ALL NATIONS CHARITABLE TRUST
ANNUAL TRUSTEES' REPORT
FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 AUGUST 2025
ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE AND DECISION MAKING
During the reporting period, one trustee, Johanna De Leeuw Van Weenen, resigned. Two new trustees were appointed as named below, bringing the total number of trustees to 4. Two trustees are related and declarations of interest are duly recorded with related parties abstaining from decisions relating to them, and if needed, one related party standing down from decision making to break deadlock – thankfully a deadlock situation has not occurred but the process can be triggered if needed.
Th trustees meet a minimum quarterly. Contact is maintained in between meetings to monitor the cash-flow, legal procedures, and general governance of the charity. The trustees for the period reported were
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Mahongo Shibemba - chair
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Eamonn Maloney
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Wana Shibemba
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Neville Jon Rigby- Finance Lead
The Trustees work together with the Eldership of the Church to ensure the charity is working in line with legal obligations and the charity’s Christian purpose. The Elder of the Church for the period reported was:
- Ezekiel Shibemba
REVIEW OF ACTIVITIES
This report aligns to the charity’s budget and financial reporting themes to demonstrate how the charity’s resources drive the charity’s aims, and church vision:
Vision and Strategy
The charity aims to promote the Christian good news, alleviating poverty, and suffering. This vision is driven through apostolic leadership and eldership oversight. The charity relates with apostolic and like-minded faith ministries. In the reporting period, the charity enabled the church to host several visiting speakers and attend various national and international conferences for shared sharpening and influence. The church elder/pastoral lead continued to provide leadership training in Eswatini, formerly Swaziland.The eldership/pastoral role is supported by a ministry assistant who supports the discipleship and community impact aspects of the charity’s work. With grant support, a part-time office manager was appointed on a fixed term contract to support financial reporting and office administration.
Discipleship
This underpins the work of enabling people to grow in their faith and in their expression of Christian values and practice. Several families were welcomed as new members, and some actively served as volunteers in various activities. We were delighted to have people become Christians for the first time and be baptised. The church continues to grow as a diverse community, with over 14 nationalities represented in its membership and regular attendees, reflecting the mandate of the church as a community of All Nations, called to pray for, and reach, all nations of our world. The charity continued to relate with, and support churches in Eswatini. A ministry team of two was sent to Eswatini for leadership training of churches there, the third year in a row to send a team, in collaboration with a related charity, Ministries Without Borders. In further partnership with Ministries Without Borders, the
church hosted a team of young missionaries from Brazil who volunteered for two weeks, reaching the community in Oldham; praying for people and explaining the Christian message of love, repentance, forgiveness, and hope as well as undertaking a range of community activities. Youth and children’s activities continued. Several youths participated in a national weekend residential conference, Ransomed, with similar age young people from across the United Kingdom. This helped the young people grow in their faith and in their expression of Christian values that will underpin how they live responsibly in their schools and community. The children’s team was consolidated with a new leader and curriculum training which strengthened activities for children, aligning with school-based strategies. The team team was trained in supporting children with special educational needs and disabilities, and to make reasonable adjustments to ensure all children can thrive and benefit from our activities.
Community Impact
It is the church and charity’s strong belief that faith is outworked in its impact on the wider community. We believe we are in Oldham to restore the community, to shape and influence all aspects of community renewal. To this end, we remain excited to partner with local schools, Oldham Council, and as a network of faith and voluntary agencies, through Action Together Oldham. We consolidated progress made in previous years by continuing involvement with the Oldham Community Health Champions Network and the Oldham Community Centres Network, ensuring families in our wider community receive coordinated support. The UK continued to experience a cost-of-living crisis with high fuel prices forcing even working families into hardship. We continued to expand our Bags of Hope project from just food and hygiene support to families to include hampers for newborns, vouchers for food and electricity costs. This strand of the Charity’s Poor and Needy work drew wider support and grant funding resulting in hundreds more of individuals supported this year than in previous years. We have established an effective process, providing vouchers for families to pay for utilities, buy food or essentials such as school uniform. The local community know they can quickly visit the church building when in need and will receive help. Members of the church were also incredibly generous in their donations, with several making specific regular donations towards the Bags of Hope/Poor and Needy projects. We continued to provide a work club supporting people with employability skills, mock interviews and supporting them to gain good jobs. We believe work is a gift from God as he wants people to exert themselves, by ‘working the world’ and to prosper, as ‘the Lord gives the ability to create wealth’.
We are delighted with consistent growth in our rebranded adult and child Stay and Play group, We Nurture, which is increasingly popular with families. We continued to hold several community fun events, and street outreach events, achieving direct contact with hundreds of Oldham residents.
Administration
The charity ensures compliance with all required legal and safeguarding processes and is affiliated to various organisations to ensure this. Pastoral leaders and volunteers are trained in safeguarding, health and safety and other areas as needed. The start of the reporting financial year saw us significantly progress our building refurbishment project. We appointment a reputable local builder to undertake internal remodelling, which continues. The refurbishment project is phased, enabling the building to remain open for church and charitable activities and room hire.
Financial review
RESULT
The charity’s substantive income continued to be from giving by church members through tithes and offerings. This primarily supports pastoral and faith activities. The year reviewed saw an increase in building hire income which is expected to increase in future years and is invested in charitable activities. The charity also received gift aid as well as restricted and unrestricted grant income toward community projects.
GOING CONCERN
After making appropriate enquiries, the trustees have a reasonable expectation that the charity has adequate resources to continue in operational existence for the foreseeable future. For this reason, they continue to adopt the going concern basis in preparing the financial statements. Further details regarding the adoption of the going concern basis can be found in the Accounting Policies.
RESERVES POLICY
The Trustees have determined that, in line with their belief that God provides for the work to which He calls His people, no reserves should be unnecessarily built up. The Trustees have considered the level of reserves they wish to retain, appropriate to the charity's needs. This will be based on the charity's size and the level of financial commitments held. The Trustees aim to ensure the charity will be able to continue to fulfil its charitable objectives even if there is a temporary shortfall in income or unexpected expenditure.
Plans for the future
FUTURE DEVELOPMENTS
The charity aims to retain financial sustainability by increasing membership donations and building hire. The charity is pleased to have received income from building hire during the year reviewed, achieving the objective from previous years. It is anticipated that building hire income will increase in future years, adding to financial sustainability. The charity plans to increase income from building hire by completing renovation of the building to make it fully functional, appealing and accessible. To increase the outreach capacity, the charity plans to retain ministry personnel, ministry support, admin and project support staff and contractors.
The charity will continue the work and employability support club, midweek groups, We Nurture play group, youth group, health and wellbeing support, and the Bags of Hope projects as vital means of supporting the poor and needy in the church and wider community. We will consolidate local and international faith and community partnerships, including with like-minded churches through Ministries Without Borders network, Oldham local church networks, Oldham council, and Action Together network of faith and voluntary agencies.