2024-03-31-accounts

Trustee’s Report 2023-2024

Vineyard Community Church, Daventry Charity No. 1128805

Charity No. 1128805

Trustees’ Annual Report

for the period 1[st] April 2023 to 31[st] March 2024

• “Growing everyday people who are called to extend God’s Kingdom, love and life to our communities by following the person and the ‘Way’ of Jesus Christ”

1

Trustee’s Report 2023-2024

Vineyard Community Church, Daventry Charity No. 1128805

The trustee’s hereby present their annual report for the period 1[st] April 2023 to 31[st] March 2024

Reference and Administrative Details

Registered Charity No.	1128805
Charity name:	Vineyard Community Church, Daventry
Other names charity is known by:	Daventry Vineyard
Charity’s principle Address:	9 Cunningham Close
	Daventry
	Northants
	NN11 4JN
Operatng address:	18a Benbow Close
	Daventry
	Northants
	NN11 4JP
Independent Examiner:	Cassandra Helen Bodman Knight
	46 Common Street
	Revenstone
	Bucks
	MK46 5AR
Bankers:	Natwest Bank
	9 North Street
	Rugby
	Warwickshire
	CV21 2AH

2

Trustee’s Report 2023-2024

Vineyard Community Church, Daventry Charity No. 1128805

Structure, Governance and Management

Vineyard Community Church is a registered charity duly constituted by a Trust Deed and operating as a church.

Names of Trustees who manage the charity: Rob Gee (Chairman) Gareth Chappell Nick Wilmot Svitlana Okoro

Appointment of Trustees

The Chairman is entitled to appoint trustees in consultation with other trustees.

Organisational Structure

The day to day running of the church is delegated to the pastoral staff led by the Senior Pastors, Rob and Angela Gee.

Objectives and Activities

As set out in our governing document, our core objectives are summarised as follows;

• The advancement of the Christian faith in accordance with the Vineyard Churches UK Statement of Faith, Values and Priorities.

• The relief of the poor and needy, the sick and elderly within Daventry and surrounding areas and anywhere else that the trustees decide.

• The furtherance of religious or secular public education.

The following summarises the main activities undertaken for the public benefit in relation to the aforementioned objectives;

On Sundays and during the week we have continued to provide teaching and training in the Christian faith. We have also provided weekly, public worship gatherings for anyone to attend. In January we left our previous place of meeting and, after trialling a local community centre, opted to meet in another local school. The transition went smoothly and our members were patient and understanding towards the change.

For the main part of the year, we continued to run ‘Vineyard Café’ family outreach events held on the fourth Sunday’s. These were geared towards encouraging parents and children to play, learn and grow together. Each event was based on a Biblical theme and consisted of crafts, games, music and learning. These came to an end in December when we felt it was time for a change.

In January we introduced a combined, dedicated prayer and worship time encouraging everyone to take part in prayer, both corporate and individual. Each event is themed with plenty of opportunity for everyone to take time to meditate on the Scriptures and hear God.

Our online support group continued to ensure that people were kept informed of what was happening and support could be given to anyone who needed it and continued to be a source of information and contact.

3

Trustee’s Report 2023-2024

Vineyard Community Church, Daventry Charity No. 1128805

The Kids and youth work continued following its Biblical curriculum whilst facilitating the children to grow in friendships, learn, play and support one another. The children and leaders showed incredible understanding as their learning was disrupted for a short period of time during the transition to a new venue.

We continued to operate Daventry Food Bank. The aim is to provide emergency food support to families in need within Daventry and surrounding areas in partnership with other churches, schools and front-line care agencies within the town. We operate with a strong team of volunteers who have shown incredible resilience during all the changes over the past few years.

Once again we ran our Christmas Projects including Christmas Food Hampers for the needy, Elderly Care Packages, selection boxes, Advent calendars and this past year we introduced children’s gift bags. We continued to experience an overwhelming amount of generosity and favour from those in our community who were able to support us.

Achievements and Performance

Sunday Worship/Teaching and midweek groups

We have enjoyed meeting each Sunday to worship God together. We have worked hard to deliver the best, clear and diverse Biblical teachings over the year which is concentrating on the processes of discipleship whilst making it as relevant and applicable to our lives as we possibly could.

Whilst it has been a challenge to recruit leaders to facilitate our Life Groups (mid-week support groups) due to the changes in people’s commitments and energy levels since the pandemic, we have still been able to deliver a number of groups across the year. Attendance at the Life Groups has picked up and we have held a Tuesday afternoon group along with a Wednesday evening group. Those that have attended have enjoyed meeting together in a more relaxed setting, doing life alongside each other.

Children’s and Youth work

Children’s and Youth work falls into 4 age categories and prove popular with both the youngsters and their parents;

Mini Grapes: 0-3yrs Little Vines: 4-7yrs Big Branches: 8-11yrs Vineyard Youth: 12-18yrs

The children’s and youth work continued to meet together following a curriculum encouraging the children to learn about God, themselves and their place in the world and the relationship each of them can have with God.

Food Bank

It has been yet another difficult year for many in our community who are still struggling to cope with ever increasing costs of food, toiletries as well as household bills and rental costs. For many in our community, it feels like there has been no space for financial recovery and the Food Bank has been a true life-line for them. We have, again, been called on for a continual-increasing number of cases.

4

Trustee’s Report 2023-2024

Vineyard Community Church, Daventry Charity No. 1128805

The Food Bank operates with an amazing team of volunteers who are committed to their roles and helping their community. The total number of volunteer hours across the year equated to around 2,200 hours. We are grateful to them all for the time that they give to us.

From Jan to Dec 2023 we were able to meet the needs of 1,700 referrals, this is almost a 30% increase on last year. In terms of how many meals this equates to, it is in excess of 61,000 meals. This had a direct impact on the lives of 2,000 children/dependants. In total, we estimate that we gave away more than £75,530 of food & £27,540 of toiletries.

With food costs rising and donations falling, during 2023 we were spending more than £2600 each month to top-up dwindling stock levels. That’s an increase of 50% from the previous year. Most food banks across the country have experienced the same rise and many have needed to pause new referrals or reduce the amount of food they can offer. Thankfully, with the tremendous support of our local community we have been able to continue to meet the growing need without making significant cuts.

Once again, during the summer of 2023 we were called upon by West Northants Council (WNC) and Northamptonshire Community Foundation (NCF) to partner with them in the distribution of food vouchers. These were in addition to the Food Bank parcels. We worked with a number of schools and local agencies during that summer in order to ensure that those of all ages, who were struggling with the cost of living crisis, could access one of these vouchers. This County-wide project was carried out using the cloud-based referral portal which we designed and continues to make the whole process much more accessible and efficient for all agencies throughout West Northamptonshire.

Last year we continued to see a huge amount of donations from Harvest Festivals being delivered from Schools, Churches and community groups. Over a period of 6 weeks, donations were coming in almost every day and we were wonderfully overwhelmed with bags and boxes of food and toiletries. The volunteers were kept busy with date checking and stocking the shelves.

We now have over 430 referral agents who are regularly referring people for Food Bank support. The agents/partners are made up of support professionals from organisations such as Citizen’s Advice Bureau, Time2Talk, Age UK, Bromford Support, NHS, Women’s Aid, Social Services, Family Support Workers in schools, in addition to numerous housing associations and District/County Council and local GP surgeries.

Christmas Compassion Ministries

Once again, we ran our Christmas food hampers appeal. We continued to experience tremendous support and generosity from our own church members as well as other local churches, schools, community groups, businesses and individuals from the Daventry community. We worked closely with a number of agencies and eight local schools and were able to distribute 105 hampers to families and individuals who needed them the most. We were incredibly grateful to WNC(Daventry) in providing us with the use of an empty office block, from where we ran the Christmas projects. It was so lovely meeting our supporters as they came to drop off their Christmas hampers, gift bags, selection boxes and additional foods.

During the summer of 2023, we made the decision to provide families in hardship with Children’s Gift Bags at Christmas which would each be filled with 9 gifts. These gift bags would ensure that, if this were to be the only gift that a child received, then they would receive an array of gifts. We felt that we needed to be much more intentional about children receiving toys rather than a last minute reaction to organisations collecting toys for us. We initially thought we would give out 100 gift bags, however after making this choice available to the various schools and agencies that we were working

5

Trustee’s Report 2023-2024

Vineyard Community Church, Daventry Charity No. 1128805

with at Christmas, and seeing how the community responded to this new venture, we actually gave out 295 Children’s Christmas Gift Bags. We also gave out hundreds of selection boxes and Advent calendars!

For the third year running, we also ran the Christmas Care Packages for those elderly members of our community who were in care homes or residing in hospital over the Christmas period. We put together a shopping list which people could choose from in order to build a gift bag with the wrapped presents inside. We were delighted to have been able to gather up 66 gift bags which ensured that the residents of a care home and Danetre Hospital each received a care package.

Compassion Ministry Coordinator (CMC)

This is a demanding and rigorous role which partners and interfaces with many different agencies throughout the town and beyond. In relation to communications alone, despite there being many hundreds of people and organisations communicating with us through one of seven different ways, we were able to competently monitor and manage all communications so that no messages were overlooked. During the past year there have been opportunities to build on the relationships with our community, working alongside over 13 schools, many community groups and local businesses. The CMC was also invited to take school assemblies, speak to community groups from all walks of life and meet with CEO’s and Managers of local businesses and agencies, highlighting the important work of the Food Bank and other compassion projects. The CMC was also able to secure the muchneeded funding when it had become available.

Oversees Children’s Charity work.

Again, this year we continued to support Listening Hearts Street Children’s Ministry in Baja, Mexico. We raised enough funds for the charity to be able to provide a Christmas meal for more than 280 street children across 3 locations there in Northern Mexico. We helped with the funding to supply tyres for their van to aid their Children’s Ministry.

Summary

It has been a busy year settling the church community into new premises for the Sunday Services and continuing to learn to deal with varying levels of commitment along with lower energy levels. This has been challenging but we have continued to outwork our faith, seek God and minister to our community.

We continue to be in awe of the support that our compassion ministries have received from the larger community and it has been an honour to serve those who have found themselves in the unfortunate position of needing the support of the Food Bank.

Food Bank continues to serve the entire district and also receives overwhelming support from the general public, churches, schools and local businesses with regard to both financial and food items.

The Trustees consider that they have complied with section 4 of the Charities Act 2006 and that the church and its membership are meeting the charitable objectives that were determined when the church was formed. As it grows, it is expected that the church's community will have further opportunities to increase its activity and influence across the town and surrounding area.

6

Trustee’s Report 2023-2024

Vineyard Community Church, Daventry Charity No. 1128805

Annual Accounts for the Period 01/04/2023 to 31/03/2024

Statement of Financial Activities (SoFA)

Incoming resources	Details	Unrestricted	Restricted	Total for	Total for
Generated funds		income funds	income funds	this period	last period
		£	£	£	£
Voluntary income	Incl Gift Aid	28,383	4,020	32,403	29,442
Activities for	Funding for Food Bank,	15,458	83,068	98,526	65,114
generating funds	sale of referral
	system/gifts for pastoral
	support/Listening Hearts
	Total incoming resources	43,841	87,088	130,929	94,556
Resources expended	Details	Unrestricted	Restricted	Total for	Total for
Costs for generating		income funds	income funds	this period	last period
funds		£	£	£	£
Charitable activities		5,493	37,665	43,158	29,126
Governance & Running	Governance & Running	40,535	34,386	74,921	57,403
Costs
Oversees Missions		531		531	547
	Total resources expended	46,559	72, 051	1 18,610	87,076
Net incoming/(outgoing) before transfers		0	0	0	0
Gross transfers between funds		-	-	-	-
+Net incoming/(outgoing) after transfers		0	0	0	0
Total funds brought forward		28,935	76,554	105,489	98,009
Total funds carried forward		26,595	91,592	118,187	105,489

Balance sheet
Current assets		Unrestricted	Restricted		Total for		Total for
		income funds	income funds		this period		last period
		£		£	£		£
Cash in the bank and in hand		26,595		91,592	118,187		105,489
Net assets		26,595		76,554	118,187		105,489
Funds of the CharityUnrestricted		26,595			26,595		28,935
Funds of the CharityRestricted				91,592	91,592		76,554
Total funds		26,595		91,592	118,187		105,489
Signed on behalf of all the trustees	Signature			Name		Date
				Robert Gee		15/01/2025	15/01/2025

7

Trustee’s Report 2023-2024

Vineyard Community Church, Daventry Charity No. 1128805

Notes to accounts

Basis of accounting

These accounts have been prepared on the basis of historic cost in accordance with:

• Accounting and Reporting by Charities – Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP 2005);

• And with accounting standards

Change in basis of accounting

There has been no change to the accounting policies (valuation rules and methods of accounting) since last year and no changes have been made to accounts for previous years

Accounting policies

This standard list of accounting policies has been applied by the charity.

INCOMING RESOURCES

Recogniton of incoming	These are included in the Statement of Financial Actvites (SoFA) when:
resources	 the charity becomes enttled to the resources;
	 the trustees are virtually certain they will receive the resources; and
	 the monetary value can be measured with sufcient reliability.
Incoming resources with	Where incoming resources have related expenditure (as with fundraising or
related expenditure	contract income) the incoming resources and related expenditure are reported
	gross in the SoFA.
Grants and donatons	Grants and donatons are only included in the SoFA when the charity has unconditonal enttlement to the resources.
Contractual income and	This is only included in the SoFA once the related goods or services have been
performance related grants	delivered.
Gifs in kind	Gifs in kind are accounted for at a reasonable estmate of their value to the
	charity or the amount actually realised.
	Gifs in kind for sale or distributon are included in the accounts as gifs only
	when sold or distributed by the charity.
	Gifs in kind for use by the charity are included in the SoFA as incoming resources
	when receivable.
Donated services and	These are only included in incoming resources (with an equivalent amount in
facilites	resources expended) where the beneft to the charity is reasonably quantfable,
	measurable and material. The value placed on these resources is the estmated
	value to the charity of the service or facility received.
Volunteer help	The value of any voluntary help received is not included in the accounts but is
	described in the trustees’ annual report.
Investment income	This is included in the accounts when receivable.
Investment gains and losses	This includes any gain or loss on the sale of investments and any gain or loss
	resultng from revaluing investments to market value at the end of the year

8

Trustee’s Report 2023-2024

Vineyard Community Church, Daventry Charity No. 1128805

EXPENDITURE AND LIABILITIES

Liability recognition Liabilities are recognised as soon as there is a legal or constructive obligation committing the charity to pay out resources. Governance and running This is a grouping of costs of running the charity. It includes staff salaries, heating, costs lighting, rent, travel expenses, administration, licenses and subscriptions. Grants with performance Where the charity gives a grant with conditions for its payment being a specific conditions level of service or output to be provided, such grants are only recognised in the SoFA once the recipient of the grant has provided the specified service or output. Grants payable without These are only recognised in the accounts when a commitment has been made performance conditions and there are no conditions to be met relating to the grant which remain in the control of the charity. 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 floor areas, or per capita, staff costs by the time spent and other costs by their usage.

ASSETS

Tangible fixed assets for use These are capitalised if they can be used for more than one year, and cost at least by the charity £500. They are valued at cost or a reasonable value on receipt. Investments Investments quoted on a recognised stock exchange are valued at market value at the year-end. Other investment assets are included at trustees' best estimate of market value.

Stocks and work in progress These are valued at the lower of cost or market value.

ADDITIONAL POLICIES

Gift aid is accounted on the date it is received from HMRC.

9

Trustee’s Report 2023-2024

Vineyard Community Church, Daventry Charity No. 1128805

Analysis of incoming resources

	Analysis	This year	Last year
		£	£
Voluntary income	Voluntary Donatons	23,055	20,894
	Gif Aid Receipts	9,348	8,548
	Total	32,403	29,442
Actvites for generatng	Funding for Food Bank, sales of Online Registraton	98,526	65,114
funds	system & Listening Hearts Contributons
	Total	98,526	65, 114
Analysis of resources expended
	Analysis	This year	Last year
		£	£
Charitable actvites	Community Serving Projects, training and leadership	43,689	29,126
	development, children and youth work
	Total	43, 689	29,126
Governance and running	Salaries	65,091	49,786
costs
	Utlites and Building Maintenance	7,960	6,763
	Travel Expenses	44	43
	Administraton & PR	941	37
	Licences & Subscriptons	885	774
	Total	74,921	57, 403
Oversees Missions & Other	Listening Hearts Children’s ministry	531	547
gifs
	Visitng ministries	0	0
	Total	531	547

10

Trustee’s Report 2023-2024

Vineyard Community Church, Daventry Charity No. 1128805

Paid Employees

Staff costs

			This year		Last year
			£		£
Gross wages, salaries and benefts in kind			65,091		49,786
Employer’s Natonal Insurance costs			0		0
Pension costs			-		-
		Total staf costs	65,091		49,786
Average number of full-tme equivalent employees in the year
The parts of the charity in which the employees work			This year		Last year
			number		number
Charitable Actvites			1		1
Governance			0.5		0.5
		Total	1.5		1.5
Tangible fxed assets
Cost or valuaton	Descripton				Value
					£
	Worship Equipment				250
				Total	250

11

IstA ril 2023- 31st March 2024 Accounts resented for ard Communit Church Davent Vine Charit No. 1128805 Examiner's Un ualified Re ort

I roport on th8 ￿￿oun1$ of the Trusl lor the year ondèd 31 Nt March 2024 Rob Gee Garelh Chappell Nick Wllmot Svillana Okoro-B Ch3lrman Ti8aAuf8r Trustee Trusloe es The eharilYs lrnslees arg responslble for the preparallon ol the a￿ount8. The charflV8 trustees Gonsid$r ihat an audll Is not raquired lor Ihls year undor sactlon 144121 of th8 Ch8rllles Act 2011 (the 2011 Acl) and Ihal an independ8nt examlnauon Ss ntseded. It Is my respJnslb411ty to.. examine the ac￿unt$ under soclion 145 01 the 2011 Act.. to follow the prL)cedures lald down in the general Dlrecllons given by the Charity CommL¥8ton under section 145{51{bl of the 2011 Act,. and to slate whether particular mattorg have como lo my att&nI￿n. Basls of Ihls re ort My examination was carried out in a￿ordanCe viith the general Directlons given by the Charity Cornmlsslon. An examination Includes a review of the accounting records kept by the charlly and a LX)mparison of the accounts presented with those records. 11 also includes consideration of any unusual items or dlsdosures in the acc£unls, and seeklng explanalions from you as trustees oncfjrning any such matters. The procedures undertaken do not provide all Ihe evidence that would be required in an audit and consequently no opIn￿n is given as lo whether the accounts present a 'Irue and fair view, and the report Is Ilmiled to those matters sel out in the statement below. stalemenl In connection with my examlnalion, no matter has come to my attention: (1) hlch glves me reasonable cauge to bolleve that In any malerfal rospect Ihe requirements: to keep accounling records in accordance with section 130 of the 2011 Act: and to prepare accounls wh￿h accord wlth the aC￿UntIng reo)rds and comply with the a¢counling requirements of th6 2011 Act have nol been met; or {2} to which. In my oplnlon, attentlon should b& drawn In order to enable a proper understandlng of the aco)unt8 to b& reached. Name.. Occupation: Address.. l(¥ C(ui.I C.IOJL Date.. |61112S