity and promise not just to Syrians but to peacebuilders globally.

For these external reasons, 2024 was a significant year for Peace Direct, emphasising the importance of our work supporting local peacebuilding globally. Alongside our ongoing, long-term support to local peacebuilders, we also responded to emerging crises. We provided emergency grants to peacebuilding partners in eastern DRC, Afghanistan, Colombia, Syria and Sudan to facilitate immediate humanitarian assistance to communities impacted by natural disasters or displaced by an upsurge in violent conflict.

2024 was also significant for Peace Direct internally: we ended a strategic period and developed a new, ambitious 5-year strategy through a consultative process to build on our learning and expand our impact. We secured our largest-ever strategic grant from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which will strengthen our efforts in transforming the peacebuilding system. And we launched our first-ever podcast, amplifying Global South voices on the need to decolonise partnerships in the humanitarian, development and peacebuilding sector.

We held two major face-to-face partner exchanges, with peacebuilders in the Great Lakes and several of our Local Action Fund (LAF) partners, and began evaluating our LAF programming – we are set to publish a global evaluation report in 2025.

We influenced several INGOs to improve their practices towards more equitable partnerships through peer-to-peer advocacy and practical support, as well as our podcast. We supported the launch of a guidance note for more inclusive international convenings and worked closely with allies to develop resources to decolonise policy and advocacy approaches, including This is the Work. We continued to convene spaces where local peacebuilders can speak truth to power.

Our influencing efforts were assessed through an independent evaluation, which demonstrated the significant positive impact of our advocacy work and gave us renewed commitment and focus for this work across the organisation.

The Peace Starts Here campaign grew, launching the local peacebuilders manifesto, the Real Stories of Peace gallery, and building towards delivering microgrants to local peacebuilders.

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We ran our second fundraising co-appeal, working with our partner in Zimbabwe; we sold our 1,000th item of merchandise; and sessions on our digital engagement programme were delivered to three packed-out rooms at the International Fundraising Congress in Amsterdam in October.

A major piece of work to develop our use of organisational systems was rolled out, our information security has strengthened, and we established our new entity in the Netherlands.

All-in-all, 2024 was characterised by a sense of renewed ambition and focus on our strategic contributions to our sector, inspired by the resilient and hopeful work of the local peacebuilders we support.

Highlights of 2024 included:

• Directly supporting over 27 local peacebuilding organisations in 14 countries. This included: launching a new initiative with our Syrian partners with funding from the European Union (EU) to strengthen and resource peacebuilding and civil society efforts in northern Syria; and deepening our innovative re-granting model for local peacebuilding actors, known as the Local Action Fund (LAF), in six countries.

• Securing our largest strategic grant to date from the Dutch government and launching the resulting 8-year ‘Local First’ programme. This work focuses on resourcing, supporting and promoting local peacebuilding programming and advocacy efforts in Afghanistan, eastern DRC, Mali and Sudan to contribute to sustainable peace.

• Hosting in-person learning exchanges with local peacebuilders in Uganda – bringing together partners from eastern DRC and Burundi – and in Vietnam, for LAF partners from Pakistan, Myanmar, Nigeria, Afghanistan and Sudan.

• Publishing a comprehensive, practical guide from Global South voices, on how to organise international events and convenings that are inclusive and accessible to people from the Global South and other minoritised identities.

• Producing a six-part podcast series, building on our work to raise awareness of better partnership practices in the international development, humanitarian support and peacebuilding sectors.

• Delivering our second co-created fundraising appeal with our local partner in Zimbabwe, with all creative development, messaging and storytelling led by them, and all fundraising proceeds shared equally.

• Conducting advocacy to policymakers in the UK, EU and US. This included develop resources to decolonise policy and advocacy approaches, including This is the Work, and supporting campaigning to end gender apartheid in Afghanistan.

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• Developing a new organisational strategy and goals that will guide Peace Direct’s work from 2025 to 2030. We ran a consultative and analytical process, including reviewing progress against our previous strategy, analysing the environment of our operations, surveying our local partners, commissioning an independent evaluation of our influencing work, and input from staff.

• Establishing a new entity for Peace Direct in the Netherlands, to support our ongoing advocacy work.

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Peace Direct’s vision and mission

Our vision

A just world, free from violent conflict

Our mission

To work in partnership with local peacebuilders and other allies to shift power and resources for sustainable peace.

Our values

We believe in:

• Non-violence

• Dignity and respect

• Inclusion

• Trust

• Courage and speaking ‘truth to power’

We are

• Non-partisan

• Entrepreneurial

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Objectives and activities for the public benefit

Our aims:

The purpose of Peace Direct is to stop violence and build sustainable peace by supporting the work of local peacebuilders in conflict-affected countries. We believe local people are best placed to end the conflicts that affect them because of their unique expertise and focus on long-term solutions. Social science research demonstrates that peacebuilding approaches that include deep knowledge of the community and local cultures are more likely to have a positive and lasting impact. Therefore, we partner directly with local peacebuilders, providing the practical support they need to save lives and create the conditions for lasting peace. We support our partners to access international funding, and provide them with resources and solidarity.

As well as providing direct support to peacebuilders, we garner wider support for locally led peacebuilding. We recognise that dominant narratives and international peace efforts overlook – and sometimes undermine – local peacebuilders’ work. We believe that many internationally led peace efforts have been unsuccessful because they exclude local perspectives and leaders and take a short-term approach that doesn’t tackle the root causes of conflict. As such, we aim to make the work of local peacebuilders more visible to the public and international power-holders, in order to shift global peace efforts towards more effective locally led peacebuilding approaches.

To support this, we take a multi-pronged approach. We conduct research to provide concrete evidence that local peacebuilding works. We advocate to policymakers and other power-holders to increase investment in locally led peacebuilding. We campaign to raise awareness of local peacebuilding and shift narratives about peace and conflict. And we work to tackle unjust, neocolonial systems that undermine the possibility of a non-violent future, by advocating for decolonisation of our sector and broader systems change.

Through this direct support and wider commitment to locally led peacebuilding, we make peace more possible around the world.

In the period covering January – December 2024, our strategy to achieve our aims focused on four strategic goals:

1. Strategic Goal 1: People in fragile and conflict-affected countries will have the tools, power and resources to prevent and respond to violence and lead efforts to build sustainable peace.

2. Strategic Goal 2: Targeted institutions and organisations will recognise and support locally led peacebuilding as an effective and essential approach to building sustainable peace and will begin to address neocolonial attitudes and practices in their work.

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1. Strategic Goal 3: Peace Direct will generate mass support for locally led peacebuilding.

2. Strategic Goal 4: Peace Direct will be a strong, dynamic, inclusive organisation better equipped to deliver our mission.

A review of our achievements and performance: Progress against our strategic plan

An overview of our progress against each of our four strategic goals is reported on below, with specific highlights of our 2024 activities and achievements listed.

As our new strategy has changed the structure of our strategic objectives for 2025 onwards, our plans for 2025 are outlined separately, beneath the full list of 2024 progress and activities.

The trustees confirm that they have referred to the guidance in the Charity Commission’s general guidance on public benefit when reviewing our aims, objectives, and future plans.

Strategic Goal 1: People in fragile and conflict-affected countries will have the tools, power and resources to prevent and respond to violence and lead efforts to build sustainable peace.

This goal speaks to the heart of our strategy – directly supporting the efforts of local people building peace in conflict-affected countries. To achieve this goal, we focus on:

• 1) providing funding and other support to local peacebuilding efforts;

• 2) fostering a thriving ecosystem of local peacebuilding actors;

• 3) learning, reflecting and generating knowledge with our partners on their local peacebuilding efforts;

• 4) developing trust-based, sustainable and mutually accountable partnerships;

• 5) exploring and promoting innovative, flexible ways of resourcing local peacebuilding efforts.

We measure progress in our ability to mobilise funding for local peacebuilders and test innovative approaches, the strength of our partnerships, and our facilitation of connections and learning between local peacebuilders in different countries.

In 2024, we made significant positive progress on this goal. We supported 27 local peacebuilding partners in 14 countries to deliver and facilitate local peacebuilding activities that prevented violence and created the conditions for lasting peace. We mobilised £1,637,319 in funding for local partners in total. We launched a new initiative with our Syrian partners, deepened

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our innovative re-granting model (the Local Action Fund) in seven countries, and secured our largest strategic grant to date, from the Dutch government to resource and promote local peacebuilding programming and advocacy efforts in Afghanistan, eastern DRC, Mali and Sudan over eight years.

Highlights of our work in 2024 include:

• Ongoing support for the Local Action Fund (LAF) to resource and amplify local peacebuilding and civil society resilience efforts with partners in Nigeria, Myanmar, Sudan, Afghanistan, Mali, Pakistan and Colombia. LAF is a flexible funding mechanism for local peacebuilding actors, made up of small grants, accompaniment, collaboration and advocacy actions at local, national and international levels. In 2024, grants worth 0ver US$260,000 were dispersed to local peacebuilders, varying in size. These small grants, often only $1,000, enabled diverse local peacebuilding activities including interfaith work, support for non-violent livelihoods and civil society resilience. Many of the grants supported typically marginalised groups such as women, youth and minorities to lead this work.

• Completing locally led evaluations of Local Action Fund programming with partners in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan and Nigeria towards the end of the year. The global LAF evaluation report will be published in early 2025, but initial results indicate small, flexible grantmaking to community change agents can yield significant peace dividends. Between 2019 and 2024, LAF awarded over 700 small grants, distributing more than $2.25 million to local groups. By encouraging agile, responsive programming in hard-to-reach conflict zones and supporting community-endorsed peace actors that are often ineligible for conventional funding, LAF has been able to reduce violence, build more inclusive and resilient peacebuilding ecosystems, and invest in innovative strategies that are ultimately accountable to the communities most impacted by conflict.

• Securing a major £15m grant from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs for 8-year strategic funding to expand our support for local peacebuilding efforts in four focus countries (Afghanistan, DRC, Mali, Sudan) and increase our advocacy efforts to shift power to local actors. The strategic objective of the programme, called Local First, is to ensure that local peacebuilding efforts in the four targeted countries, and internationally, will be better resourced, acknowledged and supported by the international community, leading to increased prospects for sustainable peace. Within this overarching objective, we also hope to foster strengthened ecosystems of local peacebuilders in the four countries, ensuring these ecosystems are better able to build peace and prevent or respond to violence at local, regional, national or sub-regional levels. Interventions will include data-driven programme design,

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flexible funding and accompaniment, convening of local peacebuilders. In 2024, Local First activities centered on internal start-up, including the recruitment of new roles in our programmes, advocacy and MEL teams, which are dedicated to the objectives of Local First. We also held introductory and planning meetings with the MfA and other grantee partners, and began developing a baseline on current peacebuilding ecosystems and international support to inform our data-led programmatic planning and help us measure progress against our objectives.

• Commencing new EU-funded work with our partner in Syria in early 2024 . This two-year project aims to create a stronger, more resilient civil society in northern Syria. Our Syrian partner is working with eight hyperlocal education-focused civil society groups to help them gain the tools and knowledge they need to better represent the interests of their communities, increase their legitimacy and work together within and across three regions controlled by different authorities. Peace Direct staff travelled to Gaziantep for a start-up workshop in March. The workshop enabled us to start the project smoothly, aligning expectations and confirming roles and responsibilities.

• Facilitating in-person learning exchanges, bringing together local peacebuilding partners in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Great Lakes (eastern DRC and Burundi) and Local Action Fund partners from Afghanistan, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan and Sudan. Through these exchanges, we created opportunities for partners to share insights and ideas on common areas of work, space for peer-to-peer skills building and showcase good practice and innovative methods of building peace that can be used to inspire and influence practice of other actors.

• In June, Peace Direct convened an exchange in Entebbe which brought together 22 peacebuilders from our partner organisations in eastern DRC and Burundi, alongside six Peace Direct staff members and facilitators, academics and practitioners from the region. The exchange was an opportunity for partners to collectively take stock of the challenges in the countries represented and share learning, knowledge and experience on locally led peacebuilding in the Great Lakes region in order to increase the effectiveness of local peacebuilding across the region.

• In October 2024, Peace Direct convened a learning exchange in Hanoi that brought together peacebuilding partners who are leading Local Action Fund programmes in Afghanistan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Myanmar, and Sudan. In total, 26 people participated, including 7 members of Peace Direct’s team and four members of our recently established Local MEL Reference Group. A separate one-day meeting was held as a bilateral exchange between Peace Direct and our partners in

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Afghanistan and Pakistan. The exchange provided space for each partner to showcase elements of their work, seek advice, insights and support from peer peacebuilders operating in different contexts, explore advocacy opportunities and programming priorities for the next phase of work, and identify themes and key learnings emerging across Local Action Fund programmes.

• Supporting locally led humanitarian response efforts by peacebuilding partners in eastern DRC, Afghanistan, Colombia, Syria and Sudan, providing them with small, rapid emergency grants totalling £92,472 (average value US$5,000-10,000 per grant). These facilitated immediate humanitarian assistance to communities impacted by natural disasters (earthquake in Syria/Turkey, flooding in Afghanistan) and communities displaced by an upsurge in violent conflict (in eastern Congo, Sudan and Colombia).

• Providing £94,245 in small, flexible grants to peacebuilding partners in more than 10 countries to support organisational development and training, safety, security and protection, strategy development and financial sustainability. Additionally, we allocated £24k in core funding as part of our ongoing commitment to increase our share of overheads with local partners.

We did not progress on one of our plans for 2024, to launch new work to identify and fund idea generation around innovative approaches to justice and accountability meeting the needs of survivors/victims of conflict. This work was paused due to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and changes in the strategic priorities of the donor. The proposed work will be reassessed in 2025 to determine whether it should continue in a different form.

Strategic Goal 2: Targeted institutions and organisations will recognise and support locally led peacebuilding as an effective and essential approach to building sustainable peace and will begin to address neocolonial attitudes and practices in their work.

This goal focuses on creating a global system of international cooperation that is more favourable to locally led peacebuilding, ensuring peace initiatives are more effective. We achieve this goal by:

• 1) tackling structural racism in the peacebuilding and wider sector through research, advocacy and partnering with actors in the Global South[1] working for change;

• 2) strengthening the evidence and knowledge base through our research on the effectiveness, impact and sustainability of locally led peacebuilding;

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• 3) advocating to strengthen international political will, commitment and policies, to shift power and resources to local peacebuilding actors; and

• 4) influencing the wider development and philanthropic sector so that supporting locally led efforts becomes the norm.

We measure our progress in the policy changes we see among targeted institutions and organisations, as well as the reach of and response to the resources we produce.

In 2024, we made significant progress against this goal. In particular, we strengthened and evaluated our advocacy efforts to drive greater support for local peacebuilders. As part of our organisational strategy review, we commissioned an independent evaluation for our advocacy efforts over the past five years. The evaluation found evidence that ‘suggests that Peace Direct’s influence and impact on the locally led peacebuilding agenda within the donor community has been considerable’. The evaluation also found that Peace Direct’s efforts have made a ‘significant contribution’ to reforms relating to decolonisation, that ‘Evidently Peace Direct have taken the decolonization discourse into key spaces that would not have happened – bilateral donors, civil society forums, UN agencies, NGO platforms, and foundations – without this program of work implemented through international advocacy strategy’. The evaluation has informed the future of our advocacy efforts and our 2025–2030 strategic objectives, particularly highlighting the importance of the wider organisation taking a role in influencing the sector.

Highlights of our work in 2024 include:

• Extending our engagement with policymakers in the UN, USA, UK and EU on decolonising the international development system through events and briefs in the context of critical policy processes – including the engaging in the Peacebuilding Architecture Review (PBAR), working with USAID to change partnership models and risk tolerance of the US government, and organising a session on ‘Shifting the power to locally led peace initiatives’ at the SIPRI forum.

• We supported an internal UN group to prepare a paper on decolonising UN institutions but were unable to ensure its publication before the end of 2024. We will continue supporting the group towards the publication of this paper in 2025.

• At the EU level, we engaged with the Service for Foreign Policy Instruments (FPI) to call for enhanced support for local peace actors and we shared lessons learned and practices from the LAF. We may have an outcome from this engagement in 2025.

• In the UK, we engaged closely with ongoing consultations pre- and post-election to influence the new Government’s position on ‘equitable partnerships’ (including a CEO-level roundtable with the Shadow

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Development Minister and, post-election, a high-level meeting to influence the ongoing ‘Development Review’ to focus on locally led development. Post-election, we also presented directly at an Away Day of the FCDO Open Societies Directorate to inform their perspective on locally led partnerships and share findings from our Transforming Partnerships guide.

• Continuing to deliver proactive advocacy strategies with our partners in DR Congo and Afghanistan, and creating a new strategy for Sudan. This included delivering two online workshops in early and late 2024 to share partner research with UN stakeholders interested in DRC, in particular MONUSCO, organising for one of our DRC partners to attend a UN peacebuilding event in December. Our advocacy on Afghanistan increased throughout 2024, including supporting our partner to engage directly with policymakers including direct support to a UN CSW event on gender apartheid.

• Supporting partners’ advocacy priorities and advocating for increased attention to ongoing atrocities in Sudan, DRC, Gaza and other emerging areas of crisis . In 2024 we officially became a member of Crisis Action, supporting its campaign calls on Palestine and have signed up to a wide range of letters, shared statements from Peace Direct calling for an end to violence, and supported public statements and campaigns including a widely shared Oxfam letter calling for a ceasefire and an end to arms sales.

• Supporting the co-creators of the Peace Starts Here campaign to attend events to advocate for better support and inclusion of local peacebuilders . Co-creator Lida Minasayen, a local peacebuilder from Armenia, presented the Peace Starts Here Campaign at the Countering violent conflict and polarisation conference in Belfast. Co-creators Diana Ishaqat from Jordan and Anna Ferreira from Venezuela joined the Alliance for Peacebuilding’s Locally-led Peacebuilding community of support for an event on ‘Eliminating and mitigating how donor and INGO practices potentially harm local peacebuilders’. Co-creators Le Sen from Cambodia and Diana Ishaqat attended the ICAN forum in Albania to present the campaign. The theme was ‘Peacebuilding in a Time of Pessimism’. Finally, co-creator Luis attended PeaceCon 2024 and facilitated a session on ‘Reframing Peacebuilding Narratives’ .

• Publishing a Local Conflict Analysis report with partners in eastern DRC following a series of participatory action research workshops involving a wide range of participants from across Beni to collectively identify potential pilot initiatives to address local conflict issues. The Local Conflict Analysis report was presented by partners during a closed-door online roundtable organised by Peace Direct with representatives in New York and DRC of

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different United Nations (UN) agencies and international NGOs, to inform the renewal of the mandate of MONUSCO in December 2024.

• Collaborating with the other advocacy networks to run global, regional and national level consultations and engagement on USAID’s ‘localisation’ policies . This supported USAID’s ongoing efforts to localise their operations along principles that are aligned with Peace Direct's vision, and to support USAID's ambition to expand its network of trusted and legitimate local and national civil society organisations.

• Working with Bond and The Advocacy Team to launch a set of practical resources to decolonise policy and advocacy approaches . Consultations were held with a mix of Global South representatives and those from within the UK INGO sector. This culminated in the publication of This is the Work; the first resource in the UK/Europe that provides guidance to policy and advocacy staff on how to conduct their work through a decolonial lens. Launched in October 2024, it has already generated a lot of positive feedback from stakeholders across the sector. We will be undertaking further promotion and outreach in the coming year to help embed this in UK INGO policy circles, including a planned event, including further collaboration with Bond.

• Advocating for change among UK INGOs. In early 2024, we helped feed into Bond’s “sector manifesto”, launched in March 2024, which focused on practical steps the future UK government should take in their development agenda. This included recommendations for local engagement, locally-led development (LLD), equitable partnerships and anti-racism.

• Producing, in direct collaboration with partners and other Global South civil society organisation, a guidance note on how to organise international events and convenings for international NGOs, donors and bilateral development agencies to use to host more inclusive events on the locally-led development agenda. The guidance note was disseminated widely, in five languages. The guidance will inform ‘Peace Connect’, our upcoming event in Nairobi in October 2025. The learning from Peace Connect will help the guidance note to evolve, and support our wider influencing and advocacy efforts to ensure voices in the Global South are better included in international dialogues, conferences and convenings about peacebuilding, development and humanitarian support.

• Establishing a Local Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Reference Group made up of peacebuilding and MEL practitioners who are actively engaged in shifting power and committed to decolonising MEL practices. The Group is working with Peace Direct’s MEL team to develop a locally led MEL practice guide and related resources that Peace Direct will

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publish in 2025 as part of our work to influence policy and practice in favour of local actors.

• Producing a six-part podcast series, The Problem with Partnerships , in order to propel conversation on decolonisation into action, and raise awareness of the need for better partnership practices across a wider audience in the international development, humanitarian support and peacebuilding sectors. Each episode featured speakers from the Global South, and focused on key thematic areas relating to the challenges of decolonising partnerships: neocolonial attitudes, internalised oppression, lack of trust and flexibility, focusing on intentions instead of action, and the practical challenges of becoming more equitable. We produced several action packs to accompany podcast episodes, which articulated key messages from the episodes alongside practical recommendations to support listeners to take action. In the first six months, the podcast had been listened to by almost 2,000 people – almost double the number we reached with a 2023 PDF report on partnerships in the same time frame – demonstrating our success in reaching wider audiences through this format.

• Drafting a pilot Funder Report Card in collaboration with CIVICUS, UNOY and MCLD focused on locally led funding practices. Towards the end of 2024, the report card was reviewed by a small focus group of Global South practitioners. Information about this tool and its co-creation process was also posted to our website. A draft in French, English and Spanish will be made available in early 2025 for open feedback, alongside two online consultation sessions. Launch of the final tool is expected to take place in late 2025.

Strategic Goal 3: Peace Direct will generate mass support for locally led peacebuilding.

To achieve our mission, we need to make the value of local peacebuilding more visible to the public and raise high-quality funding. We work to achieve this strategic goal by:

• 1) inspiring and educating at least 1 million people per year through our public communications who will watch, read or hear about local people’s efforts to stop violence and build sustainable peace;

• 2) deepening our engagement with supporters, with at least 10,000 people per year taking action for us, including - but not limited to - donating, fundraising and awareness raising;

• 3) mobilising more quality resources for local peacebuilders globally, of which at least 50% raised by Peace Direct is secured in the form of unrestricted and/or flexible funding;

• 4) raising the profile of local peacebuilders through innovative campaigns and narrative change work.

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We have seen mixed progress against this goal this year . We were able to raise less unrestricted funding in 2024, in line with the downturn in public giving since the Covid-19 pandemic. However, we were able to increase our supporter base, growing our email list by 10% to 33,000. We also supported locally led campaigning, tested new approaches, and conducted research to ground our brand awareness activities in data. We have redeveloped our approaches to better generate mass support in future, including rethinking our fundraising approach to shift from quarterly appeals to action-oriented and responsive movement building, reacting quickly to global events that our supporters care about and giving them tangible actions to take, such as sharing a message with a local peacebuilder or donating in response to a particular event.

We did not complete our planned activity to develop a formalised approach to accompanying our local partners with communications and fundraising support long-term. While we didn’t formalise our approach, we worked closely with a partner on a successful co-appeal and gave ad-hoc support to others as needed. We have successfully learnt from our experiences in 2024 and have changed how we approach our co-appeals and content creation as a result in 2025.

Highlights of our work in 2024 include:

• Continuing our work with partners to create co-owned content, strategies and appeals , including delivering our second public engagement co-appeal . We worked with our partner, Envision Women's Trust Zimbabwe, to raise vital funds and awareness for Women Peace Champions in rural Zimbabwe. The appeal was entirely co-created and coowned, with proceeds shared equally between Envision Zimbabwe and Peace Direct. The appeal raised almost £4,200 and raised awareness for Women Peace Champions amongst thousands of public supporters. Through the process of creating collaborative fundraising appeals, we are learning how best we can decolonise our practice and provide accompaniment to local partners.

• Supporting the launch for the Peace Starts Here campaign , which was co-created and owned by ten local peacebuilders from around the world. The five-point manifesto developed by the co-creators informed our communications and influencing activities, including our election-related communications. We launched ‘The Real Stories of Peace’, an online gallery showcasing peacebuilders around the world, culminating in an in-person event in London at St Ethelburga’s Centre for Peace and Reconciliation.

• Strengthening and diversifying our online supporter base via our dedicated Digital Engagement Strategy. Including :

• Optimising our proven approach to Lead-Generation, piloting fresh creatives, channels and technologies to further streamline our users’ experience.

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• Increasing the frequency, relevancy and interactivity of our regular communications − including emails, social media and website content −to better amplify the voices and perspectives of local peacebuilders.

• o Expanding the size and scope of Peace Direct Store – generating more than 800 contactable leads and 1000+ unit sales across 2024.

• Developing and launching our Community Engagement Strategy, to build awareness and support for Peace Direct with new and existing audiences who wish to take action or fundraise for us. We produced 3 resource packs to engage individuals, community groups and challenge fundraisers in their efforts to support Peace Direct, and ran concurrent social media adverts to encourage community groups to support Peace Direct.

• Improving our understanding of current public perceptions of local peacebuilding through brand and cause awareness research, to better inform our approach to public communications and engagement. 1,000 respondents were asked about their knowledge of Peace Direct as well as their views on the work we do and their understanding of who currently holds power when it comes to building peace, as well as who they believe should have the power to build peace. This research also informed subsequent efforts in early 2025 to refine our website content and our overall value proposition to make Peace Direct’s mission more accessible and emotionally engaging for our public audiences.

Strategic Goal 4: Peace Direct will be a strong, dynamic, inclusive organisation better equipped to deliver our mission.

Having skilled and motivated staff, as well as strong systems, processes and an inclusive work culture ensure that we are better able to deliver high-quality work in support of local peacebuilders worldwide. We aim to achieve this goal by:

• 1) integrating diversity, equity, inclusion and anti-racism into everything that we do, from our governance and work culture, to our policies, procedures, and operations;

• 2) embedding learning and reflection across the organisation so that we are constantly improving our practice;

• 3) supporting all staff and interns so that they are valued, skilled and inspired to excel in a healthy work environment;

• 4) developing strong finance, HR, knowledge management and IT systems and processes integrated across all teams;

• 5) strengthening our governance structures and ways of working to support greater integration, diversity and impact;

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• 6) exploring and piloting ways for Peace Direct to transform itself in line with our values and ambitions for decolonising the sector.

We measure our progress against this goal based on the alignment of our staff resources and systems with the ambitions of our strategy, the consistency with which our staff are able to benefit from positive and inclusive policies, the integration of systems across teams, and external assessments of our approaches.

We have made significant progress against this goal. We conducted a major consultative and analytical process to develop a new guiding strategy, landing on a much more cross-organisational approach to objectives in order to ensure we are better equipped to deliver them. We improved our organisation-wide approach to shared systems and also established and registered our Dutch entity, which will ensure we are better equipped to advocate to EU policymakers.

Highlights of our work in 2024 include:

• Signing up to the government’s Disability Confident Scheme. To become a more inclusive employer, we signed up to the Disability Confident Scheme and have become a Level 1 employer: Disability Confident Committed. This step enables us to attract, recruit, and retain talented individuals with disabilities, thereby broadening our candidate pool and reinforcing our commitment to creating a workplace that values equity, diversity, and opportunity.

• Continuing to diversify bank and cash transfer mechanisms. We have been expanding our financial transfer mechanisms to ensure greater accessibility, security, and efficiency. We now have several financial institution partners with whom we have been building closer working relationships. By offering a wider range of banking and cash transfer options, we have enhanced our ability to reach partners and beneficiaries in diverse contexts, particularly in high-risk or remote areas where traditional systems may be limited or unavailable.

• Developing our organisational strategy for 2025 onwards , which will guide our work from January 2025 and last for 10 years. We completed a comprehensive and participatory consultation and reflection process in the summer, built out the framework for new strategic goals in the second half of the year. These were validated by our staff, trustees and peacebuilding partners in November and adopted at our end of year board of trustees meeting on 16[th] December. The new strategy aims to maintain our thought leadership in the decolonising area, while making space for others to step forward and become allies in this change agenda. We received encouraging feedback and validation from our local partners in response to our draft strategic goals, for example: “Peace Direct's thinking is refreshing, and I

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strongly believe this will go a long way in transforming the peacebuilding sector and facilitating effective interventions.”

• Finalising the formal establishment of a new affiliate entity in the Netherlands in December 2024, following the recruitment of Dutch board members and Supervisory board members and holding a first board meeting at the end of November. The primary aim of this entity is to strengthen our advocacy efforts across Europe. The staff presence is small, with one NL Representative based in The Hague.

• Undertaking a governance review. In Q4 of 2024, Peace Direct commissioned an external governance review. This will help the Board and Management strengthen our governance as we launch our new strategy, as well as explore how governance can take into account is with the aim of engaging in a wider reaching review of our governance structures in 2025, to better understand how we could adapt governance structures and practices to better represent our objective of tackling structural and systemic racism in the sector. These considerations would take account of Peace Direct’s active participation of initiatives that aim to reimagine the role of the INGO and the wider sector. This is part of wider efforts to decolonise Peace Direct as an organisation.

• Continuing to actively invest in staff learning and development . Peace Direct continues to prioritise investing in staff learning and development. All staff continue to use their Fridays for learning and development and wellbeing time, and we continue to invest in training opportunities at individual and cross-organisational level. This includes first aid training, field resilience and mental health, cyber security, and non-violent communication. We have also signed up to a three-year accreditation programme with Investors In People to improve management, development and leadership skills. In early 2025 we were awarded the Silver Investors in People accreditation and received guidance on areas for improvement. A pay progression and salary structure review has also been initiated, and we are actively in the accreditation process of being registered as a National Living Wage employer.

• Improving our HR and IT systems to keep pace with changes in the organisation. In particular, we have rolled out new team collaboration tools (Asana), are piloting AI tools to explore how we can improve efficiency (e.g. for meeting notes), supported an overhaul of our cloud-based file management system (SharePoint), and set up improved internal communication processes. We have also updated our internal policies in line with DEI considerations, and we are exploring ways of embedding net-zero policies and practice across the organisation.

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Plans for 2025

An exciting highlight of 2024 was the development of our new organisational strategy for 2025-2035.

The strategy was developed through a consultative process involving inputs and feedback from a wide range of people directly involved in, connected to or familiar with Peace Direct’s work: staff, trustees, peacebuilding partners, civil society and peacebuilding networks, philanthropic and institutional funders, thought leaders in the sector. We complemented these consultations with analyses of the external environment, externally facilitated exercises in futures thinking and foresight, and an external evaluation of our advocacy efforts over the past 5 years.

Our strategy was approved by Peace Direct’s board of Trustees in December 2024, and is arranged into four goals: Power, Voice, Visibility and Resilience/Adaptability. Each goal is described as an outcome statement, so that we are clear what change we expect to see after ten years if we are successful.

These four goals will frame our work over the next ten years, while the strategic objectives within them will reflect our five-year ambition.

Our plans for 2025 are listed below in accordance with our four new goals.

Goal 1: POWER: Power in the peacebuilding and wider system shifts to local actors.

• Host a global convening for local peacebuilders and their allies in Nairobi, Kenya.

• Undertake and publish research into flexible funding models

• Continue changing mindsets on decolonisation through reports and advocacy, including publishing a web resource on decolonising philanthropy

• Co-design and support for country advocacy plans with local peacebuilders in Sudan, DRC, Mali, Afghanistan

• Supporting decolonising conversations created and led by Global South actors

• Organise online convenings for exchanges between peacebuilders on priority topics

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Goal 2: VOICE: The voices of local peacebuilders will be consistently heard and respected in the corridors of power, across the sector and among their own communities, supported by a strong consistent voice from Peace Direct.

• In the US/UN, find allies to keep bridging local voices with policymakers

• Continue to amplify peacebuilder voices and messages through Peace Insight, the Peace Starts Here campaign, and our digital marketing

• Disseminate partner-led research on conflict prevention in Beni, E DRC

• Support publication and dissemination of research report on Syria

• Define new research priorities with peacebuilding partners and support local research capacity

• Revisit our global advocacy strategy in light of the new organisational strategy

• Refine our communications values, language and messages to ensure they resonate with all audiences.

GOAL 3: VISIBILITY: Local peacebuilders, Peace Direct and peacebuilding as an issue will have greater visibility and global understanding, to generate increased support for this work.

• Establish trusted media contacts & a strategy to galvanise coverage of Peace Direct and peacebuilders through Peace Connect

• Define how we can better accompany partners to raise their own visibility

• Provide Peace Starts Here microgrants and peer support

• Build an equitable partner-led content pipeline

• Continue to deliver our co-appeal fundraising model

• Pilot Lead Generation and merchandise in the US

• Undertake updated network and influencing mapping to identify most relevant spaces for us to promote our mission and change agenda

• Increase visibility of decolonisation agenda across audiences and build momentum for action

• Share learnings of our work with the sector, including decolonised approach to MEL and our approach to partnerships

• Use benchmarking to assess effectiveness of our work to raise visibility

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• Redevelop our website into an accessible guide to Peace Direct & partner work through clearer and more effective content that demonstrates impact

Goal 4: RESILIENCE AND ADAPTABILITY: Local peacebuilders and Peace Direct are more effective and resilient, able to adapt to adversity and have greater collective agency to contribute to sustainable peace.

• Allocate flexible grants to support local peacebuilding efforts and respond to emerging needs/crises

• Complete baseline research for our Local First programme and co-design country programming in E DRC, Mali, Afghanistan and Sudan, allocating initial grants

• Establish a partnership with a Palestinian civil society network

• Publish evaluation report on Local Action Fund showcasing work in 5 countries

• Expand referrals and support to peacebuilders for security, safety and wellbeing needs

• Invest in upgrading our peace tech platforms and update a digital security protocol to enhance and embed information security practices within the organisation and among partners

• Undertake a mini re-structure to ensure that staffing structure reflects needs emerging from new strategy

• Undertake a baseline assessment of gender inclusion in Peace Direct and our work

• Roll out updated learning questions and framework aligned with new strategic goals

• Achieve an increase in regular giving and continue raising unrestricted funds from individuals

• Provide support to partners on live projects and programmes, including the Local Action Fund and Local First, to strengthen and resource and strengthen local civil society and peacebuilding efforts

• Review Peace Direct’s governance structures and processes

• Develop a programme of microgrants and peer-to-peer support in the final year of the Peace Starts Here campaign

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Recognition and thanks

As always, we owe a debt of gratitude first to our partners, who are working on the frontlines of conflict, at great personal risk, to stop violence and build peace. We continue to be inspired by their bravery and are honoured to be working with them. As in previous years, we could not have achieved our goals without the support of a range of donors and supporters.

We are grateful for the financial support from a number of governmental institutions, including Global Affairs Canada, EU Delegation to the Syrian Arab Republic and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

We are very grateful to Trusts and Foundations that provided flexible and generous multi-year funding for our work, including Humanity United, Robert Bosch Stiftung, People’s Postcode Lottery and Wellspring Philanthropic Fund. These funders in particular demonstrated the type of support and flexibility that we hope will become commonplace across the philanthropic sector.

We are also grateful to the Trusts, Foundations and other bodies that provided project funding of more than £10,000 per year, including the Alan & Nesta Ferguson Charitable Trust, Blandford Lake Trust, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, Jusaca Trust, Network for Social Change, Polden Puckham Charitable Foundation, Sir James Reckitt Charitable Trust, and Sulney Fields Trust, as well as our funders who wish to remain anonymous. Many other trusts and foundations provided us with grants of up to £10,000 and we are grateful for their support.

We are also very thankful to the hundreds of people who continue to support Peace Direct with gifts of all sizes. We are very grateful for their belief in what we do. Their generosity is so important to us in order to help us respond quickly and flexibly to the needs of our local partners, and to keep Peace Direct running in an efficient and sustainable way. We are especially grateful to those who remembered Peace Direct with gifts in their wills and appreciate their kind support in this very special way.

As in previous years, we would like to thank Google for providing us with free advertising, which helps drive traffic to our website.

Last but not least, we would like to thank the staff and Board of Peace Direct, who have dedicated significant time and effort to making sure that the organisation has long-lasting and positive impact for those living in conflict-affected areas.

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Structure, governance and management

The Charity started as a Trust in 2004. Today its operations are governed by its Memorandum and Articles of Association dated 20 December 2007 (as amended December 2008). Peace Direct is registered under the Companies Act 2006 as a company limited by guarantee and not having share capital. The company was registered as a charity on 18 March 2009 under registration number 1123241.

The charity complies fully with both the letter and spirit of the Data Protection Act 1998 and the General Data Protection Regulation 2018, which was effective from 25 May 2018.

Recruitment and appointment of Trustees

The Trustees in office in 2024 are set out on page 1. We actively seek out Trustees with specific skill sets through advertising, recommendations and other sources. New Trustees are approved by the whole Board. Trustees must be at least 18 years of age. The Trustees may from time to time appoint a person to fill a vacancy or act as an additional Trustee. This appointment is subject to approval of the Trustees at the next quorate Trustee meeting.

Organisation

The Board meets quarterly. Its role is one of governance and strategic oversight. It approves the budget, operational and strategic plans, and appoints the Chair and Chief Executive.

The Board has a Finance Sub-committee and a Safeguarding lead that operate under agreed terms of reference, oversee key aspects of Peace Direct activity and report back to the full Board. Trustees can also attend “in-weeks” which provide all staff and Trustees the opportunity to focus on strategy, planning and training sessions.

The Board primarily contributes to the governance and good management of Peace Direct through regular board and committee meetings. The day to day running of the charity is managed by the Chief Executive, with decisions taken and limits to authority governed by Peace Direct's delegated authority framework.

Trustee induction and training

Induction is tailored to the individual requirements of Trustees, but in all cases involves a review of the annual and strategic plan, and review of the minutes of previous Board meetings.

Related parties

Peace Direct has no formal links with other organisations, other than our affiliates in the United States and the Netherlands, but works closely with many in the fields of peacebuilding, human rights and accountability, both in the UK and overseas.

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‑ Our affiliate in the United States, Peace Direct Inc, is an independent non profit organisation that operates under licence from Peace Direct. There is close collaboration between the two organisations to further Peace Direct’s charitable objects, including fundraising for programmes, advocacy to the US government and to the UN, research and public education. In 2024, £253,093 was transferred to Peace Direct Inc to support activities in line with our organisational strategy.

Our affiliate in the Netherlands is Stichting Peace Direct NL incorporated on 9th Dec 2024.

No trustees were re-imbursed for expenses during the period (2023 £nil). No trustee received payments for services rendered from the charity during the year. (2023: £740 for a contribution to a publication)

Risk management

The Trustees confirm that they are satisfied that adequate control actions and monitoring processes are in place to mitigate the charity’s exposure to major risks. These major risks which the Charity faces have been identified as:

• Operational – overseas and in UK

• Reputational

• Financial

• Human Resources

• Governance

Appropriate actions to mitigate against the potential impact of each of these risk categories are considered on an on-going basis as part of the Risk Management process.

They are summarised as follows:

Operational: The risk of injury or death to employees and consultants whilst overseas is minimised through the completion of a risk assessment for each trip, monitoring travel advice from FCDO and by seeking information from other agencies. The failure to exercise due care and diligence with respect to the Charity’s IT systems, and the consequential loss and compromise of data, is countered through ownership of the IT system, staff training and the regular review of data security.

Reputational: The Board of Trustees determines the major issues that affect the Charity’s public image – for example whether to endorse campaigns promoted by other organisations, whether to engage in forms of fundraising that might be deemed sensitive, and any issues with significant legal implications. The potential risk from partners misreporting on projects is addressed by undertaking a comprehensive assessment of potential partners followed by regular monitoring.

Financial: A possible fall in unrestricted reserves resulting from shortfalls in income, failure to secure co-financing or unanticipated expenditure would be

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foreseen through the receipt of regular financial reports and accurate and prompt reforecasting allowing for timely reductions in the budget, additional fundraising and the encouragement of earlier receipt of pledges from major donors. Foreign exchange losses are monitored and may be minimised through offset against foreign exchange gains, forward purchasing, capping of costs in sterling as well as modifications to project budgets if agreed by the donor. Alternative funders may also be approached to make up for any budget shortfall caused by exchange rate losses.

Funding is diversified as much as possible so as to minimise the effect of specific funding applications being unsuccessful. In addition, there is continuing investment in potential new fundraising streams and products. If speculative income fails to materialise, this is offset by cancelling corresponding expenditure. Should donors change their modus operandi to funding partners directly, then the charity would seek contributions for value added services provided directly to the partner. Peace Direct is also considering a consultancy model to generate income from commercial contracts.

Human Resources: The disruption to the Charity’s work, risk to programme implementation and to key external relationships due to the unavailability of key staff member(s) owing to illness, resignation, etc, is addressed through the sharing of knowledge amongst the Senior Leadership Team and the comprehensive documentation of information and systems. Field visits also contribute to key partnership relations.

Governance: The Board of Trustees is responsible for the Governance of the Charity. It meets quarterly and approves the budget, operational and strategic plans, appoints the Chair and Chief Executive, and approves overall policy in relation to staff employment. It also ensures good governance through the operation of the Finance sub-committee. The charity has clear policies on conflicts of interest, and in addition all Trustees sign a code of conduct. All policies have recently been subjected to extensive review and updating. In addition, a governance review was commissioned to assess the governance ‘health’ of the organisation, the findings of which are being implemented in 2025.

The recruitment, appointment, induction and training of Trustees is detailed under the Structure, Governance and Management section of this report. In addition, procedures are in place to ensure compliance with the Health and Safety of staff, volunteers, partners and third parties working on the charity’s programmes. Internal control risks are minimised by the implementation of financial and other procedures. The charity adheres to the highest ethical levels in its fundraising policies and activities and complies with best practice and generally accepted standards.

Internal controls

The Trustees confirm that internal control procedures are in place in order to provide reasonable assurance against material misstatement or loss. They include:

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• Comprehensive financial policies and procedures.

• Internal audit of cash handling and other financial procedures.

• Comprehensive system of annual budgets, approved by the Trustees, and financial reporting of actuals against budget.

• Regular forecasting of predicted income and cashflow.

• Regular monitoring of reserves policy.

• Annual review of the charity’s risk register.

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Financial review

Peace Direct’s income in 2024 was £5,286,752 which represents a 16.5% increase compared to 2023 £4,535,269. This was largely a result of the increase in restricted income as outlined below.

Donations from Individuals remain at the same level as 2023, legacy income which by its nature is variable, is just over half that of 2023 at £91,242 (2023 £170,566). Institutional income was £1,565,923 compared to 2023 £473,294.

This is a result of the organisation securing an eight-year grant from Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs of which £1,079,495 was received during 2024.

Income from Trusts and Foundations remain consistent with the previous year at £2,758,181 (2023 £2,753,380)

In 2024 Peace Direct decided to change the methodology for recognising the costs of raising funds. In the accounts for 2023 cost of raising funds was stated as £338,892, this has been restated to £268,210 reflecting a recognition of the reduction in time apportionment to cost of raising funds of fundraising and communications staff.

Cost of raising funds remains consistent for 2024 £292,670 (2023 £268,210 restated from £338,892).

In addition, in 2024 Peace Direct have changed the analysis of expenditure on charitable activities. Previously the analysis was shown as International Programmes (including Advocacy) and separately Research. The analysis is now shown as International Programmes & Research and separately Advocacy. This provides a more meaningful representation of the activities of the organisation.

Expenditure on charitable activities rose by 8.26% to £4,134,355 in 2024 (2023 £3,818,922 restated) reflecting the additional grant from the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the continuation of programme activities.

The unrestricted reserve as at 31[st] December 2024 was £860,582 (2023 £709,619). Peace Direct has set aside designated reserves, designated specifically for programmatic purposes, future commitments, general operating costs and partners core support. Designated reserves as at 31[st] December 2024 were £550,652 (2023: £763,816).

Restricted reserves increased to £2,397,794 (2023: £1,434,147) reflecting the timing difference between receiving income and this being spent implementing projects, particularly in respect of the initial funding received from Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs whilst programme implementation took effect.

Staffing costs increased for the year to £1,649,080 (2023: £1,358,810). This reflects an increase in staff numbers - the average actual staff numbers increased to 31 (2023: 25) and the awarding of increases in remuneration in line with the benchmarking policy within which the market pay comparison reflected the costs of living crisis.

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Principal funding sources

The sources of funding showed a movement toward Grants from Institutions reflecting the effect of the grant from the Dutch ministry of Foreign Affairs:

• individual donations £257,227 4.8% (2023 £329,499 = 7.3%)

• trust and foundation grants £3,385,608 64.0% (2023 £3,612,518 80.4%)

• institutional income made up £1,565,923 29.6% (2023 £473,294 10.4%)

• other sources of income making up the remaining 1.5% (2023 1.9%)

As part of our risk management strategy, Peace Direct strives to have a balance of funding sources and not become overly reliant on one funder or on funding linked to one specific partner.

Investment powers and policy

The Trust Deed authorises the Trustees to make and hold investments using the general funds of the charity. Due to cash flow demands and potential movements in exchange rates during the year, careful consideration is given to investing funds in longer term investment products.

However, since late 2023, the organisation has taken advantage of deposit accounts so that the bank interest in 2024 was £49,276 (2023 £10,187)

Reserves policy

The Charity requires free reserves in order to:

• cover gaps between incurring expenditure and receiving the corresponding grants for certain projects.

• maintain services until new income streams can be found if funding is withdrawn or if other income targets are not reached.

• pay for unforeseen expenditure.

• innovate and seed fund new projects and undertake research.

The Trustees consider three month’s free reserves as the minimum level that should be maintained, with six month’s operating costs as the target. At 31 December 2024 the value of free reserves £860,582 were equivalent to 5.24 months operating expenditure (2023: 4.7 months). This calculation is based on the total of unrestricted expenditure in the year before the recovery of salary and overhead contributions from restricted grants.

The effective management of reserves will be achieved, inter alia, by efficient financial and operational management, effective cost control, the pursuit of additional and diverse sources of funding and the insistence on the financial viability of all activities undertaken by the Charity.

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Policy on grant-making

Peace Direct seeks to identify local organisations that are committed to stopping violence and building sustainable peace in their communities. In most cases, Peace Direct seeks out groups to support through long-term partnerships and therefore does not respond to unsolicited requests for funding. Grants made overseas are monitored to ensure that funds are spent on charitable purposes and that strict principles of governance are met.

Fundraising policy

Our fundraising activities focus on raising money to support the work of our peacebuilding partners around the world, and related projects, as well as to ensure the sustainable running of the organisation.

We raise funds from trusts, foundations and other donor institutions, individual supporters, community fundraising, events and companies. We have also been grateful to receive the support of those who have remembered Peace Direct with gifts in their wills.

We adhere to the guidance as provided by the Institute of Fundraising, and we are paid members of the Fundraising Regulator. In 2024 we received no complaints about our fundraising activity, either directly or via a third party, nor any reports on the Fundraising Preference Service.

We provide clear and simple ways for supporters to opt-out of our fundraising communications at any time. Donor numbers are growing but remain small enough for us to be able to easily track and identify any unusual behaviour, so we can act appropriately if we have reason to believe a vulnerable person is donating to us. Should anyone under 18 wish to donate to or fundraise for Peace Direct, we will always seek consent from a parent or legal guardian.

In 2024 Peace Direct did not engage any third parties for fundraising.

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Statement of Directors’ and Trustees’ responsibilities

The Trustees (who are also Directors of Peace Direct for the purposes of Company law) are responsible for preparing the Annual Report and the financial statements in accordance with applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice).

Company law requires the Directors to prepare financial statements for each financial year. Under that law the Directors have elected to prepare the financial statements in accordance with United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice (United Kingdom Accounting Standards and applicable law). Under Company law the Directors must not approve the financial statements unless they are satisfied that they give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the company and of its income and expenditure for that period. In preparing these financial statements, the Directors are required to:

• Select suitable accounting policies and then apply them consistently.

• Observe the methods and principles in the Charities SORP.

• Make judgements and estimates that are reasonable and prudent.

• State whether applicable UK Accounting Standards have been followed, subject to any material departures disclosed and explained in the financial statements.

• Prepare the financial statements on the going concern basis unless it is inappropriate to presume that the charitable company will continue in business.

The Directors are responsible for keeping adequate accounting records that are sufficient to show and explain the company’s transactions and disclose with reasonable accuracy at any time the financial position of the company and enable them to ensure that the financial statements comply with the Companies Act 2006. They are also responsible for safeguarding the assets of the company and hence for taking reasonable steps for the prevention and detection of fraud and other irregularities.

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Statement of disclosure to auditors

So far as the Directors are aware, there is no relevant audit information of which the company’s auditors are unaware. Additionally, the Directors have taken all the necessary steps that they ought to have taken as directors in order to make themselves aware of any relevant audit information and to establish that the charity’s auditors are aware of that information.

These accounts are prepared in accordance with the special provisions of Part 15 of the Companies Act 2006 relating to small entities.

For and on behalf of the Trustees

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Anthony Smith

Chair of Trustees

26 June 2025

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Independent auditor’s report to the members of Peace Direct

Opinion

We have audited the financial statements of Peace Direct (the ‘charitable company’) for the year ended 31 December 2024 which comprise the statement of financial activities, balance sheet, statement of cash flows and notes to the financial statements, including significant accounting policies. The financial reporting framework that has been applied in their preparation is applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards, including FRS 102 The Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and 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 charitable company’s affairs as at 31 December 2024 and of its 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

• 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 Auditor’s responsibilities for the audit of the financial statements section of our report. We are independent of the charitable company in accordance with the ethical requirements that are relevant to our audit of the financial statements in the UK, including the FRC’s Ethical Standard 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 trustees' 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 Peace Direct's ability to continue as a going concern for a period of at least twelve months from when the financial statements are authorised for issue.

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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 trustees’ annual report, other than the financial statements and our auditor’s report thereon. The trustees are responsible for the other information contained within the annual report. Our 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. 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 course of 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 this gives rise to a material misstatement in the financial statements themselves. 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.

Opinions 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 trustees’ annual report for the financial year for which the financial statements are prepared is consistent with the financial statements; and

• The trustees’ annual 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 charitable company and its environment obtained in the course of the audit, we have not identified material misstatements in the trustees’ annual 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, or returns adequate for our audit have not been received from branches not visited by us; or

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

• Certain disclosures of trustees’ remuneration specified by law are not made; or

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

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

Responsibilities of trustees

As explained more fully in the statement of trustees’ responsibilities set out in the trustees’ annual report, the trustees (who are also the directors of the charitable company for the purposes of company law) 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 the trustees 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 charitable company’s ability to continue as a going concern, disclosing, as applicable, matters related to going concern and using the going concern basis of accounting unless the trustees either intend to liquidate the charitable company or to cease operations, or have no realistic alternative but to do so.

Auditor’s 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 auditor’s 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 extent to which our procedures are capable of detecting irregularities, including fraud are set out below.

Capability of the audit in detecting irregularities

In identifying and assessing risks of material misstatement in respect of irregularities, including fraud and non-compliance with laws and regulations, our procedures included the following:

• We enquired of management, which included obtaining and reviewing supporting documentation, concerning the charity’s policies and procedures relating to:

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

• Detecting and responding to the risks of fraud and whether they have knowledge of any actual, suspected, or alleged fraud;

• The internal controls established to mitigate risks related to fraud or noncompliance with laws and regulations.

• We inspected the minutes of meetings of those charged with governance.

• We obtained an understanding of the legal and regulatory framework that the charity operates in, focusing on those laws and regulations that had a material effect on the financial statements or that had a fundamental effect on the operations of the charity from our professional and sector experience.

• We communicated applicable laws and regulations throughout the audit team and remained alert to any indications of non-compliance throughout the audit.

• We reviewed any reports made to regulators.

• We reviewed the financial statement disclosures and tested these to supporting documentation to assess compliance with applicable laws and regulations.

• We performed analytical procedures to identify any unusual or unexpected relationships that may indicate risks of material misstatement due to fraud.

• In addressing the risk of fraud through management override of controls, we tested the appropriateness of journal entries and other adjustments, assessed whether the judgements made in making accounting estimates are indicative of a potential bias and tested significant transactions that are unusual or those outside the normal course of business.

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. This risk increases the more that compliance with a law or regulation is removed from the events and transactions reflected in the financial statements, as we will be less likely to become aware of instances of non-compliance. The risk is also greater regarding irregularities occurring due to fraud rather than error, as fraud involves intentional concealment, forgery, collusion, omission or misrepresentation.

A further description of our responsibilities is available on the Financial Reporting Council’s website at: www.frc.org.uk/auditorsresponsibilities . This description forms part of our auditor’s report.

Use of our report

This report is made solely to the charitable company's 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 charitable company's members those

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matters we are required to state to them in an auditor’s 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 charitable company and the charitable company's members as a body, for our audit work, for this report, or for the opinions we have formed.

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Noelia Serrano (Senior statutory auditor)

2 July 2025

for and on behalf of Sayer Vincent LLP, Statutory Auditor

110 Golden Lane, LONDON, EC1Y 0TG

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PEACE DIRECT

FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FOR YEAR ENDED 31 December 2024

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Peace Direct

STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL ACTIVITIES FOR YEAR ENDED 31 December 2024

Notes INCOME FROM Donations 2 Charitable Activities 3 International Programmes & Research Advocacy Other Income TOTAL INCOME EXPENDITURE ON Raising Funds 4 Charitable Activities 4 International Programmes & Research Advocacy TOTAL EXPENDITURE Net Surplus From Operations Net Unrealised Exchange gains/ (losses) Net Surplus Before Transfers Transfers Between Funds 11 Net Surplus Funds Brought Forward Funds Carried Forward 11	Unrestricted Funds £ 373,125 2,492 - 52,295 427,912 292,670 () 109,329 401,999 25,913 41,720 67,633 83,330 150,963 709,619 860,582	Restricted Funds £ 4,266,566 - 4,266,566 - 3,530,116 19,081 3,549,197 717,368 - 717,368 246,279 963,647 1,434,147 2,397,794	Designated Funds £ 592,274 - 592,274 - 466,893 8,936 475,829 116,445 - 116,445 (329,608) (213,163) 763,816 550,652	Total 2024 £ 373,125 4,861,332 - 52,295 5,286,752 292,670 3,997,009 137,346 4,427,025 859,727 41,720 901,447 - 901,446 2,907,583 3,809,029	Unrestricted Funds £ 435,591 44,262 10,187 490,040 268,210 - 137,530 87,884 493,625 (3,584) (85,291) (88,875) 55,787 (33,088) 742,707 709,619	Restricted Funds £ 3,678 3,323,317 - 3,326,995 - 2,876,190 6,421 2,882,611 444,384 - 444,384 (14,714) 429,670 1,004,477 1,434,147	Designated Funds £ - 718,234 - 718,234 - 710,890 6 710,897 7,337 - 7,337 (41,073) (33,735) 797,552 763,816	Total 2023 Restated £ 439,269 4,085,813 10,187*
								4,535,269
								268,210 3,724,611 94,311
								4,087,132
								448,137 (85,291)
								362,846
								-
								362,847
								2,544,736
								2,907,583

There were no recognised gains or losses for the above two financial periods other than those included in the Statement of Financial Activities. All gains and losses arising in the year have been included in the Statement of Financial Activivies and relate to continuing activities * please see note 4 regarding reason for restating 2023 The notes on pages 44 to 58 form part of these accounts.

41

Peace Direct

BALANCE SHEET AS AT 31 DECEMBER 2024

Notes FIXED ASSETS 8 CURRENT ASSETS Debtors 9 Cash at Bank & in Hand CREDITORS Amounts falling due within one year 10 NET CURRENT ASSETS Total Assets Less Current Liabilities NET ASSETS THE FUNDS OF THE CHARITY Unrestricted Income Funds 11 Designated Income Funds 11 Restricted Income Funds 11	£ £ 5,777 182,178 4,133,057 4,315,234 511,982 511,982 3,803,252 3,809,029 3,809,029 860,582 550,652 2,397,794 3,809,029 2024	£ £ 11,285 134,540 3,514,537 3,649,077 752,779 752,779 2,896,298 2,907,583 2,907,583 709,619 763,816 1,434,147 2,907,583 2023	£ £ 11,285 134,540 3,514,537 3,649,077 752,779 752,779 2,896,298 2,907,583 2,907,583 709,619 763,816 1,434,147 2,907,583 2023
			2,907,583
			709,619 763,816 1,434,147
			2,907,583

These financial statements have been prepared in accordance with the provisions applicable to companies subject to the small companies' regime.

These financial statements were approved by the Board of Trustees and authorised for issue on 26th June 2025 and were signed on its behalf by:

………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………… Anthony Smith Mohammad Haider Chair of Trustees Treasurer Company Number 06458464

42

Peace Direct

STATEMENT OF CASH FLOWS AS AT 31 DECEMBER 2024

Notes CASH FLOWS FROM OPERATING ACTIVITES Net cash provided by / (used in) operating activities CASH FLOWS FROM INVESTING ACTIVITIES Purchase of fixed assets Net cash used in investing activities CHANGE IN CASH AND CASH EQUIVALENTS IN THE YEAR CASH AND CASH EQUIVALENTS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE YEAR Change in cash and cash equivalents due to exchange rate movements CASH AND CASH EQUIVALENTS AT THE END OF THE YEAR RECONCILIATION OF NET INCOME / (EXPENDITURE) TO NET CASH FLOW FROM OPERATING ACTIVI Net income for the year Depreciation Increase in debtors Decrease in creditors ANALYSIS OF CASH AND CASH EQUIVALENTS AND NET DEBT Cash at bank and in hand Cash at bank and in hand	2024 £ 580,640 (3,840) (3,840) 576,800 3,514,537 41,720 4,133,057 TIES 2024 £ 859,727 9,348 (47,638) (240,797) 580,640 Balance Cash flows 1/1/2024 £ £ 3,514,537 576,800	2023 £ (32,684) (9,652) (9,652) (42,336) 3,642,164 (85,291) 3,514,537 2023 £ 448,137 8,230 (31,696) (457,356) (32,685) Foreign exchange Balance movements 12/31/2024 £ £ 41,720 4,133,057
	Balance Cash flows 1/1/2023 £ £ 3,642,164 (42,336)	Foreign exchange Balance movements 12/31/2023 £ £ (85,291) 3,514,537

43

Notes to the financial statements

Peace Direct is a public benefit entity, a charity registered in England and Wales (registered charity number 1123241) and a company limited by guarantee (company number 06458464), registered in England.

The registered office and its principal place of business is 1st Floor, Dynamis House, Sycamore Street, Barbican, London EC1Y 0SW.

1.

1.1

Accounting policies

Basis of preparation of accounts

These financial statements have been prepared in accordance with Accounting and Reporting by Charities: Statement of Recommended Practice applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS102) - (Charities SORP (FRS102)), the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102) and the Companies Act 2006.

Peace Direct meets the definition of a public benefit entity under FRS 102. Assets and liabilities are initially recognised at historical cost unless otherwise stated in the relevant accounting policies.

The trustees consider there are no material uncertainties about the charitable company's ability to continue as a going concern.The trustees do not consider there are any sources of estimation uncertainty at the year end that have a significant risk of causing a material adjustment to the carrying value of either assets or liabilities within the next accounting period.

1.2

Income recognition

Voluntary income including donations, legacies and grants that provide unrestricted funding are recognised when entitlement and the amount can be measured with reasonable accuracy. Such income is only deferred when:

• The donor specifies that the grant or donation must only be used in future accounting periods; or

• The donor has imposed conditions which must be met before the charity has unconditional entitlement to it.

Income from charitable activities includes income received where the funds must be applied for specific purposes stipulated by the donor. Grant income included in this category provides funding to support performance activities and is recognised when entitlement and the amount can be measured with reasonable reliability. Income is deferred when

performance-related grants are received in advance of the performance or event to which they relate. Bank interest and investment income are included on a receipts basis.

Income Tax recoverable (Gift Aid) on donations received is included on an accruals basis.

1.3

Volunteers and donated services and facilities

The value of services provided by volunteers is not incorporated into these financial statements. Further details of the contribution made by volunteers can be found in the Trustees’ Annual Report. Where services are provided to the charity as a donation that would normally be purchased from suppliers, this contribution is included in the financial statements at an estimated sum based on the value of the contribution to the charity. The income equivalent is recognised within incoming resources as a donation, and equivalent costs included within resources expended under the relevant cost categories.

1.4

Expenditure

Expenditure is recognised when a liability is incurred, which generally occurs when there is a legal obligation committing the charity to make a transfer of value to a third party.

A liability is considered incurred when the charity has a commitment to make a future payment or provide a service, regardless of when the actual cash flow occurs.

1.5

Cost of Generating Funds

Costs of generating funds are those costs incurred in raising income for the charity.

These include an apportionment of fundraisng and communication staff proprtionate to the time they spend in raising funds. Direct costs are included, being cost codes for acquisition, retention & development, events, product development, data input & management and website hosting costs.

A proprotion of the general support costs are also included based on the staff time percentage deemed to be allocted to raising funds.

1.6

Charitable activities

Charitable activities include expenditure associated with achieving the objectives of the charity and include both the direct costs and support costs relating to these activities.

1.7 Governance costs

Governance costs include costs associated with meeting regulatory and statutory requirements of the charity and include the audit fees and costs linked to the strategic management of the charity. Under the new Charity SORP they are included in Charitable Activities on the face of the Statement of Financial Activities.

1.8 Support costs

Support costs include central functions and have been allocated to activity cost categories on a basis consistent with the use of resources, eg allocating property costs by number of staff, and staff costs by time spent in different areas of work by staff members.

44

1.9 Pension costs

The pension costs charged in the accounts represent the contributions payable by the charity during the period. Pension costs represent contributions paid to a defined contribution scheme on behalf of the charity's employees. The assets of the scheme are held separately from those of the company in an independently administered scheme.

1.10 Funds structure

Unrestricted funds are available for use at the discretion of the Trustees and in furtherance of the general objectives of the charity.

Designated funds are funds which have been set aside by the trustees for future use in specific circumstances.

These funds have not been restricted by the donor and are therefore unrestricted to be used for any charitable purpose. These funds are set aside in anticipation of needs such as foreign exchange losses, supporting advocacy projects or emergency funds for partners. Designated funds can be useful for planning future projects, setting aside funds for specific programs, or managing reserves.

Restricted funds are funds received where their use is subject to donor imposed conditions.

1.11 Grants payable Grants are expensed in the period in which they are paid. This is to say that the expenditure appears in the statement of financial affaires of the organisation when the grant is paid to the partner and or when the expense is incurred by Peace Direct. 1.12 Operating leases Rentals payable under operating leases are charged against income in a straight line basis over the lease term. 1.13 Irrecoverable VAT All resources expended are classified under activity headings that aggregate all costs related to each activity. Irrecoverable VAT is charged to the category of resources expended to which the item it relates to has been charged. 1.14 Taxation The charity is a registered charity and claims exemption from income tax and corporation tax on income and activities arising from its charitable activities. 1.15 Foreign currency exchange gains and losses Monetary assets and liabilities in foreign currencies are translated in to sterling at the ruling rate of exchange at the year end. Transactions in foreign exchange are translated into sterling using the middle rate on the date of the transaction. Exchange differences are taken into account in arriving at the net movement in funds for the year. Unrealised gains on conversion of monetary assets and liabilities denominated in foreign currencies at the year end are credited to a designated reserve to be utilised in offsetting any future foreign currency exchange losses. 1.16 Tangible fixed assets for use by the charity and depreciation. Tangible fixed assets for use by the charity are stated at cost less depreciation. Depreciation is provided at rates calculated to write off the cost or valuation of fixed assets, less their estimated residual value, over their expected useful lives: computer equipment 3 years; fixtures and fittings 4 years. Equipment is capitalised where the purchase price exceeds £1,000. 1.17 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. 1.18 Cash at bank and in hand Cash at bank and in hand includes cash and short term highly liquid investments with a short term maturity of three months or less from the date of acquisition or opening of a deposit or similar account. 1.19 Creditors and Provisions Creditors and provisions are recognised where the charity has 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 are recognised at their settlement amount after allowing for any trade discounts due. Deferred income represents income that has timing restrictions placed upon the use of that income so that it is recognised in a future period.

45

Notes to the accounts For YEAR ENDED 31 December 2024

Peace Direct

2 INCOME FROM DONATIONS Donations from Individuals Proceeds from merchandise Legacies Sub-total Grants Small Grants Blanford Lake Trust Jusaca Trust Sir James Reckitt Charitable Trust Sulney Fields Trust Sub-total Corporate Donated Services Sub-total TOTAL INCOME FROM DONATIONS 3 INCOME FROM CHARITABLE ACTIVITIES INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMMES Grants Received Institutions Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs European Commission European Partnership for Responsible Minerals Global Affairs Canada Guernsey Overseas Aid & Development Commission UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office Sub-total	2024 2024 2024 2024 Unrestricted Restricted Designated Total £ £ £ £ 157,926 - - 157,926 5,060 - - 5,060 91,242 - - 91,242 254,227 - - 254,227 5,200 - - 5,200 20,000 - - 20,000 20,000 - - 20,000 30,000 - - 30,000 15,000 - - 15,000 90,200 - - 90,200 28,698 - - 28,698 - 28,698 - - 28,698 373,125 - - 373,125 2024 2024 2024 2024 Unrestricted Restricted Designated Total £ £ £ £ - 1,079,495 - 1,079,495 - 223,477 - 223,477 - - - - - 259,231 - 259,231 - 3,720 - 3,720 - - - - - - 1,565,923 - 1,565,923	2023 2023 2023 2023 Unrestricted Restricted Designated Total £ £ £ 154,933 3,678 - 158,611 - - - - 170,566 - - 170,566
		325,499 3,678 - 329,177 8,495 - - 8,495 10,000 - - 10,000 20,000 - - 20,000 40,000 - - 40,000 - - - - -
		78,495 - - 78,495 31,597 0 0 31,597 -
		31,597 - - 31,597
		435,591 3,678 - 439,269
		2022 2022 2022 2022 Unrestricted Restricted Designated Total £ £ £ £ - - - - - - - - - 57,839 - 57,839 - 393,713 - 393,713 - 16,742 - 16,742 - 5,000 - 5,000 -
		- 473,294 - 473,294

46

Peace Direct

Notes to the accounts For YEAR ENDED 31 December 2024

2 continued

Trusts and Foundations Carnegie Foundation HCD Memorial Trust Humanity United Network for Social Change Peace Nexus Foundation People's Postcode Lottery Robert Bosch Foundation Open Society Foundation Sir James Reckitt Charitable Foundation Wellspring Philanthrophic Fund Anonymous Anonymous Other small grants Sub-total Sub-total Policy & Research Grants Knowledge income Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust Humanity United Robert Bosch Stiftung Wellspring Open Society Foundation Polden-Puckham Charitable Foundation Other small grants Contracts Other small contracts Sub-total TOTAL INCOME FROM CHARITABLE ACTIVITIES	2024 2024 2024 2024 Unrestricted Restricted Designated Total £ £ £ £ - - - - - 20,000 - 20,000 - - 114,161 114,161 - 26,924 - 26,924 - 28,405 - 28,405 - 1,050,000 - 1,050,000 - - - - - 192,556 - 192,556 - - - - - 522,884 478,113 1,000,996 - 196,772 - 196,772 - 128,366 - 128,366 - - - - - 2,165,907 592,274 2,758,181 - 3,731,830 592,274 4,324,104 2,492 - - 2,492 - 50,080 - 50,080 - - - - - 210,838 - 210,838 - 123,817 - 123,817 - - - - - 150,000 - 150,000 - - - - - - - - 2,492 534,735 - 537,227 2,492 4,266,566 592,274 4,861,332	2023 2023 2023 2023 Unrestricted Restricted Designated Total £ £ £ - 118,683 - 118,683 - 24,000 - 24,000 - - 165,112 165,112 - 18,837 - 18,837 - 23,315 - 23,315 - 1,000,000 - 1,000,000 - 43,550 - 43,550 - - 355,317 355,317 - 10,000 10,000 - 706,972 197,805 904,777 - - - - - 89,789 - 89,789 - - - - -
		- 2,035,146 718,234 2,753,380
		- 2,508,440 718,234 3,226,674 44,262 - - 44,262 - 37,934 - 37,934 - 39,209 - 39,209 - 463,600 - 463,600 - 124,134 - 124,134 - - - - 150,000 - 150,000 - - - - - - - -
		44,262 814,877 - 859,138
		44,262 3,323,317 718,234 4,085,813

47

Peace Direct

Notes to the accounts

For YEAR ENDED 31 December 2024

4a ANALYSIS OF EXPENDITURE

Basis of Allocation Staff Direct Costs Grants Payable (Note 5) Direct Costs Programme & Direct Costs Direct Costs Support Costs Staff & Office Costs Total expenditure 2024 Basis of Allocation Staff Direct Costs Grants Payable (Note 5) Direct Costs Programme & Direct Costs Direct Costs Support Costs Staff & Office Costs Total expenditure 2023	2024 Cost of International Total Raising Funds Programmes & Research Advocacy £ £ £ 117,348 959,250 67,955 1,144,552 - 1,637,319 - 1,637,319 103,757 768,567 24,212 896,536 71,565 631,874 45,180 748,618
	292,670 3,997,009 137,346 4,427,025
	2023 restated Cost of International Total Raising Funds Programmes & Research Advocacy £ £ £ £ 104,804 789,082 55,928 949,814 - 1,565,558 - 1,565,558 97,141 852,426 5,968 955,536 66,264 517,544 32,415 616,223
	268,210 3,724,611 94,311 4,087,132

In 2024 Peace Direct decided to change the methodology for recognising the costs of raising funds. In the accounts for 2023 Cost of raising funds was stated as £338,892, this has been restated to £268,210 reflecting a recognition of the reduction in time apportionment to cost of raising funds of fundraising and communications staff.

In 2024 Peace Direct have changed the analysis of expenditure on charitable activities. Previously the analysis was shown as International Programmes (including Advocacy) and separately Research. The analysis is now shown as International Programmes & Research and spearately Advocacy. This provides a more meaningful representation of the activities of the organisation.

4b SUPPORT AND GOVERNANCE COSTS

SUPPORT AND GOVERNANCE COSTS
Note Support costs consist of Staff costs Office Costs Governance Costs Audit Trustee Indemnity Insurance Legal & Professional Fees	2024 £ 504,527 206,319 32,917 414 890 745,068	2023 £ 408,996 184,984 21,113 649 481
		616,224

48

Peace Direct

Notes to the accounts For YEAR ENDED 31 December 2024

5 GRANTS PAYABLE

Restricted Fund Grants - International Programmes EPDO, Afghanistan Justapaz, Colombia Redepaz, Colombia Centre Resolution Conflits (CRC), DRC Fondation Chirezi (FOCHI), DRC Burma Monitor, Myanmar Initiatives for International Dialogue, Myanmar Khet Khet Tin, Myanmar Paung Ku, Myanmar Swe Ta Har, Myanmar EU - Syria Envision, Zimbabwe Other Multi-partner International Programmes Local Action Fund - Nigeria, Pakistan, Sudan, Colombia Local First - Sudan, Mali, DRC, Afghanistan People's Postcode Lottery - Supporting various local peacebuilding projects Shift the Power Robert Bosch Humanitarian Grants Partner Core Support Fund Sub-total Restricted Fund Grants - Policy & Research Beni Peace Forum, DRC RISD, DRC Strength From Adversity Sub-total TOTAL GRANTS PAYABLE

2024 2023 £ £ 272,196 40,158 19,961 - 11,805 - - 22,247 - 35,803 22,566 13,424 - 26,195 31,394 26,848 23,018 130,748 59,318 138,374 106,647 - 19,685 - 46,529 16,667 331,373 454,769 65,397 - 509,985 442,047 - 53,493 41,797 29,841 24,247 51,115 1,585,920 1,481,729 37,379 51,331 13,225 27,961 795 4,537 51,399 83,829 1,637,319 1,565,558

49

Notes to the accounts

For YEAR ENDED 31 December 2024

6 NET INCOME FOR YEAR

This is stated after charging / (crediting):

This is stated after charging / (crediting):
	2024	2023
	Total	Total
	£	£
Operating lease rentals:
Property	30,000	30,000
Depreciation	9,348	8,230
Auditor's remuneration:
Audit fees	16,250	21,113
in respect of previous years	16,667	-
Foreign exchange gains / (losses)	41,720	(85,291)

50

Peace Direct

Notes to the accounts For YEAR ENDED 31 December 2024

7 STAFF COSTS

Salary Costs National Insurance Costs Employer Pension Costs	2024 2023 Total Total £ £ 1,439,454 1,180,923 136,256 115,094 73,370 62,793 1,649,080 1,358,810

The number of employees whos emoluments exceeded £60,000 were:

		2024		2023
		Total		Total
£60,000	- £69,999		2		2
£70,000	- £79,999		-		1
£80,000	- £89,999		1		-

The charity's key management personnel are considered to be the senior leadership team (SLT) comprising at 31 December 2024 the CEO, and the Heads of International Programmes & Research / Deputy CEO, Finance & Operations and two Fundraising & Communications on a job share.

Their total remuneration including NI and pension contributions amounted to £345,480 (2023 £318,446).

The average monthly full time equivalent number of staff employed by the charity during the period was as follows:

	2024		2023
	Total		Total
Raising Funds		2		2
Charitable Activities		29		23
		31		25

See note 13 on related party transaction for Trustees remuneration and expenses

51

Peace Direct

Notes to the accounts For YEAR ENDED 31 December 2024

8 FIXED ASSETS

COST As at 1st January 2024 Additions during period Disposals during period As at 31 December 2023 DEPRECIATION As at 1st January 2024 Charge for period Disposals during period As at 31 December 2023 NET BOOK VALUES As at 31 December 2024 As at 31 December 2023	Computer equipment £ 49,704 3,840 - 53,544 38,419 9,348 47,767 5,777 11,285	Fixtures Total & Fittings £ £ 5,343 55,047 - 3,840 - 5,343 58,887 5,343 43,762 - 9,348 - 5,343 53,110 - 5,777 - 11,285

52

Peace Direct

Notes to the accounts

For YEAR ENDED 31 December 2024

9 DEBTORS

9 DEBTORS
Grant Receivable Prepayments & Other Debtors 10a CREDITORS: Amounts falling due within one year Other Creditors Taxation & Social Security Deferred Income (Note 10b)	2024 £ - 182,178 182,178 2024 £ 50,437 - 461,545 511,982	2023 £ 28,324 106,216
		134,540
		2023 £ 86,418 - 666,361
		752,779

Income is deferred when it is received during the period but relates, in whole or in part, to one or more subsequent periods when the matching expenditure will be incurred.

10b DEFERRED INCOME

Deferred income brought forward Released to income in year Income deferred in year Deferred income carried forward (Note 10a)	2024 2023 £ £ 666,362 1,026,534 (666,362) (1,026,534) 461,545 666,362 461,545 666,362

53

Peace Direct

Notes to the accounts For YEAR ENDED 31 December 2024

11 MOVEMENT IN FUNDS

		£	£	£	£	£		£
					Transfers between	Foreign Exchange
Project	Purpose	Opening Balance	Income	Expenses	funds	Gain/(Loss)		Balance 31/12/2024
RESTRICTED FUNDS
SINGLE-COUNTRY PROGRAMMES
Afghanistan EPD Local Action Fund 2023/25	Local Action Fund civil society resilience	261,457	128,366	(245,657)	-		-	144,166
GOAC FOCHI 2022-23	Other locally-led peacebuilding action	-	3,720	-	(3,720)		-	-
Myanmar Local Action Fund	Local Action Fund civil society resilience	102,191	259,231	(242,582)	-		-	118,840
Aware Girls Commonwealth Foundation 2017-2020	Other locally-led peacebuilding action	15,119	-	-	-		-	15,119
Radio Amani Phase 2	Peace education and awareness-raising	754	-	(754)	-		-	-
Network for Social Change Colombia		-	19,700	(22,477)	2,777		-	-
EU Syria Hurras		-	223,477	(169,405)	30,000		-	84,072
Zimbabwe HCD Memorial 2024/25		-	20,000	(20,000)	-		-	-
MULTI-COUNTRY PROGRAMMES
	Organisational development Peace Direct and
	partners; other peacebuilding initiatives; peacebuilding
PPL 2023/24 & 2024/25	research	96,967	1,050,000	(1,034,690)	(100,727)		-	11,551
	Local Action Fund violence prevention and
LAF Blandford Lake 2021/22	peacebuilding	204,698	220,681	(374,348)	-		-	51,031
Peace Nexus MEL 2020/21/22	Peacebuilding research	18,912	28,405	(16,225)	-		-	31,092
Global Campaign 2022/23	Peace education and awareness-raising	192,586	-	(94,125)	123,642		-	222,102
Shift the Power		2,400	-	(7,227)	4,826		-	-
OSF Justice and Accountability		-	192,556	(7,556)	-		-	185,000
LAF GDS Foundation 2024-27		-	196,772	(96,098)	-		-	100,674
Dutch MFA		-	1,079,495	(387,098)	-		-	692,397
Robert Bosch Humanitarian Grants		-	210,838	(81,608)	-		-	129,230
Wellspring Designated		-	-	-	105,865		-	105,865
Wellspring Local Action Fund 2024-26		-	302,203	(130,577)	-		-	171,625
P&R PROGRAMMES
Beni Action Research Carnegie 2022-24	Peacebuilding research	93,216	-	(100,963)	20,727		-	12,979
SAS2.0	Peacebuilding research	172	123,817	(123,625)	-		-	363
JRCT UK Advocacy 2023/25	Support for Peace Direct's UK Advocacy Programme	256	50,080	(52,124)	1,788		-	-
Robert Bosch Advocacy 2021/22/23/24	Support for Peace Direct's EU Advocacy Programme	377,088	-	(162,406)	-		-	214,682
Strength from Adversity	Peace education and awareness-raising	12,047	7,224	(6,905)	(5,000)		-	7,366
RTC Book and online course	Peace education and awareness-raising	212	-	-	-		-	212
Decolonising Aid	Peacebuilding research	54,392	150,000	(172,746)	66,101		-	97,747

RESTRICTED INDIVIDUAL DONATIONS

54

Small funds of restricted individual donations

1,680

1,680

OTHER

TOTAL RESTRICTED FUNDS		1,434,147	4,266,566	(3,549,197)	246,279	-	2,397,794
DESIGNATED FUNDS				(3,549,197)
Advocacy Designated	Supporting Advocacy Projects	23,198	-	-	-	-	23,198
Research Designated	Supporting Research Projects	143,824	-	(43,628)	-	-	100,196
Future Commitments Fund	Supporting Future or Emergency Projects	50,000	-	-	-	-	50,000
Partner Core Support Fund	Supporting Partners Core Activities	36,793	-	(24,247)	30,379	-	42,925
5% Salary & Overhead Reserve		44,448	-	-	(44,448)	-	-
	Arising from net unrealised exchange gains, to be
	utilised in offsetting any future foreign currency
Foreign Exchange Gain Reserve	exchange losses	28,316	-	-		-	28,316
Wellspring Designated 2019/20/21/22	Supporting General Organisation Support	16,679	478,113	(146,932)	(113,715)	-	234,145
Humanity United Designated 2019/20/21/22	Supporting General Organisation Support	60,200	114,161	(118,492)	(36,169)	-	19,700
OSF Designated	Supporting General Support and LAF Colombia	360,359	-	(142,531)	(165,655)	-	52,173
TOTAL DESIGNATED FUNDS		763,817	592,274	(475,829)	(329,608)	-	550,653
Other Unrestricted		709,619	427,912	(401,999)	83,330	41,720	860,582
UNRESTRICTED FUNDS		709,619	427,912	(401,999)	83,330	41,720	860,582
ALL FUNDS		2,907,583	5,286,752	(4,427,025)	-	41,720	3,809,029

55

RESTRICTED FUNDS SINGLE-COUNTRY PRO MULTI-COUNTRY PROG P&R PROGRAMMES

Funds in 2023 £ £ £ £ £ £ Project Purpose Opening Balance Income Expenses Transfers between funds Foreign Exchange Gain/(Loss) Balance 31/12/2023 GRAMMES Afghanistan EPD Local Action Fund 2022/23 Local Action Fund civil society resilience 119,647 100 (79,249) (40,498) - - Afghanistan EPD Local Action Fund 2023/25 Local Action Fund civil society resilience 89,789 - 171,668 - 261,457 EPRM Peace Gold Other locally-led peacebuilding action (40,451) 67,839 (30,974) 3,586 - - EWER Systems Ituri & North Kivu (Zivik) Other locally-led peacebuilding action 91 - (91) - - - Radio Amani Peace education and awareness-raising 833 - (833) - - - GOAC FOCHI 2022-23 Other locally-led peacebuilding action 1,181 16,742 (20,980) 3,057 - - Myanmar Local Action Fund Local Action Fund civil society resilience 158,595 393,713 (450,117) - - 102,191 Aware Girls Commonwealth Foundation 2017-2020 Other locally-led peacebuilding action 15,119 - - - - 15,119 Radio Amani Phase 2 Peace education and awareness-raising - 24,000 (23,246) - - 754 RAMMES FCDO Jo Cox 2019/20/21/22 Other locally-led peacebuilding action (104) 5,000 (4,926) 30 - - YAPP SIDA 2019/20/21/22 Local Action Fund youth peace and security 1,805 - (1,805) () - - PPL Extra 2021/22 Organisational development Peace Direct and partners; other peacebuilding initiatives; peacebuilding research 21,899 - (19,280) (2,619) - - PPL 2022/23 Organisational development Peace Direct and partners; other peacebuilding initiatives; peacebuilding research 13,559 225,000 (179,843) (58,716) - - PPL 2023/24 Organisational development Peace Direct and partners; other peacebuilding initiatives; peacebuilding research - 775,000 (630,094) (47,939) - 96,967 LAF Robert Bosch 2020/21/22 Local Action Fund violence prevention and peacebuilding 45,688 - - (45,688) - - LAF Anonymous 2019/20/21/22 Local Action Fund violence prevention and peacebuilding 59,417 - (5,727) (53,690) - - LAF Blandford Lake 2021/22 Local Action Fund violence prevention and peacebuilding - 706,972 (611,946) 109,672 - 204,698 Peace Nexus MEL 2020/21/22 Peacebuilding research 4,696 23,315 (9,099) - - 18,912 Global Campaign 2022/23 Peace education and awareness-raising 234,368 37,415 (143,430) 64,233 - 192,586 Shift the Power - 82,760 (112,328) 31,968 - 2,400 Robert Bosch Humanitarian - 160,213 (33,021) (127,192) - - Beni Action Research Carnegie 2022-24 Peacebuilding research 86,922 118,683 (121,044) 8,655 - 93,216 SAS2.0 Peacebuilding research 1 124,134 (123,963) - - 172 JRCT UK Advocacy 2021/23 Support for Peace Direct's UK Advocacy Programme 8,815 25,418 (34,233) - - - JRCT UK Advocacy 2023/25 Support for Peace Direct's UK Advocacy Programme 12,516 (12,260) - - 256 Robert Bosch Advocacy 2021/22/23/24 Support for Peace Direct's EU Advocacy Programme 215,907 265,971 (104,790) - - 377,088 Strength from Adversity Peace education and awareness-raising 7,757 19,037 (19,747) 5,000 - 12,047 RTC Book and online course Peace education and awareness-raising 212 - - - - 212 Decolonising Aid Peacebuilding research 150,000 (163,779) 68,171 - 54,392 -

56

RESTRICTED INDIVIDUAL DONATIONS

RESTRICTED INDIVIDUAL DONATIONS
						-
Small funds of restricted individual donations		1,015	3,378	(2,713)	-	-	1,680
						-
OTHER						-
5% Salary & Overhead Reserve		47,505	-		(47,505)	-	-
Reallocation of funds between categories		-	-	56,907	(56,907)	-	-
TOTAL RESTRICTED FUNDS		1,004,477	3,326,995	(2,882,611)	(14,714)	-	1,434,147
DESIGNATED FUNDS
Advocacy Designated	Supporting Advocacy Projects	23,198	-	-	-	-	23,198
Research Designated	Supporting Research Projects	190,177	-	(46,353)	-	-	143,824
Future Commitments Fund	Supporting Future or Emergency Projects	50,000	-	-	-	-	50,000
Partner Core Support Fund	Supporting Partners Core Activities	59,591	-	(51,115)	28,317	-	36,793
5% Salary & Overhead Reserve		-	-	-	44,448	-	44,448
	Arising from net unrealised exchange gains, to be
	utilised in offsetting any future foreign currency
Foreign Exchange Gain Reserve	exchange losses	93,462	-	-	(65,146)	-	28,316
Wellspring Designated 2019/20/21/22	Supporting General Organisation Support	14,983	355,317	(317,224)	(36,397)	-	16,679
Humanity United Designated 2019/20/21/22	Supporting General Organisation Support	64,889	165,112	(161,320)	(8,481)	-	60,200
OSF Designated	Supporting General Support and LAF Colombia	301,252	197,805	(78,863)	(59,835)	-	360,359
Reallocation of funds between categories		-	-	(56,021)	56,021	-	-
TOTAL DESIGNATED FUNDS		797,552	718,234	(710,896)	(41,073)	-	763,817
Other Unrestricted		742,707	490,040	(493,624)	55,787	(85,291)	709,619
UNRESTRICTED FUNDS		742,707	490,040	(493,624)	55,787	(85,291)	709,619
ALL FUNDS		2,544,736	4,535,269	(4,087,131)	-	(85,291)	2,907,583

57

Peace Direct Notes to the accounts For YEAR ENDED 31 December 2024

12 ANALYSIS OF FUND BALANCES BETWEEN NET ASSETS

Tangible Fixed Assets Net Current Assets As at 31 December 2024 Tangible Fixed Assets Net Current Assets As at 31 December 2023	2024 2024 2024 2024 Unrestricted Funds Restricted Funds Designated Funds Total Funds £ £ £ £ 5,777 - - 5,777 854,806 2,397,794 550,652 3,803,252
	860,582 2,397,794 550,652 3,809,029
	2023 2023 2023 2023 Unrestricted Funds Restricted Funds Designated Funds Total Funds £ £ £ £ 11,285 - - 11,285 698,334 1,434,147 763,816 2,896,297
	709,619 1,434,147 763,816 2,907,583

13 RELATED PARTY TRANSACTIONS

No trustees were re-imbursed for expenses during the period (2023 £nil) .

No trustee received payment for services rendered during the year (2023: £740)

During the year, Peace Direct transferred £253,093 to our affiliate in the United States, Peace Direct Inc.

(2023: £336,443). At year-end, £13,278 was owed to this organisation (£11,396: 2023 owed by this organisation)

14 FINANCIAL COMMITMENTS

At 31 December 2024, Peace Direct's future minimum lease payments under non-cancellable operating leases are as follows:

LAND & BUILDINGS Less than one year One to five years Total commitments	2024 Total £ 20,000 - 20,000	2023 Total £ 30,000 17,500
		47,500

(The Charity was committed to a rental agreement until August 2025 at 31 December 2024)

15 LEGAL STATUS OF THE CHARITY

The charity is limited by guarantee and therefore does not have a share capital. The liability

of the members is limited to the sum of £1 per member, and the number of members was 10 (2023: 10)

58

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