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2023-03-31-accounts

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~ The Advocacy Academy’s ~

State of the Movement 2022/23

Building the Collective Power of Young People to Create a More Fair, Just, and Equal Society for All

INTRODUCTION 2
WELCOME TO THE ADVOCACY ACADEMY 3
OUR STRATEGIC FRAMEWORK 4
STEERING OUR SHIP TOWARDS A MORE FAIR, JUST AND EQUAL
FUTURE 7
DEVELOPING OUR CULTURE: TRANSFORMATIVE JUSTICE APPROACH 7
BUILDING A VALUES-LED CULTURE 7
CAMPAIGNING FOR CHANGE 8
CAMPAIGNS & ALUMNI DEPARTMENTAL STRATEGY UPDATE 8
CAMPAIGN UPDATES: THE FELLOWSHIP 9
CAMPAIGN UPDATES: HOST PROGRAMME 10
ABOUT THE HOST PROGRAMME: 10
CURRENT HOSTED CAMPAIGNS: 10
MORE CAMPAIGNS & ACTIVIST PROJECTS AT TAA 10
AN UPDATE ON OUR ALUMNI 11
DEVELOPING LEADERS WITH LIVED EXPERIENCE OF INJUSTICE 12
PROGRAMME UPDATES & OVERVIEW 12
OUR SAFEGUARDING ROADMAP 15
ORGANISING OUR COMMUNITY 15
FINDING OUR FEET: CREATING A HUB FOR OUR COMMUNITIES 15
COMMUNITY BUILDING 15
OPENING OUR HUB 16
WHAT’S BRIXTON SAYING? A COMMUNITY LISTENING CAMPAIGN 16
A WORKING IDEOLOGY FOR TAA 17
WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE COMMUNITY DEPARTMENT? 19
ACTIVATING NEW ALLIES 20
OUR IMPACT THIS YEAR 20
KEY RISKS AND UNCERTAINTIES 22
STEERING THE SHIP 25
OUR THREE-YEAR STRATEGY FOR TAA 25
INVESTING IN OUR GOVERNANCE, FINANCE, HR & OPERATIONS 25
BUILDING OUR COMMERCIAL OBJECTIVES 26

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EVOLVING OUR PROGRAMME INFRASTRUCTURE 26
CAMPAIGNING FOR CHANGE 26
MOVING TOWARDS A MEMBERSHIP MODEL 26
EXTENDING HOST 27
ORGANISING OUR COMMUNITY 28
BUILDING OUR INSTITUTIONAL POWER 28
INVESTING IN OUR COMMUNITY HUB 28
ACTIVATING NEW ALLIES 28
COMMUNICATING TO OUR COMMUNITY 28
OUR CURRENT STAFF 30
OUR PATRON AND TRUSTEES 32
GOVERNANCE 33
ACCOUNTS 35

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INTRODUCTION

We faced a turbulent landscape and embraced our daring transformation.

In March 2021, there were only three staff members working at The Advocacy Academy. Three staff members responsible for running an £700K charity which supported 150 young people across a suite of residential programmes - while we always knew we needed to restructure TAA it wasn’t until we looked under the hood that we realised how much. The departure of a significant amount of the founding staff team is always a challenge for an organisation without the added headwind of important concerns raised by our communities who relied on our expertise and goodwill shared in solidarity. While we were lucky to have much of our funding largely unrestricted, we would have been unable to continue in any meaningful way if we had delayed our programme's delivery for more than a year. This left us the unenviable challenge of having to rebuild the entire house from its foundations within a year to meet even a portion of the expectations still outstanding.

During this time, we saw the closure of larger organisations. It has been an important reminder that we are not the only, and certainly not the first, organisation to face these challenges. Also, it has been no small feat to get to where we are today. Finding Nemo was (controversially, I know) never my favourite Pixar movie and yet the phrase, “Just keep swimming” was playing on repeat in my head.

Despite where we started, I feel confident in saying that we are once again a trusted institution, not trusted by all (which is only to be expected) but trusted by many. Young people who have not engaged with TAA since they graduated from the initial programme they went through however many years ago are coming back to our spaces. At the time of writing this note, we have 11 live campaigning groups, two new cohorts of young people excited to explore their first taste of organising and we hosted our most well attended membership event in August 2022 – Rest is Resistance. We reopened our community hub on Vining St, and began to pull in steady income and most importantly host interesting and exciting events and groups from across the activist community. One of my favourite moments of 2022 was about our open house on gentrification in the local area which brought together almost 40 people including members of the council and local activists that have been working on this issue for over 30 years. None of this would have been possible without the tireless efforts of our staff team. Growing from 3 to 19 people in just 18 months has definitely had its growing pains but through it all the staff team weathered the storms with joy, creativity and belief in the mission and potential of The Advocacy Academy and the young people we work with.

In the last few months all of this investment has begun to coalesce. The senior leadership team is bedded in, and the broader staff team is able to create spaces to dream of the future. There is still a lot left to do. We critically need to backfill some critical roles in our Communications and Campaigning teams. Relationships rebuilt remain wobbly and there is still some trust to earn. The team needs a break after a hard sprint last year and the organisation remains vulnerable to big economic and political shifts. Yet, the path ahead feels manageable – a more routine set of restructuring and investments if you will. I am also thrilled to have Daniel and Marjorie join us on the Board. My conversations with them have provided some much-needed security and filled me with a sense of excitement for what we can imagine, and of course, what good trouble we can conjure in the world. As we reflect on our key learnings from 2022-23, join us as our movement embarks on the most exciting part of its journey so far.

Saba Shafi, CEO

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WELCOME TO THE ADVOCACY ACADEMY

We are youth organisers working to create a more fair, just, and equal society, by building the collective power of young people to bring about change. We train young people with lived experience of injustice to achieve long-term systemic change for themselves and the communities they live in. We combine formal instruction in social and economic systems, practical training in community organising, with the heart and soul of radical youth work. We equip young people with the knowledge, skills and confidence to become active agents for change in the community.

Our work to date has focused on three core areas:

  1. The delivery of a highly regarded community organising, training programmes for young people (the Fellowship, Spark and Changemaker Development programmes).

  2. The development of young people’s campaigning work, helping them build campaigns that shake the nation, supporting them through a membership model.

  3. The bringing together of young people and local civic leaders in our community hub in the heart of Brixton, rooting our work in community and solidarity.

At our heart we believe that young people are best able to create the futures they want to see in this world. Looking ahead, we want to ensure The Advocacy Academy matches the scale and ambition of our 200+ members, providing them, their campaigns and our allies the support they will require over the coming years.

OUR VISION FOR A MORE FAIR JUST AN EQUAL WORLD

OUR MISSION

Build the power of young people aged 16 – 25 with lived experience of injustice to take action to realise systemic change for themselves and their communities.

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OUR STRATEGIC FRAMEWORK

We have a clear view of our destination. But with no precedent in the UK, we’re tackling through uncharted waters to reach it. We don’t have a map or ten-point plan to follow - so instead, in 2020 we created a Compass for Change to guide us. Our compass orientates us across four poles, with every choice we make guided by our Advocates Charter and our Theory of Social Change.

The core thinking we developed in 2020 remains true. Our Compass for Change (see left) reflects the ‘known knowns’ of this work. Achieving our vision and delivering on our mission requires investment in these four quadrants. Critically through the restructure it has become clear that the historic focus on entry programmes, on the “developing leaders” quadrant while important initially has not over time prevented us from delivering on the promises we made to our young people and to our funders and partners.

True growth and scale come from more balanced investment across all four areas:

1st phase of growth - Developing Leaders: To build the minimum scale for organising, investing in this initial activation point was necessary, but at a certain scale it is no longer sufficient. Increasing the number of young people entering our movement doesn’t help if they aren’t supported once they’re in!

2nd phase of growth – Organising the Community & Campaigning for Change: With enough numbers in membership, it is critical to invest in building institutional power with local (geographic, sector, values) communities, and to focus on our membership and campaigns. Focus here allows us to rapidly scale our national impact.

3rd phase of growth – Activating new Allies: At some point our impact and power will be limited unless we bring in new partnerships, allies, and expansions. This can come through online materials, hosting for non-membership groups, etc. expansion of our activation programmes.

OUR COMPASS FOR CHANGE

DEVELOPING LEADERS: WE ARE TRAINING YOUNG PEOPLE WITH LIVED EXPERIENCE

We believe that those with lived experience are the best placed to lead change, so we focus on building the skills, experience, connections, and confidence of young people to organise in their communities and become life-long agents of change. Our young people learn to analyse socio-political conditions, identify innovative solutions to problems they have experienced, and run their own grassroots campaigns which seek specific policy changes that will benefit their communities.

We have two main entry programmes: the Fellowship, a

six-month leadership programme, and Spark, a one week introduction. These are supported by the

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Changemaker Development Programme, which trains graduates from our entry programmes in activist youth work allowing them to lead our programmes.

We measure our success through pre-and post-questionnaires which assess young people’s experience, their learning of key skills and knowledge, and their confidence and intention to continue their journey as activists.

CAMPAIGNING FOR CHANGE: WE ARE BUILDING OUR IMPACT AS A POLITICAL MOVEMENT

Every Movement has a campaigning arm and a training arm, and The Advocacy Academy is no different. Most movements focus on their campaigns in the beginning, and then later develop their training and membership absorption arms. Because our Theory of Change holds that young people with lived experience should be leading our campaigns, it was critical for us to start by building the best social justice training programme in the country.

We support our young people to deliver Campaigns. More information on the campaigns delivered are provided later in the report.

We work with young people to incubate and explore justice issues and develop campaigns. Once a campaign is stabilised and ready to launch, they are hosted within our governance structures and provided with steady support through their expansion. We also support our young people in creating their own organising and governance structures, accessing training and employment in activist organisations, as well as helping them socialise.

We measure the success of our work through turn-out and participation, number of campaigns in incubation and being hosted, and through the impact our campaigns have on the world.

ORGANISING OUR COMMUNITY: WE ARE GROWING OUR COMMUNITY

The power we are building is relational (among and between people) because history has shown us more times than we can count that well-organised people can challenge dominant power (power over people) and win. We work closely with schools, community groups, activists, and youth workers to grow our impact. We also open our Brixton Campus for Young Activists to other grassroots organisations in South London, building bridges between movements and offering much-needed space to organise our community. We have moved away from using volunteers and offer all our supporters’ honorariums for their time.

We work with local grassroots organisations to access our Hub in Brixton also supporting them with needs on an adhoc basis. We also host open houses and solidarity events connecting our young people with local activists. The programmes here are in development as we explore the communities’ needs and interests.

We measure the success of our work through turn-out and participation, and Campus usage. KPIs will develop as we further develop programmes.

ACTIVATING NEW ALLIES: WE ARE SUPPORTING NEW AND EXISTING ALLIES IN THE UK

We want youth organising to flourish in every corner of the UK, but we have always been a locally rooted movement. Putting a Campus in every town has never been our goal. Instead, we want to invest in the infrastructure that will allow us to activate new allies and support them to unleash the power of the young people in their orbit. Through our train-the-trainer work, we will share our learnings, experience, energy, tools, and resources with other grassroots movements as they develop their own young leaders and campaigns.

We are not actively developing programmatic work in this department and are pursuing things adhoc for the time being.

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STEERING OUR SHIP TOWARDS A MORE FAIR, JUST AND EQUAL FUTURE

DEVELOPING OUR CULTURE: TRANSFORMATIVE JUSTICE APPROACH

As we grow our team, we want to ensure that we build an internal culture which actively seeks to avoid replicating harm. We have decided to manage this process through a transformative justice framework. In essence, transformative justice is a radical, abolitionist approach to addressing harms that occur to, or within communities, that seeks to address the root causes of harm and respond in a way that prevents further harm. Instead of punishment, transformative justice seeks understanding, meaningful apologies, and healing. Transformative justice is a political framework that “actively cultivate[s] the things we know prevent violence such as healing, accountability, resilience, and safety for all involved”[1] .

For us, this has meant changing the way that we relate to each other - from the micro interactions we have day to day, to the macro structures and policies that guide and enable our work.

“We will tell each other we hurt people, and who. We will tell each other why, and who hurt us and how. We will tell each other what we will do to heal ourselves and heal the wounds in our wake. We will be accountable, rigorous in our accountability, all of us unlearning, all of us crawling towards dignity. We will learn to set and hold boundaries, communicate without manipulation, give, and receive consent, ask for help…” Adrienne Maree Brown, We Will Not Cancel Us, 2021.

BUILDING A VALUES-LED CULTURE

Through the TCCP that we began last year, our staff team agreed that our culture should not be a fixed point but rather a set of values that will guide us as we reimagine our Movement. These are:

We will be continuously working on how we evolve these into a set of behaviours, in areas including how we prioritise, line manage, address conflict, communicate, hold meetings, and how we take responsibility.

The journey - for ourselves as a Movement, and for our wider communities towards a more fair, just and equal society - has not been, and was never going to be, a smooth one. By acknowledging this and placing focus on how we can heal and keep going, we can feel confident in setting a course for change.

1 “Transformative Justice: A brief description” Mia Mingus, 2018: https://transformharm.org/transformative-justice-a-brief-description/

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CAMPAIGNING FOR CHANGE

CAMPAIGNS & ALUMNI DEPARTMENTAL STRATEGY UPDATE

During 2022-23, the campaigns department shifted our focus from solely supporting Fellowship & Alumni Campaigns to integrating this work with our wider Alumni support function by developing a new model of “Membership” for those who have completed their programs but want to remain active in the TAA community and campaigning work both with TAA and beyond. This shift moved from the previous emphasis on initial programmatic engagement (typically the Fellowship) to a framework that supports young people to actively campaign and participate in the TAA community.

We have always had the goal of being a 75% youth-led movement by 2025. What that means is the Alumni leading in the development and delivery of our programmes; becoming embedded in our staff team and decision making; and taking control across the Movement as a whole.

During the time period of 2022-23, we began to conceptualise the journey of a young person in their time with TAA:

The Campaigns Team worked with the existing Alumni to develop a new model of engagement based around the creation of distinct categories of Membership & Alumni.

We are working on the assumption that to do this young people in membership at minimum need the following:

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We significantly reorganised the way we provide existing Alumni and Campaigns support when young people end their time with Spark and the Fellowship to ensure that we create a community and offer that ensures these things are in place and to develop a model of Membership that best serves Young People who are already involved in and will become part of TAA in the future.

During the 2022-23 period, we worked with Alumni to determine what a Membership Model should and could look like through a consultation process and we developed a new staffing model (including hiring) that supported this. At the point of writing this report, we are developing Darcey’s role (currently Head of Cyclical Leadership) to shift to the title of Head of Member-Led Governance by May 2023.

We have also placed a real emphasis on care and rebuilding trust with the existing Fellowship Alumni through our interactions with the hope this lays the groundwork for this engagement to succeed (see Alumni updates on page 13).

CAMPAIGN UPDATES: THE FELLOWSHIP

We have worked closely with the Fellowship Team to develop a new pathway for Advocates to develop their campaigning experience as part of the Fellowship. This has included:

This year we are working with the Programmes Team to support the new Fellowship Campaign Groups and Campaign Partners. The new campaigns are:

  1. Secure - Working on Housing

  2. Coils, Curls & Colours - working with the HALO collective on Hair Euphoria

  3. Under the Umbrella - an intersectional feminist collective interested in medical sexism

  4. Genuine Justice - exploring Criminal Justice.

*Photos from the Campaigns Team from the Summer Residential

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CAMPAIGN UPDATES: HOST PROGRAMME

ABOUT THE HOST PROGRAMME:

HOST is the name of our campaign’s infrastructure offer for youth led campaigns. This means that we will act as the legal entity responsible for the campaign or project and provide support for groups to manage their money, develop effective systems to self organise and provide strategic and pastoral support as needed. We see this as an important piece of infrastructure currently missing in the youth campaigning space and we are still working through some aspects of the policy.

CURRENT HOSTED CAMPAIGNS:

Halo: The Halo campaign works to end hair discrimination. There are currently more than 500 employers who have adopted the Halo code. Meetings of the team have resumed after an extended summer break with a new team forming to support groups who want to adopt the Halo Code. The team have also agreed a price structure for their consultancy and speaking rates which should help with standardising income generation. Notable activities this summer include an invitation for Kaisha Wade to give a TedX talk, Morrisons adopting the code and a number of invites to speak at black history month events.

Choked Up: Choked UP continue to campaign on air pollution and are shifting their focus to both support the rollout of local clean air zones and work towards new air quality legislation. For the next year Anjali will be taking a gap year and working on Choked Up for 2-3 days a week and with our support has received funding from Blagrave’s Challenge & Change fund. We have additional funding applications in place to support Choked Up’s growth.

MUINPE: Members of LatinXcluded continue to work on the activist show MUINPE ( My Uncle Is Not Pablo Escobar). We have given them £5k to support their ongoing development of this work. We will also now be housing them through an amended offer as part of the HOST program and are currently submitting a joint application the Baring Foundation. We are working to explore how we might support their upcoming residency at Brixton House and a two-week festival of events around this in 2023.

MORE CAMPAIGNS & ACTIVIST PROJECTS AT TAA

Collective Punishment: This is a new campaign being led by Jemmar Samuels to tackle the issues children of prisoners face when their parents are imprisoned. We supported Jemmar with a successful application to Blagrave’s Challenge & Change Fund which will allow her to spend 2 days a week working on early campaign development. We are supporting this through fortnightly supervision sessions.

ReRoot.Ed: They continue with the Voices project in partnership with Decolonising Geography. The VoicesProject is a collaboration between teachers, students and institutions aiming to create a more inclusive, critical, and anti-racist curriculum. The project uses oral histories to talk about geographical themes and historical moments, whilst centring the voices of cultural groups who don't usually get to be heard in the classroom. The VoicesProject resources consist of oral histories, transcripts, context sheets and lesson plans. These resources are now live and can be found on their website.

Fill In the Blanks: Members of Fill In The Blanks have joined a working group with the NEU and The Runnymede Trust advising the Government on their curriculum development and will be pursuing this as their main focus going forwards.

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Housing: Planning permission has been submitted for the Lambeth CLT and London CLT continue to lead on the offer of support for this project. JP has moved on to the planning committee to help expedite.

AN UPDATE ON OUR ALUMNI

The team focused on rebuilding trust and engagement with the Alumni through the following activities:

What have we learnt from this about our approach to re-engaging Alumni?

These activities demonstrated the real value of showing care and attention to the Alumni Community and we have received good feedback around care packages, creating space for rest and the desire to invest more clearly in the Alumni Community.

However, the retreat in particular flagged a number of pre-existing challenges (mostly relating to the transformative culture work) around developing the Alumni work. Employing Alumni to plan and deliver events for themselves is popular and creates a useful insight into the process, however, there is a need to ensure that this participation is meaningful, roles are clearly defined, and pay is standardised across organisation wide Alumni engagement.

Next steps:

This work directly informs our approach to how we will approach the consultation process around moving to a Membership model and what this should like and will mean for existing Alumni. This idea of a consultation was ‘soft launched’ and very well received on retreat and will be the focus for Alumni engagement this term. We will also aim to organise at least one social/political education event before the end of the year to maintain momentum around wider ways of engaging with TAA.

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DEVELOPING LEADERS WITH LIVED EXPERIENCE OF INJUSTICE

PROGRAMME UPDATES & OVERVIEW

There have been a number of changes in our Programmes Department at TAA. This includes a growing team, changes to the contents of our programmes and changes in the way we offer support and structure within our programmes, including supervision support and safeguarding.

In November 2021, we hired three Alumni as TAA graduates, Betty Mayo, Ilhan Yonis and Mel Pinto to work as Movement Leaders. They were then joined by Shoomi Chowdhury, our new Programmes Director, in February 2022, Maddy Leftwitch, our Changemaker Leadership Lead in May 2022, and by Frankie Garnons Williams as our new Head of Fellowship in July 2022.

THE FELLOWSHIP PROGRAMME

Our 2022-23 Fellowship underwent a number of changes. The Movement Leaders, Associate Director of Spark, CEO and now the Programmes Director were all holding this work in different forms, but the capacity gap has posed a number of challenges. We looked at ways to transform the Fellowship from recruitment, delivery to aftercare. These changes are underway and at the time of writing this report, we have developed our Head of Fellowship role.

The Movement Leaders led on the changes to and delivery of the recruitment process. They engaged Alumni in redesigning how we run assessment centres and changes they’d like to see to the fellowship. They also expanded our reach to South London schools and brought in 20 more

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schools during the recruitment phase. In 2022 we ran recruitment for Spark and Fellowship together and allowed applicants to express their interest in either or both programmes and received a total of 79 applicants.

We also made a concerted effort to look into Increasing accessibility to the fellowship and exploring how we could make our programmes truly accessible.

Our work on transforming our culture has influenced how we have rewritten our Assessment centres and how we will redesign the fellowship. With assessment centres we have moved away from having trauma as a requirement and moving more towards how applicants are disadvantaged by a system rather than the experience of interpersonal incidents that have led to trauma and make up lived experience. This is still a work in progress, but we are moving in the right direction and are not requiring young people to trauma dump as a way to get on to the fellowship.

Our redesign of the fellowship started in June 2022 leading to stakeholder engagement with programmes team, Alumni, Changemakers and wider staff. We worked with freelance creative artist Liv Wynter to run these sessions. We looked at what we could change in the interim to make the fellowship, especially the summer residential, a safe and thriving space for young people as well as changemakers and staff. We have looked at what we want to keep, drop, adapt, and add to the fellowship curriculum, and how we run a fellowship with boundary time periods, with supervision and support built in for staff, changemakers and advocates.

ALUMNI PROGRAMME UPDATE

In March 2022, we took the decision to move our Alumni programmes to our Campaign Department. Please see the Campaigns & Alumni Department report on page 10 for an update on Alumni Programmes.

SPARK PROGRAMME

Program Development and Goals

At The Advocacy Academy, we are committed to refining our programs to empower young changemakers. Our goals have revolved around enhancing our flagship 5-day Spark program, ensuring its smooth delivery, and expanding its impact. To achieve this, we are intensifying our efforts in several key areas.

Our Strategic Planning

Our strategic planning is characterised by a thoughtful approach to program delivery. We have made significant decisions to advance our mission. In line with our Changemaker Development Programme, we are now set to deliver two Spark programs. The first will involve young individuals selected through our schools’ outreach efforts, while the second will focus thematically on the pressing issue of climate change, delivered in collaboration with partner organisations.

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Additionally, we are actively working with our Alumni team to create pathways for Spark participants to engage in campaigns and other Alumni initiatives. This strategic alignment ensures that young changemakers have a clear trajectory for continued impact beyond their Spark experience.

Reflections on transformative culture work

Our commitment to transformative culture work is underscored by our experiences and reflections. Following the July 2021 Spark program, we embarked on a deliberate journey to enhance the October half-term residential. This involved reevaluating our cultural norms and expectations, which required time and intentional effort.

To support this transformative process, our team engaged in close collaboration, fostering co-creation among team members and Alumni Changemakers. Regular meetings provided a space for in-depth support and reflection, enabling us to navigate challenges and maintain our course. Through comprehensive reviews of program components, including culture-setting, campaigns education, and various experiential social justice learning sessions, we developed a plan that prioritised what was both ideal and achievable for the October residential.

We successfully implemented numerous changes, positively received by our young participants, external Changemakers, and Alumni Changemakers. As we plan for upcoming Spark programs, our aim is to further implement necessary changes, continually refine our approach, and adapt based on our progress. This iterative process ensures that we remain dedicated to empowering the next generation of changemakers.

CHANGEMAKER DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME UPDATE

The period of 2022-23 has seen a significant number of changes to our Changemaker Apprenticeship, starting with its new name. Those changes are explained below. TAA’s commitment to our transformative culture work has influenced many of these changes including a curriculum redesign, a more transparent and consent-based approach to communication and recruitment of this year's Alumni Changemakers. This July will be the first time we are rolling out this new approach and we are excited to see how it is received by our Alumni Changemakers.

Changemaker Terms

It is now called the Changemaker Development Programme (CDP). There are no longer any Younger Changemakers titles, or Older Changemakers titles. This language was ageist and hierarchical. Whilst there is a hierarchy in the roles at the Academy, connected to decision making power, responsibility and experience we don't want to use language that upholds problematic dynamics. Alumni on the programme are now called Changemakers.

Leadership Lead

We have hired a wonderful new person called Maddy Leftwich who will be joining the Changemaker Development Programme. She will be running the CDP alongside Darcey Williamson and will deliver the CDP on the Fellowship and Spark programmes.

HIRING ALUMNI AS CHANGEMAKERS

Changing Structure, Development & Compensation

Before, how much Changemaker alumni were paid was determined by the number of hours they had worked. This has changed, now their compensation is related to the quality of their practice. To

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support them to reflect on this and step into challenge, we have created a guide (see below) that describes different stages that their practice might develop through or into. As ever nothing is static, this an offering for us to explore through and it will be changed with the Changemakers feedback as we go.

Moving through the stages will be a collaborative decision process between the Changemakers, Darcey, and the CDP Lead (Maddy). To change stages, they will demonstrate the abilities and experience they have developed which will be considered through 3 parts: their practice on the placement; 121 reflection sessions. These take part after their placements where they can critically reflect on your development and affirm that amazing work they've done; feedback from the leadership lead.

OUR SAFEGUARDING ROADMAP

We are focused on accomplishing three pivotal initiatives to strengthen our safeguarding and pastoral care efforts. Firstly, we aim to transition the Designated Safeguarding Lead role from Imane Maghrani (Associate Director Spark Programmes) to Shoomi Chowdhury (Programmes Director). Additionally, our goal is to update and prepare our safeguarding and pastoral care plans and processes for summer residentials and all our engagements with young people, making sure they are fully in place and effective by the end of this fiscal year.

Lastly, we are laying the groundwork for a more comprehensive, long-term safeguarding, well-being, and pastoral care initiative through a justice lens. This perspective will continue to guide our ongoing efforts in creating a supportive and equitable environment for young people, aligned with our core mission. These endeavours underscore our commitment to ensuring safeguarding and pastoral care throughout the journey that our members and alumni take with us.

ORGANISING OUR COMMUNITY

From re-opening up our Vining Street headquarters, to running TAA’s very first Community Listening Campaign, 2022 was a very busy and impactful year for our newly vamped Community Department! Here are some of the highlights from the year that has been.

FINDING OUR FEET: CREATING A HUB FOR OUR COMMUNITIES

Early 2022 was a very exciting time for the Community Department at The Advocacy Academy. Hiba Ahmad, our Community Director, joined in February and together with alumni staff members Vanessa Castro, Stephanie Cohen, and Shiden Tekle, had a big job cut out for them - re-opening our Vining Street headquarters and getting alumni and staff back into it, while also inviting in allies and partners in the community and social justice sector to use it.

Campus, as the headquarters was lovingly called by staff and alumni alike, was soon redubbed the TAA Community Hub to make it seem less school-like (Academy and Campus are not a great combination!). Using word of mouth and building networks slowly but surely, the Hub soon became a staple of the local scene again - a welcoming, open, and affordable space for all who want to make a change in their communities and in the world.

COMMUNITY BUILDING

Since March 2022, we’ve been steadily working on building trust and networks within the wider community in Brixton and broader South London. We conducted a community mapping exercise with the wider staff team which identified over 100 potential groups to further collaborate with both locally and nationally and have since started making introductions and booking meetings with the

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more strategically important ones. These meetings have yielded many interesting connections and collaborations, with both grassroots networks and established institutions. To this date, we’ve made connections and started collaborations with groups such the Southwark and Lambeth anti-raids networks, LGBTQ organisation Mosaic, the Black Cultural Archives, The Voice, Friends of Windrush Square, and revived collaborations with existing partners such as The High Trees Trust.

Moving forward, the team will keep working on relationship building with the community and opening our Campus up to the community. We have also slowly started divesting from using the name Campus for our space with non-TAA folks, as the language was confusing for community groups who wanted to use the space but were unsure if it was school property or a part of a university structure.

We are also getting involved in community initiatives - working on policing justice with local coalitions, attending local meetings for the local Recreation centre, organising through Citizens UK network, and hosting a series of community events for Pride in July 2022, Black History Month in October 2022, and a series of other events aimed at making space for the community.

OPENING OUR HUB

Operating on a solidarity payscale which meant unfunded groups could get the space for free while funded groups kept the space open, the Hub had over 80 bookings from a minimum of 30 different groups over the period May - December 2022. It saw the re-establishment of a Lambeth CopWatch, it hosted a Latinx summer school for young children, as well as groups like Brixton Neighbourhood Forum and Aya Learning Community and had workshops and celebrations from the TAA community too! It also hosted groups visiting from Sweden, Canada, and the US who were curious about TAA’s work and mission.

The team has also been busy spreading TAA’s magical recipe of political education and community building in the form of Open Houses - a series of free and accessible events for the broader communities in Lambeth and beyond to discuss the things that matter to them. Over the last year, the team has hosted conversations around issues such as gentrification and policing, and celebrations of our queer community members, Black community members, and Latinx communities across London.

Finally, visitors from outside the UK and various community groups are also not the only people we have been hosting at the Hub this year. As the cost-of-living crisis made our homes and communities colder and poorer, we came together as an organisation to meet the need of safe, accessible, warm, and reliable spaces for teenagers to exist without pressure in the community. And so, Marhaba Space was born - a weekly space for young people in and outside of movement to hang out, do homework, be silly, eat patties, and be in community. This space, which is our first attempt at Open Access work at TAA, has been a success with many young people, both alumni and others, enjoying it throughout the year.

However, all good things must come to an end. As we near the end of 2023, we will need to close the chapter on Vining Street as TAA’s contract for the space is sadly running out. But this will not be the end of our journey - only the start of a new one! We are working hard to secure a new space and have big ambitions to continue our space-based organising, in a new, bigger, and bolder space which we are calling our Liberation Centre. The space will continue to enable us to do our work while offering community members, social justice practitioners and organisers, and our partners across London and the UK a space to dream, discuss, and change our politics for the better.

WHAT’S BRIXTON SAYING? A COMMUNITY LISTENING CAMPAIGN

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Community Team undertook a Listening Campaign in late 2022 - early 2023 to find out what makes Brixton tick.

Over the course of a few weeks, the team defied the winter cold and had over 80 conversations with organisers, Brixton residents, and independent and small traders in the markets, to find out what the big issues in the area were.

The campaign culminated in conversations about neighbourhood planning, political apathy, struggling with cost-of-living crisis, and a sense of restlessness and rootlessness for a lot of the people involved. But in a way, it was also a love letter to a neighbourhood which has been home to many communities from across the world, and which many feel completely at home in. The Listening Campaign re-affirmed TAA’s commitment to continue building spaces for community-building and political organising, while also highlighting the need and appetite for young people’s leadership in the community.

A WORKING IDEOLOGY FOR TAA

Changes are in the air - and TAA is no stranger to it! Last year saw the development of a new working ideology for our organising work. As our organisation enters its 9th year of existence in 2023, it has become clear that we need to articulate and re-articulate the way we think about ourselves and our role in both our local communities, in the social justice sector, in the youth working sector, as well as the broader movement for progressive change.

Facilitated and pulled together by the Community Director and the CEO, the TAA staff team spent a lot of time thinking through how they will be moving in a constantly shifting world. Guided by principles of intersectionality, solidarity, and the principles of no liberation for anyone without the liberation of everyone, TAA has committed itself to the following:

We recognise that you cannot be neutral on a moving train, meaning we will apply a material, strategic, and intersectional analysis to relationship building, power, and that this will be reflected in the way we connect and organise with our young people, partners, and communities.

We recognise the complexity of the struggles we are waging and recognise that no one sits on all the answers alone.

We recognise that justice can look different to different people, and that we are one of many organisations and groups out there trying to make the world a better, more just place. We also recognise that this work is not done in a vacuum, and that power relations within our movement will colour the way we make decisions and bias our work, intentionally or unintentionally.

At the same time, we accept that we cannot at each moment always take the time to reflect on this knowledge gap. We believe in taking action today and balance our values, culture, and hopes with the practicalities of the world as it is.

Concretely, this means:

Young people, their futures, and their wellbeing is at the heart of what we do. We are not afraid of conversation, of taking stances, of collaborating and leading on social justice, but we will always put our young people and their safety first. This means that we make sure our young people and their wellbeing and safety is at the heart of the decisions we make, and that their voice is heard at every opportunity and at every level of our organisation. If something moves beyond our risk tolerance, or if a partner does not demonstrate that they have our young people at heart - we pull away. We will not exploit our young people to win brownie points, we will not expose them to needless harm or

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scrutiny. They will be seen, cared for, and cherished for who they are, and we will make sure that they feel held and protected by us as they develop into themselves.

We are a space for broad movement building. We recognise that people in the movement have different tactics. We don’t expect purity of ideology from anyone we work with, nor do we hold ourselves to this standard. We do not exclude any potential partners purely because they are seen as radical/unwanted by other partner organisations or by people in power (for example political agitators, abolitionist groups etc). Instead, we offer people chances to learn, to grow, to explain, find common ground, and to do better together.

We are not ideological purists. Liberation is a process, and one which looks different to different people depending on their positionality, lived experience, knowledge, personal beliefs, and networks. Different people in our staff team, in our partnership networks, our board of Trustees will have different pathways and tactics for change, and sometimes these differing views will mean we will disagree on what decisions to make or tactics to use. Sometimes, what works for TAA as an institution won’t be what we personally agree with, and that is ok too. We are not ideological purists because we do not believe we can have certainty in the path ahead. What we can commit to that we will do is our best - and sometimes that means to challenge, experiment, take a stand and other times may mean we settle, compromise, or take a step back. As a justice organisation, we are not infallible, and we will inevitably mess up. As an institution we embrace this certainty of failure. We think it is ok to get things wrong, to mess up, to miscalculate. When people in our networks make bad decisions, we don’t shun them away. We embody the practice of transformative justice, steering away from punitive approaches, and try to talk through and explain when things aren’t right. We work for the community and with the community, and when our members (staff members, board, alumni, contractors) or our partners mess up, we will have honest conversations about such failings and apply our transformative justice lens to ensure no further harm can come out of the mistake.

We are political. This is not the same as being party political. We are not affiliated with any political party. Rather, we recognise that our lives are governed by political decision making. We do not accept that the status quo is inevitable, and we believe that civic action is the route to achieving systemic change. Our focus is not on offering services. We know there are many excellent local and national organisations which provide those in need with access to services and partner with and signpost to these much-needed groups. We’re not shy about believing in liberation for all and in extending that vision for everyone we meet and work with.

We believe that another world is possible today. We are unapologetic about wanting to achieve a new world for our communities today. We are power savvy, we go into campaigns having done our homework and we negotiate with power holders and get them to meet our demands. We don’t talk in echo chambers or work in silos. We want radical change now and believe in taking the most effective and appropriate approach to getting there. All the spaces that we hold are rooted in a praxis of seeing possibilities of and striving towards the world as it should be, a world where every human being is respected and has a dignified existence. They are also grounded in the reality of the world as an imperfect place but one that can be bent towards justice. We see social justice not as a sprint or even a marathon that we do alone, but as a relay where we do our bit and pass on to others for a collective goal together.

We want to collaborate politically, but we are not naive pawns. There is a conception of young people as being without agency, and politically easy to work with - pawns to move in a bigger political game. We champion beliefs and ideas, such as transformative justice, which are deemed soft because they don’t believe in punishment or uphold toxic ideologies, making us seem idealistic to some political actors. We challenge this perception and this approach. Every single person in our broader movement has agency, power, and the will to

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wield both. Our choice to uphold values from the world as it should be is our strength. We do not believe that partnering or allying ourselves with a group means automatic support of every action or belief they might hold, nor would we expect such comprehensive support of them. We will evolve and create processes for points of difference and agree on how to make hard decisions collectively. This means we’re not too good to polish some egos, but it also means that we don’t allow anyone to dictate our next steps. We stand up for our set of beliefs, and we push back when people condescend us and the people we work with.

We are curious and hopeful. We facilitate spaces for exchanges to happen, and we are not gatekeepers to others who wish to do the same things we do. We seek to be challenged, and welcome dialogue. We will do our best to share best practice with others in the justice space. We will centre hope and joy in our spaces, and we will share this lens and belief with the people around us.

Our responsibility to our wider community dictates that we act proactively on things beyond the remit of our ideological and strategic schedules. While we aren’t service providers in the traditional sense as an organisation, we are a community-based organisation, and as such, we will course-correct and answer needs in the community as they arise. We will act in solidarity with the people around us and share our resources if there is need and we are able to. This means we will open our doors to young people not in our programmes, we will share resources with groups working with young people and whose values we support, and we will help organisations and people and share our knowledge the best we can.

Our mandate as an organisation comes from our membership base, our leadership team, our Board, and our experienced and passionate workers - and we trust our collective voice and judgement to guide us through.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE COMMUNITY DEPARTMENT?

With our graduate scheme coming to an end, and Vining Street chapter closing too, we are looking at a very different Community Department for 2023/2024. Here’s what you can expect to see from us in the next year:

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ACTIVATING NEW ALLIES

We take an outward-facing and community-orientated approach to our movement building. With the introspection that came with this past year, this is an arm of our work that we plan on coming back stronger next year. Find out more about our plans in Part Three of this State of the Movement.

OUR IMPACT THIS YEAR

We take impact evaluation at The Advocacy Academy extremely seriously and are continuously assessing our impact-measurement process to draw on what we learn, compare them against our KPIs, and improve our services for the next cohort of young people. We evaluate our success through three lenses: the impact of our pedagogy; the strength of our community; and the lasting change we create in the world.

The impact of our pedagogy:

We want each Advocate to graduate from the Fellowship with the skills and networks to become passionate and effective leaders. Each of our activities work together to bring about our 65 learning outcomes which sit across five categories: knowledge and insight, skills, character, networks and access, and active citizenship. We use pre- and post- programme impact surveys, alongside one-to-one feedback sessions to monitor individual progress and allow for self-evaluation.

The strength of our community:

Fostering community and building networks is critical to achieving change. The more Alumni, the bigger and stronger our movement. Each cohort learns and grows together and is encouraged to guide and inspire future generations. We track data on the number of participants at our alumni events, and on those who re-join the programme to become Changemakers.

During FY22/23 our impact records and participation numbers showed that:

Lasting change in the world:

We track the real world impact our Advocates deliver during and after their time with us. We are beginning to see the ripples of change our Advocates are creating, however we currently don’t hold KPIs for this area. More info on our campaigns can be found elsewhere in the document.

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FINANCE REVIEW

The Advocacy Academy’s income has increased this financial year, from £719,250 to £911,758, while our expenditures increased from £887,109 to £1,244,727, as we resumed in-person working and continued to fill critical roles in the organisation to match our growth strategy.

Unlike last year, where we had decided not to run the Fellowship programme and instead focused on other areas of our work including development of our pilot programme, Spark. Thanks to the support of our funders, we were able to fully finance our core costs and delivery of both our Fellowship and Spark youth programmes.

The management team and trustees continued to work together to place an emphasis on restricting outgoings and in particular the indirect costs of charitable work, including governance and administration costs.

FUNDRAISING

This year has been challenging for fundraising as, like so many, we felt the continued effects of the pandemic. However, we are pleased to have raised £911k in income, of which £749k (82%) came from trusts and foundations, £138k (15%) from donations, and £23.7k (3%) from charitable activities. We are hugely grateful to all our donors for their continued support.

RESERVES OVERVIEW

We review our reserve position on a regular basis to determine whether the funds held are adequate for our work. We consider operating expenses for continued service delivery as well as unforeseen circumstances, particularly those relating to future funding uncertainties.

Our reserve position ending FY23 is £196,337, which includes the previously designated unrestricted Stewart grants of £120k, undesignated by the Board this financial year, to allow for flexibility in responding to emerging needs and opportunities.

Our aim is to maintain free reserves in unrestricted funds at a level equivalent to at most three months of operating expenses and annually assess our ability to do so. The Board believes that maintaining this level of free reserves will provide TAA with the flexibility to swiftly adjust to changing circumstances and provide assurance that such fluctuations will not impede our ongoing operations. Following the annual review of our required reserves, we will be maintaining a reserve up to £196k, still aligning with a level sufficient for covering up to three months of immediate commitments.

We will continue to conduct an annual review of our required reserve levels as an integral part of our annual budgetary process to determine the level of appropriate reserves necessary to make any adjustments to our operations.

KEY RISKS AND UNCERTAINTIES

Weathering an uncertain political, environmental and economic times ahead

Already our young people have shared the tension of participating in our work alongside part-time jobs they’ve had to take around school. While we are at a steady but also important time of our growth as an organisation and the fluctuations from cost-of-living changes can hit our budget hard with short notice. This is why investment in our infrastructure remains critical:

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Maintaining relationships and the trust and integrity which nourish them

In traditional organisations, scale sometimes comes at the expense of those starting relationships. Organising is designed specifically to prevent this erosion (even at scale), however, there is still risk considering. That’s why our investment in membership governance and organising the community is important, alongside investment in our staff people:

The pros and cons of increased visibility and high impact campaigns

As with any organisation campaigning for change our institution and our young people will face scrutiny and judgement alongside the success of their campaigns. We have seen pockets of this already, and if we are to move forward to scale, we need to put ourselves beyond reproach and invest in governance and risk management including but not limited to:

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STEERING THE SHIP

OUR THREE-YEAR STRATEGY FOR TAA

We are shifting into our 2nd phase of growth. With our campaigns gaining momentum and visibility, the size of our membership growing rapidly, and the power of our institution now tangible, we are steadily shifting into our 2nd phase of growth. TAA is now not only stabilised but also better aligned to deliver on our mission and see through our strategic framework. In the next three years, we must invest in critical infrastructure which enables us, prepares, and protects us for national visibility and widespread systemic impact. The key areas of investment are:

Campaigning and activism has its risks, but all risk is manageable with the right preparation and investment… and of course with no risk there is no reward!

Below you will find our starting point for our three-year strategy. These represent critical areas of growth, in place of a comprehensive set of annual objectives.

INVESTING IN OUR GOVERNANCE, FINANCE, HR & OPERATIONS

Over the next three years, the main thrust of our work will centre on five critical areas of growth. Our strategic plan is designed to prioritise the following key objectives:

Financial Stability and Control:

To set the framework for financial resilience and security. We will:

Process and system improvement:

Clear and efficient internal systems and processes and excellent IT underpin our work, culture, and help us fulfill our aspiration to our young people. We will:

Governance

The governance goals aim to identify priority areas of governance and address any skills gaps through recruitment or committee co-option. We will:

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Proactive Risk Management:

Our goal is to start tracking and monitoring key areas of risk at TAA. We will:

Supportive People Management

We want the TAA to be a great place to work. We will:

BUILDING OUR COMMERCIAL OBJECTIVES

DEVELOPING LEADERS WITH LIVED EXPERIENCE OF INJUSTICE

EVOLVING OUR PROGRAMME INFRASTRUCTURE

Our goal by the end of three years is to make sure we have scaled dependencies on infrastructure which are understood and actively managed. Making sure that our membership intake is monitored and actively addressed, ensuring a balanced focus on efficiencies of scale. We will also be prioritising critical components including standardised templates for risk management, budgeting and tracking, coordinating M&E with first draft structure, setting up holistic safeguarding structures, and developing targeted programmes to address membership disparities (e.g., reduced numbers of men entering the programme). We also aim to finalise our Spark programme design and develop a map to scale the reach of the programme. This includes understanding costs to scale through different methods and associated limitations, and mapping out detailed pathways for growth and integration into the wider organising movement at TAA.

CAMPAIGNING FOR CHANGE

MOVING TOWARDS A MEMBERSHIP MODEL

Our membership model transformation began last year, and we projected that it would take 18 months to transition across to it. The previous iteration of the Fellowship used campaigning as a pedagogical tool that required Advocates to identify an individual interest to pursue from an early

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stage. What we’ve heard is that in practice, many young people feel under pressure to find a cause, and once they graduate from the Fellowship there is a lack of clearly defined staff support to help them continue. Then, when young people do not continue their campaign beyond the framework of the Fellowship, they can feel that they have ‘failed’. Responding to this, we are planning to move towards a membership model at TAA, repositioning the Fellowship as one of two entry points to the movement (the other being Spark).

In FY24 we aim to boost our membership engagement by clearly communicating and integrating our membership model with pathways for involvement. These pathways include internal paid opportunities, activist employment support, and training programs, along with a focus on transitioning "Developing Leaders" participants into Campaign membership. We are also redesigning our internal governance structures to include member integration, piloting some initiatives currently. In terms of campaigns, our goal is to have a three-year target of 30 active groups in incubation. Our active membership target for the year is 50%, with a three-year goal of 60%. Looking ahead, we plan to enhance visibility into engagement pathways, provide regular training opportunities, and integrate members into key institutional areas.

Once the work is completed, we envision a Movement that builds power as a campaigning institution, supported by our local partners and getting our wider communities behind our campaigns to win real and lasting change.

EXTENDING HOST

While we develop the Membership model, we are testing ways to support our young people’s campaigns in the immediate term. This year, we piloted ‘HOST’ with two of our campaigns, Halo and ChokedUp and we will be extending the HOST offer to all Alumni-led campaigns and projects in the following years.

Our goal by the end of three years is to have standardised our campaign hosting framework, defined what campaigns can and cannot be hosted by TAA, have finalised the HOST agreement structure, while setting up beta infrastructure around automating financial and governance requirements, allowing for easy induction process. We also envision having M & E structures set up across all of the campaigns. In three years’ time we aim to have the HOST framework matured and tested, with the infrastructure embedded and iterated. We aim to explore potential pilots around non-member campaign HOSTing, while having our around 15 hosted campaigns hosted through single-issue entry points, in contrast to our current general approach. By the end of these three years, we aim to have a better understanding of coalition campaigns, knowing when a campaign outgrows TAA, as well as having on hand a committee of legal, financial, comms, and reputational advisors to support TAA and the campaigns.

HOST will provide a range of support and benefits for groups seeking to make change. These include: fiscal hosting, technical support, strategic guidance & mentoring, startup funding, fundraising & budget support, media & press support, access to TAA’s wider networks and community relationships, free meeting and workspace, and HOST organiser training where we will deep-dive into campaigns management, skills development, press work and effective communications with masterclasses from social justice experts across the UK.

HOST groups will remain the ultimate decision makers about the direction of their campaign. Some groups may, in time, want to set up as established organisations in their own right, while others may not. We are committed to supporting groups to set up independently as and when this becomes appropriate for them.

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ORGANISING OUR COMMUNITY

BUILDING OUR INSTITUTIONAL POWER

We aim to have successfully established ourselves as a recognised institution in the field of activism, particularly in the South London region. Our clearly defined ideology and political positioning will be effectively communicated to external partners, strengthening our influence and impact.

INVESTING IN OUR COMMUNITY HUB

In an environment that is increasingly hostile to oppressed communities coming together to build power, we are taking up vital physical space and sharing it with members of our wider community to empower grassroots activism in the fight for social justice. Our commitment to investing in a community hub has borne fruit, with steady income from the hub covering core costs, and utilisation rates currently standing at 50%. Looking forward, we aim to have secured a new community hub and anticipate that, within three years, steady income from the hub will not only continue to cover core costs but also extend to building-associated salaries, with usage projected to rise to 70%. This strategic investment is poised to further enhance our community engagement and resource sustainability, continuing to create space for our young people to deliver groundbreaking community organising work, and build the power of our communities to realise a better tomorrow.

ACTIVATING NEW ALLIES

COMMUNICATING TO OUR COMMUNITY

Over the past eight years, we have gained a strong and passionate supporter base who want to follow our young people’s campaigns and turn out for their actions, because they share our belief that the future is not fixed and that young people, working together, can shape it for the better. We also know there are other movements like ours across the UK who can benefit from our learnings (warts and all!), for whom we want to share our thought leadership in the field of youth organising.

Over the next three years, we are embarking on a strategic journey to activate new allies through a comprehensive communication strategy. Our overarching goal is to solidify our core brand, messaging, and communications strategy while simultaneously expanding our digital footprint. This includes growing our presence on Twitter and Instagram to engage funders and partners and venturing into new platforms to connect with a broader audience of young people. We aim to establish regular donor communications and community updates, streamline content collection from our membership, and relaunch our website.

Our active communication across the community will serve a triple purpose: sharing our work and key updates, securing consistent donations, and providing essential support for organising and campaigning efforts. Moreover, we intend to explore innovative content distribution methods, such as piloting online courses for trainers and creating how-to guides for young activists. By achieving these strategic milestones, we will build a robust network of allies and supporters to advance our mission over the next three years.

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OUR CURRENT STAFF

Saba Shafi Managing Director 2017-2021, CEO 2021-Present

Saba has an MBA from Wharton and eight years of management consultancy experience. She kicked off her career leading healthcare initiatives in refugee camps and diversity and inclusion programmes in graduate schools in the US. Saba is passionate about growing The Advocacy Academy.

Darcey Williamson Head of Cyclical Leadership 2018-April 2023, Head of Membership Governance from May 2023-Present

Darcey is a youth worker and informal educator whose practice is informed by a radical youth work paradigm. She employs critical education methods and participatory action research, working with others to co-create projects that challenge epistemic and social injustices. Darcey leads our Younger Changemaker Apprenticeship programme, training and supporting our Alumni community to develop their leadership practice and social justice education methods to become Changemakers, who are central to our movement.

Imane Maghrani Spark Programmes Manager 2020-2021, Associate Director Spark Programmes 2021-Present

Imane is a social justice educator and youth programmer who runs The Advocacy Academy’s Spark programmes. She’s worked across sectors specialising in programme design and delivery, youth empowerment and social justice learning, and is most excited by reimagining education and embedding social justice in youth spaces.

Dhakshi Suriar Head of Philanthropy 2021-Present

Dhakshi is an accidental activist (her words), with a huge passion for social justice. After a couple of roles in the finance sector, she moved across to non-profits working predominantly in trusts and foundations. She now oversees philanthropy at The Advocacy Academy, bringing a breadth of partnership management experience with her.

Fopé Olaleye Political Education Lead 2021-March 2023

Fopé is an educator and writer who brings a wealth of facilitation experience from Fearless Futures. They have travelled the country delivering talks and workshops to universities and are now beyond excited to dig their teeth into Advocacy campaigns, as their work has always involved campaigning and critical thinking around education.

Amarah Khan Community Administrator 2021-Present

Amarah has a master’s degree in environmental psychology. Starting her career in qualitative research, she uses evidence and insight to create fairer spaces. She is passionate about creating social and physical spaces that dare to have chutzpah and be unapologetically beautiful.

Lydia Rye Campaigns & Organising Director 2021-Present

Lydia is an experienced Community Organiser and campaigner with more than a decade of experience in social purpose work. She is a former Senior Organiser for Citizens UK; a host for The Dinner Party, a peer led grief support group based on food and collective care; and still works freelance with funders interested in funding organising work.

Shiden Tekle Community Organiser 2021- Present

Shiden is an activist who graduated from the Fellowship in 2018 and has stayed involved with TAA as a Changemaker since. His campaigns include Legally Black and The Halo Code, winning MTV EMA awards and a Marie Claire award from both campaigns. He studied Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary, University of London.

Stephanie Cohen Community Organiser 2021 - May 2023

Having graduated from the Fellowship in 2015, Stephanie gained an LLM in Legal and Political Theory from York University. The Legal and Political Organiser of The Halo Code, she calls herself

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a Legal academic, having published her first article in June 2021 arguing for legally recognising hair discrimination as a form of racial discrimination.

Vanessa Castro Community Organiser 2021- Present

Vanessa graduated from TAA in 2016 and then completed a BA in Politics and International Relations. As a Changemaker she has participated in many fun, radical campaign actions whilst empowering and supporting young Advocates. She is co-organiser of Latinxcluded, a collective that fights for the representation of the Latinx community in the UK.

Betty Pearl Movement Leader 2021-Present

An Alumni of the Class of 2017, Betty has organised campaigns such as Influencers and Education Not Exclusion and was heavily involved in the documentary Excluded. She was President of Feminists’ Society at Nottingham where she studied Politics and IR and is currently part of the Involving Young People Collective for Esmée Fairbairn.

Mel Pinto Movement Leader 2021-Present

Mel recently completed her BA Hons in Politics and IR. She has campaigned with TAA since graduating in 2018 and was the leading liberation officer at university. She constantly leads with awareness around mental health because she went undiagnosed for a big part of her life and knows how it is to feel invisible.

Ilhan Yonis Movement Leader 2021-Present

Ilhan is one of the alumni from the class of 16/17. She has worked on the housing campaign, helping to secure funding and land to build affordable housing. She is also currently working as a lead organiser for the Halo Collective. Ilhan has had many media appearances including a feature on the cover of Dazed with Vivienne Westwood and her collaborative film 'Hijab and me,' which earned her a BAFTA nomination. Ilhan is a recent social anthropology graduate.

Shoomi Chowdhury Programmes Director 2022-Present

Shoomi has extensive experience leading transformative programmes, joining us after seven years in human rights education at Amnesty UK and anti-oppression programmes in the arts and cultural sector. She has a track record of getting things done whilst centring the lived experience of people and communities impacted by oppressive structures.

Hiba Ahmad Community Director 2022-Present

A Human Geography graduate & enthusiast, Hiba is passionate about building fair cities and creating lasting, inclusive spaces that bring people together. As a researcher she has focused on just transitions across the globe and as a campaigner and organiser she works in critical pedagogy, liberation work, anti-gentrification, and climate justice.

Dola Akinniranye, People Manager 2022-Present

Dola is a HR professional with about 5 years of experience in generalist HR. She has worked across various sectors like education, charity, management consulting, health care and real estate. Dola has an MA in Human Resources and is currently doing a PHD on “the effect of culture on employees’ workplace decision making and behaviour”.

Toyin Onasanya, Associate Director of Finance and Operations 2022-March 2023, Director of Finance and Resources, from April 2023 - Present

Toyin is the Finance and Resources Director and is responsible for the TAA's Finance and Resources Strategy. She has more than eight years of experience leading the finance and operations function for non-profit organisations such as The Children's Society, Arthritis Care (Versus Arthritis), the Microbiology Society, and the Ada Lovelace Institute, where she also led the institute-wide anti-oppression initiative.

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Frankie Garnons Williams, Head of Fellowship, 2022 - Present

Frankie has over eight years of experience working with young people and campaigners of all ages, designing and delivering transformative workshops and training across the UK, Canada and the USA.

Maddy Leftwitch, Changemaker Development Lead, 2022 - March 2023, Head of Change Maker Development from April 2023-Present

Maddy has nearly a decade of experience in mentoring, facilitating and support work, and has worked for several years in community arts and through-the-gate support roles, within prisons and post-release settings, as well as alternative educational contexts with young people.

Benjamin Linsley, Commercial Director, March 2023-Present

Benjamin has 25 years of experience in fundraising, business development and public policy, working across the commercial and charity sectors both in the UK and United States. With several decades of activism experience in the Labour Party, including working as a Labour Councillor in the London Borough of Hackney, and in New York, where he helped grow the Center for Popular Democracy into the largest progressive community organising network in the US.

OUR PATRON AND TRUSTEES

PATRON Helen Hayes MP

Helen has been Patron of The Advocacy Academy since before she was elected as Labour MP for Dulwich and West Norwood! She is a staunch affordable housing advocate in Parliament, where she sits on the Communities and Local Government Select Committee.

CHAIR Daniel Taylor MBE

Daniel Taylor is the Founder and CEO of MDC Group, a highly respected design agency with a reputation for designing and building bespoke interiors for public and private sector clients. Daniel is a founding trustee for the Creative & Cultural Skills Council, a Fellow of the RSA, a trustee for the Aleto Foundation and Ambassador for the Black Health Collaborative Organisation.

VICE-CHAIR Marjorie Perkins

Marjorie is a multi-award-winning TMT professional, who has worked for over 20 years at BT. Marjorie is also a Program Delivery Lead at the Aleto Foundation. Previously, Marjorie was a member of the Advisory Board for Career Ready, and the Area Director for Toastmasters International.

TREASURER: Thishani Nadesan COO | Cleo AI

Thish’s start-up Cleo AI works to radically improve our relationship with money. She is a passionate believer that business and tech can be a force for positive social and economic change and brings board experience in business strategy and scaling companies.

ALUMNI TRUSTEE Thalia Papanicolaou Class of 2017 - till July 2023

Thalia is currently studying International Studies at Leiden University. She co-organises the Climate Justice Collective of the Advocacy Academy’s Alumni network, working on the issue of intersectional youth representation. She is also involved in ‘Influuenzers’, the Alumni response to the Covid-19 crisis, creating content related to the pandemic.

ALUMNI TRUSTEE Constantinos Christou Class of 2016 - till July 2023

Costa co-leads Advocacy’s housing work as an organiser for the Housing Collective, which recently secured a £5.1m piece of land from TfL to build affordable housing. He has facilitated a number of sessions on the Fellowship programme. Costa is currently on a research technology graduate scheme at Kantar.

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Abimbola Wingate-Saul Barrister | 25 Bedford Row Chambers

Alongside her professional work and trusteeship of Advocacy, Abimbola is currently Chair of the Independent Scrutiny and Oversight Board on the Police Plan of Action on Inclusion and Race. She is also a founder and co-host of The Manifesto Read Podcast which breaks down the manifesto pledges of the big three parties.

Michelle King Director of Transformation | Allvue Systems

Having spent over 20 years in Finance, Michelle setup Silent Way Partners to promote economic opportunity based on merit, not on race, gender, or class. She went on to create the Silent Way Foundation to promote equality of opportunity for marginalised communities and invest in minority women founders, before moving to Allvue Systems.

GOVERNANCE

Status

Charity registration number 1161785. The Charitable Incorporated Organisation is governed by a constitution, which was passed, and last amended, on 1 January 2015.

Charitable Objects

Advance the education of the public, particularly but not exclusively people under the age of 25, in such ways as the charity trustees think fit, including but not limited to in the subject of politics.

To develop the skills, capacities, and capabilities of young people in such a way that they are better able to identify and help meet their needs and enable them to participate in society as mature and responsible adults.

The Trustees have had regard to guidance issued by the charity commission on public benefit.

Key Activities

We train young people to engage in collective action to improve their communities and tackle social issues which directly affect them.

Public Benefits Disclosure

The Trustees have given due consideration to the Charity Commission’s published guidance on the Public Benefit Requirement under the Charities Act 2011.

Founded

20 February 2014: The United Nations World Day of Social Justice

Registered

21 May 2015

Trustees

Abimbola Wingate-Saul (May 2021 to present) Constantinos Christou (May 2020 to July 2023) Daniel Taylor MBE, CHAIR (Jul 2022 to present) Marjorie Perkins, VICE-CHAIR (Jul 2022 to present) Michelle King (May 2020 to present) Thalia Papanicolaou (May 2020 to present) Thish Nadesan (Dec 2018 to July 2023)

The Trustees have ultimate responsibility for The Advocacy Academy, work to ensure good governance, sign off on the overall strategic direction and are the highest decision-making body. The Board works with the executive team (see staff bios in the previous section) which is

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responsible for the day-to-day running of the charity. Trustees maintain a good working knowledge of charity law and best practice.

The Board has the power to appoint Trustees as it considers appropriate, with particular reference to enriching skills and increasing representation from communities reflected in our Alumni community. There are informal procedures in place for their induction. New Trustees are provided with one year’s worth of Board minutes, financial reports, and the Memorandum and articles of Association.

Pay & Remuneration

All pay and remuneration is made in line with a pay table which details by level the range of salary an individual can earn, as part of a broader pay and performance policy.

Salaries of the CEO are agreed by the Trustees. Staff salaries are agreed by line managers in partnership with the Finance Director and the CEO to meet pay and performance policy and budget needs and approved by the Board as part of the annual budget setting.

Registered Office

Bank

HSBC, 421 Brixton Rd, London SW9 8HE

Independent Examiner

Knox Cropper Chartered Accountant, 65 LeaderHall Street, London EC3A 2AD

Pro Bono Solicitors

Allen & Overy, One Bishops Square, London E1 6AD

Socials

The Trustees have read and reviewed the State Of The Movement Report, and approved at the Board meeting 27 October 2023.

Name: Daniel Taylor Role: Chair Board of Trustees Signature:

11/20/2023

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INDEPENDENT EXAMINER'S REPORT TO THE MEMBERS OF THE ADVOCACY ACADEMY FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 MARCH 2023

I report to the charity trustees on my examination of the financial statements of the Advocacy Academy for the year ended 31 March 2023.

Responsibilities and basis of report

As the trustees of the Advocacy Academy, you are responsible for the preparation of the accounts in accordance with the requirements of the Charities Act 2011 (‘the 2011 Act’). You are satisfied that the accounts of the Charitable Incorporated Organisation are not required by charity law to be audited and have chosen instead to have an independent examination.

Having satisfied myself that the accounts of the Advocacy Academy are not required to be audited and are eligible for independent examination, I report in respect of my examination of the accounts carried out under section 145 of the 2011 Act. In carrying out my examination I have followed the Directions given by the Charity Commission under section 145(5)(b) of the 2011 Act.

Independent examiner’s statement

Since the Company’s gross income exceeded £250,000 your examiner must be a member of a body listed in section 145 of the 2011 Act. I can confirm that I am qualified to undertake the examination because I am a registered member of ICAEW which is one of the listed bodies.

I have completed my examination. I confirm that no matters have come to my attention in connection with the examination giving me cause to believe that in any material respect:

  1. accounting records were not kept as required by section 386 of the 2006 Act; or

  2. the accounts do not accord with those records; or

  3. the accounts do not comply with the accounting requirements concerning the form and content of accounts set out in the Charities (Accounts and Reports) Regulations 2008 other than any requirement that the accounts give a ‘true and fair view which is not a matter considered as part of an independent examination.; or

  4. the accounts have not been prepared in accordance with the methods and principles of the Statement of Recommended Practice for accounting and reporting by charities applicable to charities preparing their accounts in accordance with the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102).

I have no concerns and have come across no other matters in connection with the examination to which attention should be drawn in this report in order to enable a proper understanding of the accounts to be reached.

Shoaib Arshad ACA, FCCA Knox Cropper LLP Chartered Accountants

65 Leadenhall Street, London, EC3A 2AD

11/27/2023

Date: ________

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The Advocacy Academy

Statement of financial activities (incorporating an income and expenditure account)

For the year ended 31 March 2023

2023 2022
Unrestricted Unrestricted Unrestricted Unrestricted
General Designated Restricted Total General Designated Restricted Total
Note £ £ £ £ £ £ £ £
Income from:
Grants, donations and legacies 2 302,248 - 585,810 888,058 552,289 - 150,220 702,509
Charitable activities 3
Commissioning (spark programme) - - 16,000 16,000 - - 16,000 16,000
Other income 1,080 - - 1,080 950 - - 950
Other trading income - campus hire 6,620 - - 6,620 - - - -
Total income 309,948 - 601,810 911,758 553,239 - 166,220 719,459
Expenditure on:
Raising funds 4 136,323 - - 136,323 103,870 - - 103,870
Charitable activities 4 506,594 - 601,810 1,108,404 486,902 60,000 236,337 783,239
Total expenditure 4 642,917 - 601,810 1,244,727 590,772 60,000 236,337 887,109
Net income / (expenditure) for the year (332,969) - (332,969) (37,533) (60,000) (70,117) (167,650)
Transfers between funds 180,000 (180,000) - - - - - -
Net movement in funds (152,969) (180,000) (332,969) (37,533) (60,000) (70,117) (167,650)
Reconciliation of funds:
Total funds brought forward 349,306 180,000 - 529,306 386,839 240,000 70,117 696,956
Total funds carried forward 13 196,337 - 196,337 349,306 180,000 - 529,306

All of the above results are derived from continuing activities. There were no other recognised gains or losses other than those stated above. Movements in funds are disclosed in Note 13 to the financial statements.

The notes on pages 53 to 61 form part of these financial statements

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The Advocacy Academy

Balance sheet

As at 31 March 2023

2023
Note
£
£
Fixed assets:
9
28,105
28,105
Current assets:
10
16,620
223,525
240,145
Liabilities:
11
71,913
168,232
12
196,337
13
-
-
196,337
Total unrestricted funds
196,337
196,337
General funds
Approved by the trustees on and signed on their behalf by
Total charity funds
Cash at bank and in hand
Tangible assets
The funds of the charity:
Creditors: amounts falling due within one year
Net current assets / (liabilities)
Total net assets / (liabilities)
Unrestricted income funds:
Designated funds
Debtors
Restricted income funds		 2023
£
28,105		 £
203,953
337,476		 2022
£
41,533
28,105
168,232		 41,533
487,773
541,429
53,656
180,000
349,306
196,337 529,306
-
196,337		 -
529,306
196,337 529,306

…………………………….. - Trustee

11/20/2023

The notes on pages 53 to 61 form part of these financial statements

DocuSign Envelope ID: D07E3AF6-B1E3-480F-94BD-037FE25EDDFD

The Advocacy Academy

Statement of cash flows

For the year ended 31 March 2023
Note
Net income / (expenditure) for the reporting period
Depreciation charges
Dividends, interest and rent from investments
(Increase)/decrease in debtors
Increase/(decrease) in creditors
Net cash from/(used in) operating activities
Analysis of cash and cash equivalents
Cash in hand and at bank
Total cash and cash equivalents
Cash and cash equivalents at the beginning of the year
Cash and cash equivalents at the end of the year
Change in cash and cash equivalents in the year
Net cash provided by / (used in) investing activities
Cash flows from investing activities:
Purchase of fixed assets		 £
(3,918)		 £
(332,969)
17,346
-
187,333
18,257
2023		 £
(23,126)		 £
(167,650)
16,915
-
(16,943)
30,275
2022
(110,033)
(3,918)		 (137,403)
(23,126)
(113,951)
337,476		 (160,529)
498,005
223,525 337,476
At 31 March
2023
£
223,525		 At 31
March 2021
£
337,476
223,525 337,476

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The Advocacy Academy

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2023

1 Accounting policies

a) Company information

The Advocacy Academy is a charity registered in England with registration number 1161785. Its registered office address is 7 Vining Street, London SW9 9QS.

b) Basis of preparation

The 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 (FRS 102) (effective 1 January 2019); the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland (FRS 102); and the Charities Act 2011. The accounts are presented in GBP rounded to £1, which is the functional currency of the charity.

Assets and liabilities are initially recognised at historical cost or transaction value unless otherwise stated in the relevant accounting policy or note.

c) Public benefit entity

The charitable company meets the definition of a public benefit entity under FRS 102.

d) Going concern

The trustees assess whether the use of going concern is appropriate i.e. whether there are any material uncertainties related to events or conditions that may cast significant doubt on the ability of the charity to continue as a going concern. The trustees make this assessment in respect of a period of one year from the date of approval of the financial statements. In making this assessment the trustees have considered the impact of Covid 19.

Annual budgets have been revised taking this into account with prudent figures for both income and expenditure. The charity holds significant reserves and has liquid assets in the form of cash held in short term deposits.

The Trustees are satisfied that there are no material uncertainties in relation to going concern in the foreseeable future

e) Income

Income, including from Government and other grants and donations, whether 'capital' or 'income', is recognised when the charity has entitlement to the funds, any performance conditions attached to the income have been met, it is probable that the income will be received and that the amount can be measured reliably.

Grants with performance-related conditions, commissioning and other earned incomes are only included in the SoFA under income from Charitable Activities once the charity has provided the related goods or services or met the performance related conditions.

Gift Aid receivable is included in income when there is a valid declaration from the donor. Any Gift Aid amount recovered on a donation is allocated to a separate fund unless the donor or terms of the appeal has specified otherwise and instead is treated as an addition to the same fund as the initial donation.

f) Donations of gifts, services and facilities

Donated services (including the time given to the organisation by volunteers) and facilities are included in the SOFA when received at the value of the gift to the charity, provided the value can be measured reliably. Where appropriate, donated services and facilities are recognised as income with an equivalent amount recognised as an expense under the appropriate heading in the SOFA.

In accordance with the Charities SORP (FRS 102), volunteer time is not recognised so refer to the trustees’ annual report for more information about their contribution.

g) Interest receivable

Interest on funds held on deposit is included when receivable.

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The Advocacy Academy

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2023

1 Accounting policies (continued)

h) Fund accounting

Restricted funds are to be used for specific purposes as laid down by the donor. Expenditure which meets these criteria is charged to the fund.

Unrestricted funds are donations and other incoming resources received or generated for the charitable purposes.

Designated funds are unrestricted funds earmarked by the trustees for particular purposes.

i) Expenditure and irrecoverable VAT

Expenditure is recognised once there is a legal or constructive obligation to make a payment to a third party, it is probable that settlement will be required and the amount of the obligation can be measured reliably. Expenditure is classified under the following activity headings:

Costs of raising funds relate to the costs incurred by the charitable company in inducing third parties to make voluntary contributions to it, as well as the cost of any activities with a fundraising purpose. Expenditure on charitable activities includes the costs of offering fellowships, programmens and campaigns and delivering related services undertaken to further the purposes of the charity and their associated support costs.

Other expenditure represents those items not falling into any other heading.

Irrecoverable VAT is charged as a cost against the activity for which the expenditure was incurred.

j) Allocation of support costs

Resources expended are allocated to the particular activity where the cost relates directly to that activity. However, the cost of overall direction and administration of each activity (support costs), comprising the salary and overhead costs of the central function, is apportioned on the following basis which are an estimate, based on staff time, of the amount attributable to each activity.

Social Justice Leadership Fellowship 25%
Alumni and campaigns 30%
Commissioning (spark programme) 21%
Power + Privilege Workshops 0%
Community Programmes 25%

Where information about the aims, objectives and projects of the charity is provided to potential beneficiaries, the costs associated with this publicity are allocated to charitable expenditure. Pension costs are allocated to various activties and restricted funds on the same basis as salaries.

Governance costs, which are considered a category of support costs, are the costs associated with the governance arrangements of the charity. These costs are associated with constitutional and statutory requirements and include any costs associated with the strategic management of the charity’s activities.

k) Tangible fixed assets

Items of equipment are capitalised where the purchase price exceeds £250. Depreciation costs are allocated to activities on the basis of the use of the related assets in those activities. Assets are reviewed for impairment if circumstances indicate their carrying value may exceed their net realisable value and value in use.

Depreciation is provided at rates calculated to write down the cost of each asset to its estimated residual value over its expected useful life. The depreciation rates in use are as follows:

Buildings 5 years
Fixtures and fittings 5 years
Office equipment 5 years

l) Financial Instruments

The charity only has financial assets and financial liabilities of a kind that qualify as basic financial instruments. Basic financial instruments are initially recognised at transaction value and subsequently measured at their settlement value.

l.1) Financial assets

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.

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The Advocacy Academy

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2023

1 Accounting policies (continued)

l.2) Financial Liabilities

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 and provisions are normally recognised at their settlement amount after allowing for any trade discounts due.

m) Cash at bank and in hand

Cash at bank and cash in hand includes cash and short term highly liquid investments with a short maturity of three months or less from the date of acquisition or opening of the deposit or similar account. Cash balances exclude any funds held on behalf of service users.

n) Significant accounting policies

In the application of the company’s accounting policies, the charity is required to make judgements, estimates and assumptions about the carrying amount of assets and liabilities that are not readily apparent from other sources. The estimates and associated assumptions are based on historical experience and other factors that are considered to be relevant. Actual results may differ from these estimates.

There are no estimates and assumptions that are considered to have a significant risk of causing a material adjustment to the financial statements in a future period.

o) Redundancy and termination costs

Redundancy and termination costs are recognised as an expense in the Statement of Financial Activities and a liability on the Balance Sheet immediately at the point the Charity is demonstrably committed to either: terminate the employment of an employee or group of employees before normal retirement date; or provide termination benefits as a result of an offer made in order to encourage voluntary redundancy. The Charity is considered to be demonstrably committed only when it has a detailed formal plan for the termination and is without realistic possibility of withdrawal from the plan.

p) Holiday pay accruals

The charity makes a provision for annual leave accrued by employees as a result of services rendered in the current period and which employees are entitled to carry forward and use.

2 Income from donations

Donated Facilities (note 15)
Grant Funding
Donations and gift aid		 Unrestricted
£
283,800
-
18,448		 £
465,810
120,000
-
Restricted		 2023 total
Total
£
749,610
120,000
18,448		 2022
Total
£
567,720
120,000
14,789
302,248 585,810 888,058 702,509

Income in 2022 comprised of unrestricted income of £552,289 and restricted income of £150,220.

3 Income from charitable activities

Commissioning (spark programme)
Other earned income
Total income from charitable activities		 Unrestricted
£
-
1,080		 £
16,000
-
Restricted		 2023
Total
£
16,000
1,080		 2022
Total
£
16,000
950
1,080 16,000 17,080 16,950

Income in 2022 comprised of unrestricted income of £950 and restricted income of £16,000

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The Advocacy Academy

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2023

Staff costs (Note 5)
Temporary staff
Campus for Young Activists (note 14)
Accommodation and venue hire
Office and administration costs
Programme delivery costs
Marketing
Staff recruitment, travel and
wellbeing
Trustees
Grant no longer receivable
Depreciation
Support costs
Total expenditure 2023
Total expenditure 2022		 Cost of
raising
funds
£
118,216
9,389
-
459
4,643
2,939
172
505
-
-
-		 Charitable activities Charitable activities Total
Charitable
activities
498,721
90,089
-
49,166
24,919
59,119
902
6,742
41
-
-
729,699
378,705
1,108,404		 Support
costs
£
132,256
1,399
120,000
328
64,514
10,763
751
1,331
17
30,000
17,346		 2023 Total
£
749,193
100,877
120,000
49,953
94,076
72,821
1,825
8,578
58
30,000
17,346		 2022
Total
£
448,369
90,294
120,000
25,328
48,448
128,184
1,061
8,225
285
-
16,915
Social Justice
Leadership
Fellowship
£
123,282
42,584
-
32,680
6,295
28,674
202
3,900
12
-
-		 Alumni and
campaigns
£
147,282
16,209
-
4,782
5,933
18,838
172
1,958
9
-
-		 £
105,311
18,044
-
11,219
5,695
3,548
172
552
6
-
-
Commissioning
(spark
programme)		 Just
Education
-
(550)
-
-
12
-
-
-
-
-
 Power +
Privilege
Workshops
£
-
(550)
-
-
12
-
-
-
-
-		 Community
Programmes
£
122,846
14,352
-
485
6,986
8,035
356
332
14
-
-
136,323
-		 237,629
93,614		 195,183
111,839		 144,547
79,968		 (533)
-		 (533)
-		 153,406
93,283		 378,705 1,244,727 887,109
136,323 331,243 307,022 224,515 (533) (533) 246,689 1,244,727 887,109
103,870 167,723 267,361 203,602 84 30,501 113,968 887,109

Of the total expenditure, £612,917 was unrestricted (2022: £650,772) and £601,810 was restricted (2022: £236,337). Fees in respect of independent examination were £3,550 (2022: Nil)

Supports costs for 2022 consist of the following.

Staff costs
Office and administration costs
Programme delivery costs
Trustees
Campus for Young Activists (note 14)
Depreciation		 2022
Total
£
124,554
11,583
24,368
285
120,000
16,915
297,705

DocuSign Envelope ID: D07E3AF6-B1E3-480F-94BD-037FE25EDDFD

The Advocacy Academy

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2023

Analysis of staff costs and the cost of key management personnel

Staff costs were as follows:

Salaries and wages (including termination payments)
Social security costs
Employer’s contribution to defined contribution pension schemes		 2023
£
666,140
67,407
15,646		 2022
£
402,880
37,675
7,814
749,193 448,369

The following number of employees received employee benefits (excluding employer pension costs) during the year in bandings of costs greater than £60,000:

2023 2022
No. No.
£60,000 - £69,999 2 2

The total employee benefits including pension contributions of the key management personnel, made up of Benjamin Linsley (Commercial Director), Saba Safi (CEO), Hiba Ahmed (Community Director), Lydia Rye (Campaigns & Organising Director), and Rohima Chowdhury (Programmes Director) were £249,612 (2022: £196,799).

6 Staff numbers

The average number of employees (head count based on number of staff employed) during the year was as follows:

Just Education
Cost of raising funds
Commissioning (spark programme)
Social Justice Leadership Fellowship
Community Programmes
Alumni and campaigns
Power + Privilege Workshops
Governance and support		 2023
No.
2.9
3.0
3.6
2.6
-
-
3.0
3.2		 2022
No.
1.5
1.4
2.1
1.5
-
-
1.2
2.6
18.3 10.3

7 Related party transactions

No trustees were reimbursed for expenses of travel or subsistence during the year (2022: £285).

No charity trustees were paid or received any other benefits from employment with the charity in the year (2022: £nil). No other charity trustee received payment for professional or other services supplied to the charity (2022: £nil).

There are no other related party transactions to disclose for 2023 (2022: none).

8 Taxation

The charitable company is exempt from corporation tax to the extent that all its income is charitable and is applied for charitable purposes.

DocuSign Envelope ID: D07E3AF6-B1E3-480F-94BD-037FE25EDDFD

The Advocacy Academy

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2023

9
Building
£
49,148
-
49,148
30,368
9,829
40,197
8,951
18,780
All of the above assets are used for charitable purposes.
Tangible fixed assets
Cost
Depreciation
Net book value
At the end of the year
At the end of the year
At the start of the year
Charge for the year
At the start of the year
Additions in year
At the end of the year
At the start of the year		 Building
£
49,148
-		 Fixtures and
fittings
£
12,850
-		 Office
equipment
£
20,817
3,918		 Total
£
82,815
3,918
49,148 12,850 24,735 86,733
30,368
9,829		 4,131
2,570		 6,783
4,947		 41,282
17,346
40,197 6,701 11,730 58,628
8,951 6,149 13,005 28,105
18,780 8,719 14,034 41,533

10 Debtors

Tangible fixed assets
Net current assets
Net assets at the end of the year
Analysis of net assets between funds
Taxation and social security
Other creditors
Accruals
Trade creditors
Grant debtors
Prepayments and accrued income
Other debtors
Creditors: amounts falling due within one year		 General
unrestricted
£
28,105
168,232		 £
-
-
Designated		 2023
£
2,320
14,300
-		 2022
£
7,250
194,000
2,703
16,620 203,953
2023
£
11,950
38,661
2,038
19,264		 2022
£
12,709
22,262
400
18,285
71,913 53,656
Restricted
£
-
-		 Total funds
2023
£
28,105
168,232
196,337 - - 196,337

11 Creditors: amounts falling due within one year

12 Analysis of net assets between funds

DocuSign Envelope ID: D07E3AF6-B1E3-480F-94BD-037FE25EDDFD

The Advocacy Academy

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2023

12 Analysis of net assets between funds (continued)

13
Impact for Urban Health
City Bridge Trust
Commissioning
John Ellerman Foundation
Gucci
LB of Lambeth
GLA
Total restricted funds
Total designated funds
General funds
Net assets at the start of the year
Total funds
Total unrestricted funds
The Tides Foundation
Stewart Investors
Unrestricted funds:
Movements in funds
Restricted funds:
Tangible fixed assets
Designated funds:
Donated facilities
Net current assets
BBC Children in Need		 At 1 April
2022
£
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-		 General
unrestricted
£
41,533
307,773		 £
-
180,000
Designated		 Restricted
£
-
-		 Total funds
2022
£
41,533
487,773
349,306 180,000 - 529,306
Incoming
resources &
gains
£
185,595
12,500
16,000
40,000
85,666
1,000
3,300
127,749
10,000
120,000		 Outgoing
resources &
losses
£
(185,595)
(12,500)
(16,000)
(40,000)
(85,666)
(1,000)
(3,300)
(127,749)
(10,000)
(120,000)		 Transfers
£
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-		 At 31 March
2023
£
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
- 601,810 (601,810) - -
180,000 - - (180,000) -
180,000 - - (180,000) -
349,306 309,948 (642,917) 180,000 196,337
529,306 309,948 (642,917) - 196,337
529,306 911,758 (1,244,727) - 196,337

DocuSign Envelope ID: D07E3AF6-B1E3-480F-94BD-037FE25EDDFD

The Advocacy Academy

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2023

13 Movements in funds (continued)

Lankellychase Foundation
Unilever UKCR
Commissioning
Donated Facilities
Fearless Futures
BBC Children in Need - Spark
Guys' & St. Thomas' Trust
Total restricted funds
Total designated funds
General funds
Restricted funds:
Other
Unrestricted funds:
Designated funds:
Total funds
Stewart Investors
Total unrestricted funds		 At 1 April
2021
£
42,000
11,657
-
-
16,460
-
-
-		 Incoming
resources &
gains
£
13,000
-
16,000
120,000
-
10,000
7,000
220		 Outgoing
resources &
losses
£
(55,000)
(11,657)
(16,000)
(120,000)
(16,460)
(10,000)
(7,000)
(220)		 Transfers
£
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-		 At 31 March
2022
£
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
70,117 166,220 (236,337) - -
240,000 - (60,000) - 180,000
240,000 - (60,000) - 180,000
386,839 553,239 (590,772) - 349,306
626,839 553,239 (650,772) - 529,306
696,956 719,459 (887,109) - 529,306

Purposes of restricted funds

Lankellychase Foundation - Core costs to deliver Campaigns and work with the Alumni Paul Hamlyn Foundation - Salaries and recruitment costs, new office cost Earned Income (Just Education) - JustEducation Unilever UKCR - Campaigns Commissioning - Spark L.B. Lambeth CLIPS - real estate Fearless Futures - staff cost BBC Children in Need - Social Justice Leadership Fellowship BBC Children in Need - Booster fund - Programmes, Campaigns, Working from Home costs BBC Children in Need - Spark

Guys' & St. Thomas' Trust - staff wellbeing Donated facilities - Donated lease on new office

Impact for Urban Health - To support our core model and work with their alumni to create campaigns around health effects of air pollution and children’s mental health.

City Bridge Trust - To enable us to deliver our leadership training programmes to marginalised young people in South London.

John Ellerman Foundation – Contribution towards the CEO and senior leadership team sala

Gucci – To support marginalised young people from South London with skills, and confidence to tackle critical issues.

GLA – To help children and young people to fulfil their potential, particularly those at risk of getting caught up in crime.

The Tides Foundation – To support The Advocacy’s Social Justice leadership Fellowship.

DocuSign Envelope ID: D07E3AF6-B1E3-480F-94BD-037FE25EDDFD

The Advocacy Academy

Notes to the financial statements

For the year ended 31 March 2023

13 Movements in funds (continued)

Purposes of designated funds

The designated reserves will be used to build out new programme areas including but not exclusive to our Alumni programmes (expanding programmes and training to our Alumni), and Spark programmes (short programmes to introduce key concepts to more young people). The initial plan was to draw down £60,000 per annum from designated funds untill they are exhausted, however, the Trustees have now agreed to undesignate the remaining balance at the end of FY23 to allow for greater flexibility in responding to emerging needs and opportunities.

14 Operating lease commitments

The charity signed a lease on premises in Brixton for a five-year period commencing 18 January 2019. The lease has been donated with the annual charge payable by the charity being a peppercorn amount only. The value of the donation in the current year, based on an open market rate payable on a comparable lease, has been included as income and an equivalent amount charged to expenditure in the SOFA. £120,000 has been recognised in income and expenditure for the year (2021: £120,000)

15 Funds received as agent

The charity has acted as an agent for the following third-party , whose aims and objectives are consistent with those of the charity. Funds, held in cash, are administered on the instruction of the principal and recorded ithin a separate genral ledger sub-code and adjusted in financial statements. The movement in funds during the year was:

Balance at 1 April 2022
Funds received
Funds paid out
Balance at 31 March 2023
representing cash held		 Choked Up
£
250
16,500
-		 £
-
-
-
Unbound
Philantrophy		 £
6,000
-
(6,000)
Bossing IT		 Charity So
White/HS
Charity
£
6,451
-
-		 Total
12,701
16,500
(6,000)
16,750 - - 6,451 23,201

Choked up - Teenagers campaigning for clean air unbound philanthropy - Private grant-making foundation investing in organisations working to build a vibrant, welcoming society and just immigration system.

Bossing IT - A shared space for women of colour in impact leadership to share opportunities, and help each other succeed.

Charity So white: Tackling institutional racism within the charity sector.

16 Pension Commitments

The charity operates a defined contribution pension scheme. The assets of the scheme are held separately in an independently administered multi-employer fund. During the year, £14,926 was charged to SOFA (2022: £7,814) and at the balance sheet date there is an overpayment of £68 (2022: nil).

17 Legal status of the charity

The charity is a company limited by guarantee and has no share capital. The liability of each member in the event of winding up is limited to £1.