Annual Trustees’ ) Report Year ending 31° August 2023
Festive
Trustees:
Charity No: 1123966
487 Coed-y-Gores Llanedeyrn Cardiff CF23 9NU
Pauline Kendall (Chair) Alex Forrest Jon Fortnam Joshua Kendall Jess Stinton
Organisation Overview
Festive was formed by a small group of people with a big heart for Further Education. They had experience of ministering in FE Colleges and Sixth Forms and were aware of the lack of support available to Christian students, staff and chaplains. Working in partnership with Scripture Union and UCCF, through much prayer and God’s great provision, Festive was launched in 2007. Festive currently works across the UK supporting Christian students, chaplains and those in FE through prayer, advice, resources and training. The mission is to inspire and support Christians in FE to live for Jesus and to equip them as they share their faith through their words and actions. The vision is to see an Ongoing vibrant witness ofJesus[in][every][FE] College and Sixth Form in the UK. The charity is run by the Trustees named above in close relationship with the Director, Peter Carrington, with a team of 5 other staff members, 14 volunteer workers and a network of partners and supporters of the work.
Summary of Activities 2022-23
During this academic year, 2022-23, Festive has kept in touch with, prayed for and supported around 450 students. Our staff team and volunteer Student Engagement Team have prayer for, emailed regularly, sent text messages, and engaged with the students on a variety of social media platforms. In addition to this, we have had a significant number students from both within and outside of our network joining us for our online ‘Scattered’ events that continue to be beneficial to the students who attend. In addition to the main termly events, we ran a series of workshops in the summer term looking to the year ahead: ‘Preparing to go to uni’, ‘Living for Jesus in the workplace’, ‘Answering Tricky Questions’ and ‘Leading my CU in year 13’.
Festive has had a bigger part to play this year in Amplify Academy: a young people’s evangelism training course run in partnership with Hope, The Message, Scripture Union, Youth For Christ, Pais and Church of England. Pete continues to sit on the core leadership panel, with other members of the team being involved this year with leading talks, seminars, sitting on the Q&A panel and mentoring students throughout the course. This has been a great Opportunity to offer our existing students, as well as meeting new students and inviting them to join our network. Various members of the team have also made the most of other opportunities throughout the year to lead seminars and talks at youth events across the country throughout the year, along the themes of Festive’s mission to equip and inspire young people in their evangelism and running Christian Unions.
Alongside student engagement activities, the other key area of our work is resources. Following an extensive edit to bring it up-to-date and future-proof it for years to come, we successfully launched a new edition of Beyond Beans on Toast in the Spring of 2023. This book has proven to be an invaluable evangelistic resource for students leaving sixth form and heading off to university. We successfully raised close to £4,500 of our £3,000 target to purchase and distribute 1,000 copies to be given away to students who don’t yet know Jesus.
The other brand new resource that has been in the pipeline this year is a podcast series, ‘Beautiful Feet’. The initial recordings have now been completed for the first 5 episodes and the final work is being done to edit and market these ready for launch next year. This series is a collection of interviews with experienced evangelists, packed with inspirational stories and plenty of advice and top-tips to equip students in a variety of aspects of evangelism and living for Jesus in sixth form/college. The next recordings are being lined up for next year and we are excited about the launch and the great resource these can be for students for years to come.
Our existing online resources continue to be reviewed and updated where necessary, and we have held two evangelistic giveaways this year at Christmas and at exam time. The idea behind these giveaways is that students can order a gift package to give to a non-Christian friend, that will contain something of the gospel as well as some treats. The exam package also has some practical bits in to help with exam time and a little stress-busting prayer card. These have both been popular again this year with all 30 packs being ordered each time.
For the second year, Festive took an active part in FE Sunday, an initiative run by West Midlands Churches’ FE Council, to promote and encourage prayer in churches across the country for their local FE colleges and sixth forms, for their staff, students and any Christians they know in the field. Alongside this we held an online prayer gathering for supporters for the second year, a blessed evening to pray with those who stand with us for the mission.
As always, the summer was full of recruitment activity ready for the 2023-24 academic year. This kicked off with a training day for the Student Engagement Team, an excellent opportunity to bring together our volunteers for a day to invest in them, train them, thank them and encourage them as they look back over their year on the team and look forward to serving again next year. A number of our volunteer team also represented Festive at various youth festivals over the summer, taking an active role in recruiting the students they would be supporting over the next year. Of the 450 students in our network by the end of the academic year, we said goodbye to around 200 who were leaving sixth form/college, but we had our most fruitful summer yet, recruiting an additional 500 students through various events and our online social media campaign, bringing us to a total of around 750 students for the 2023-24 academic year. This growth is unexplained and unexpected and is a good challenge to face into the next year!
Finally, as he retires from his role this year, we would like to thank David James, one of the inaugural Trustees of Festive for his wisdom, insight and leadership over the last 16 years! We have also said goodbye to Dan, our Design and Web worker and welcomed Heather to the team in his stead.
Finance
Festive received £25,000 in grant award funding for financial year 2022-23, with a further £20,000 received within the year towards the 2023-24 financial year. Festive has grown a surplus of funds over previous years that will provide funding to continue staffing and operations at our current Capacity into the following financial year when existing grant funding comes to an end. The Director, along with the support of the Trustees continues to seek further grant funding which will be crucial for sustaining the current level of work and ministry.
donations from individuals, churches and Trusts. Ultimately, encouraging further new regular supporters, both individuals and churches, remains an important financial priority going forwards as current income levels do not support the organisation’s ambition to grow its work and ministry.
As always, the trustees keep a close eye on the finances with financial reports and projections provided and reviewed at quarterly Trustee meetings. A summary of the accounts for the financial year ending 31* August 2023 is included below.
Future Developments
For the next academic year we will continue with all our student engagement activities including both Scattered and Amplify. In response to the significant growth we have seen this summer, we plan on running a survey for the students after the first term to understand the different contexts represented across the network, the services and resources that they access the most and what would be most helpful to them. We also intend to increase the number of giveaway packs available during the two evangelistic giveaways that will be held at Christmas and either Easter or exam time again, in order to meet an anticipated increase in demand as we have more students to serve.
Resources that are in development for launch in 2023-24 include the Beautiful Feet podcast, mentioned above, and also a suite of prayer related resources. While prayer has been central to our mission among the Trustees, staff and volunteers, it has become clear that this is something that we can encourage students to do more of as part of their day-to-day witness, and so we intend to develop a suite of resources of varying media to both inspire and equip students and CUs in praying in faith for their sixth form/college and their friends.
In response to the sudden growth experienced as we head into 2023-24, we will be dedicating some time and resource to growing our supporter base and raising the funds needed to sustain our current work with regular giving, allowing us to seek grant funding for an additional worker on the team to work more directly with students and networking with supporting churches and partner organisations. We will be approaching this challenge prayerfully and intend to hold more regular prayer gatherings for supporters over the course of the year.
The Trustees will continue to monitor closely the activity and finances of the charity, and ensure that all relevant policies and procedures are kept up to date and are adhered to accordingly.
Closing Remarks
The trustees wish to thank all of Festive’s staff and supporters for all their work, prayer and support over the last 12 months.
For financial year 01-09-2022 to 31-08-2023
Accounts Summary
Opening Balance
01-09-2022 £49,312.05
| Income | Expenditure | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trusts/Grant Money* | £ | 45,036.19 | StaffWages (inci. pension, | tax, Ni) | £ | 58,606.57 | |
| Individual | Supporters | £ | 33,394.10 | Staff&Volunteer Expenses | £ | 4,642.45 | |
| Churches | £ | 10,010.00 | Events (Summer Exhibits, Scattered) | e | 4,501.03 | ||
| Gift Aid | £ | 5,633.75 | External Wages& Contractual Work | £ | 4,113.08 | ||
| External Wage Provision | £ | 1,321.02 | Resourcing Students (purchase, print, post etc.) | £ | 3,124.79 | ||
| Refunds | £ | 249.50 | Partnerships | £ | 1,175.00 | ||
| Website/IT packages | £ | 1,131.60 | |||||
| Communications (social | Media,SMSetc.) | £ | 979.73 | ||||
| Othergeneral costs | £ | 897.60 | |||||
| Insurance | £ | 885.18 | |||||
| Safeguarding Training | £ | 662.00 | |||||
| Total Income* | £ | 95,644.56 | Total Expenditure | £80,719.03 | |||
| Closing Balance | |||||||
| 31-08-2023 | £ | 64,237.58 |
- £20,000 of this grant income is for use in the 2023-24 financial year.
Ringfenced Funds:
Beyond Beans on Toast £ 2,899.95 YouTube/Filming £ 94.49 Total £ 2,994.44
Independent Examiners Report:
| have examined the accounts of Festive for the year ending 31% August 2023 in accordance with the general directions given by the Charity Commission. In connection with my examination, no matter has come to my attention which gives me reasonable cause to believe that in any material respect the requirements to keep accounting records and prepare accounts have not been met. | have not found anything to which, in my opinion, attention should be drawn in order to enable a proper understanding of the accounts to be reached. Address:Name: TOFN}¢ QeF, fazAKenredsae:ARIEJ LEYSr Signature: (GL Date. /4'°0/-202 3 AL woo, Relevant professional(ReSn qualification(43 yy) or body: Festive ACMA (Keeed ') Annual Trustees Report Year end 31-08-2023