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2025-12-31-accounts

Literature Prize Foundation Trustees' Annual Report 2025

In the absence of sponsorships, a decision was taken to ‘mothball’ the Prize at the end of 2024, and no prize was delivered in 2025.

The Folio Academy Mentorships continued to operate during 2025, as funding for these was still in place (please see below for details).

1. Aim

For details on the Prize’s aims and objectives, please see previous Annual Reports. Details on the Mentorships follow.

2. Governance

i. The Literature Prize Foundation

The Writers’ Prize and Folio Academy Mentorships are managed by the Literature Prize Foundation, which is a charity registered in the jurisdiction of England and Wales (charity number 1151069). The charity is also informally known as the Folio Academy Foundation.

The Foundation is a body that incorporates the original vision and founding principles of the Prize, whose co-founders are Andrew Kidd and Kate Harvey. In 2025, no freelance consultants were retained for the Prize as it did not operate. The Mentorships were overseen by Ralf Webb, as they have been since their inception.

The Foundation is governed by a board of trustees who meet at least once a year to review the operational, financial and commercial performance of the Prize and to ensure it is fulfilling its duty of public benefit.

The Foundation alone has the right to engage staff, either permanent or temporary, to engage contractors for the provision of services, and to enter into any legal contracts on behalf of the Prize. All payments for goods or services are made through the Foundation.

All decisions relating to the activities and conduct of the Foundation are made by its trustees.

ii. The Board

The trustees in 2025 were:

Natasha Fairweather

Kate Harvey (prize co-founder)

Andrew Kidd (prize co-founder and Chair)

Suzy Lucas

iii. The Administration

The Administration of the Mentorships was overseen by Ralf Webb, reporting into the board.

3. Finances

See separate report. As the Charity’s funds were below £25,000 in 2025, and all existing funding was spent in support of a single, well-established initiative with clearly defined and limited costs, the Trustees concluded that no Independent Evaluator’s Report was required in 2025 and were satisfied that the accounts were in good order.

4. Sponsorship

i. Principal sponsor

There was no principal sponsor in 2025. The Mentorships were funded by a generous grant from Amazon Literary Partnership.

5. Academy

The Folio Academy is a group of individuals drawn from the world of books who have demonstrated a commitment to excellence in fiction. The great majority are writers themselves, and the remainder are literary critics. Many have strong connections to the UK, as the home of the Prize, but a large component is international.

Academy members are nominated by the Foundation. Invitations are issued by the Foundation. Existing Academy members are also able to suggest names to the Foundation.

There is no fixed size for the Academy. At the launch of the Prize, its membership was in excess of one hundred and has since more than tripled in size – at the time of writing there are over 350 members.

Mentors for the Folio Academy Mentorships are selected from the Academy, who in the absence of a Prize in 2025 played no further role.

6. 2025 Events

No events (with the exception of the Folio Academy Mentorship showcase) were run in 2025.

7. Partnerships

In March 2017 a new partnership with the literary charity, First Story, was announced. First Story, founded by former teacher Katie Waldegrave and the writer William Fiennes, brings talented professional writers into over 80 secondary schools serving low-income communities to work with teachers and students to foster creativity and communication skills. The new initiative was to be known as the Rathbones Folio Mentorships, and 2024-25 marked the eighth year of the scheme.

8. The Folio Academy Mentorships

In July 2025, the mentees for seventh year of the scheme read their work in a Showcase at the London Library, held in partnership with First Story. The mentors were Folio Academy members were Caroline Bird, Guy Gunaratne, Will Burns and Joelle Taylor.

In September 2025, the ninth incarnation of the Folio Academy Mentorships was launched. The mentors are Liz Berry, Ashley Hickson-Lovence, Sophie Mackintosh, and Yomi Ṣode.

The scheme, which has been widely praised, was supported by a grant from Amazon Literary Partnerships.

9. Outcomes

The first part of the Foundation’s principal aim – to promote reading and an appreciation of literature for the public benefit by selecting and raising the profile of the very best works of fiction and non-fiction published each year – was not met in 2025 as the Prize could not be delivered. However, the second part of its principal aim – to generate conversation about and around the ideas that writing, and writers, create – was successfully delivered via the Mentorships.

10. Summary

In the absence of funding, the Prize was not delivered in 2025.

As sufficient funding remained for the continuation of the Folio Academy Mentorships, thanks to the ongoing support of Amazon Literary Partnerships, a decision was taken that these should continue, and that the Charity remained a going concern as it had no liabilities beyond the costs associated with running the Mentorships programme, for which adequate funding was in place.

CC16a — Receipts and Payments Accounts

Charity Name:

Period from:

The Literature Prize Foundation

1 January 2025 To: 31 December 2025

Charity No: 1151069

Section A Receipts and Payments

Unrestricted funds Restricted
funds		 Endowment funds Total funds Last year
to nearest £ to nearest £ to nearest £ to nearest £ to nearest £
A1 Receipts
rant — Amazon.co.uk Ltd (ref: FCS003230847762) 15,000 - - 45,011
Bank interest 23 - - 66
- - -
-
- - -
-
- - -
-
- - -
-
- - -
-
- - -
-
Sub total (Gross income for AR) 15,023 0 0 15,023 45,077
A2 Asset and investment sales (see table)
- - -
-
- - -
-
Sub total 0 0 0 0 0
TOTAL RECEIPTS 15,023 0 0 15,023 45,077
A3 Payments
Programme coordinator — Ralf Webb (Folio, 12 mon 6,720 - - 6,510
Literary editor — William Burns 3,219 - - -
Editorial/production fees — Joelle Taylor 3,000 - - -
Mentorship fees — Caroline Bird (Folio) 2,099 - - 1,034
Mentorship fees — Guy Gunaratne (Folio) 3,000 - - -
Website maintenance — Calaweb 30 - - 1,619
Library subscription — London Library 72 - - -
Expenses — Ralf Webb 95 - - 99
Expenses — A N Kidd 268 - - 1,062
First Story -- expenses payment 460 - - 495
Bank charges 60 - - 62
- - -
-
Sub total 19,023 0 0 19,023 86,942

A4 Asset and investment purchases (see table)

- - -
-
- - -
-
Sub total 0 0 0 0 0
TOTAL PAYMENTS 19,023 0 0 19,023 86,942
Net of receipts / (payments) -4,000 0 0 -4,000 -41,865
A5 Transfers between funds 0 0 0 0 0
A6 Cash funds at last year end 16,172 0 0 16,172 58,038
Cash funds at this year end 12,172 0 0 12,172 16,172

Note: 'Last year' figures (2024) are drawn from the Literature Prize Foundation's 2024 cash book. Individual line items in the 2024 accounts used different payment categories; the sub-totals and totals reflect the audited 2024 figures (receipts £45,077; payments £86,942). Dashes in the Last Year column indicate no direct 2024 equivalent for that line.

Section B Statement of Assets and Liabilities at the end of the period (31 December 2025)

Unrestricted funds Restricted funds Endowment funds
B1 Cash funds
CAF Bank — CafCash Account (sort: 40-52-40, acct: 00025155) 12,172 - -
Total cash funds 12,172 - -
(should agree with 'Cash funds at this year end' in Section A)
B2 Other monetary assets
Internal reserve/deposit account (CAF acct 00016463) — see note 460

B3 Investment assets

None

None

B4 Assets retained for the charity's own use

None

None

B5 Liabilities

None

Signed on behalf of all the trustees:

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Print Name:
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Andrew Kidd

Date of approval: 19.06.2026

Signature: