Mosaic LGBT+ Young Persons’ Trust Charity Number 1166676
Report of Trustees
April 1[st] 2022 – March 31[st] 2023
Registered Address
Old Diorama Arts Centre 201 Drummond St London NW1 3FE
Introduction
Welcome to the Annual Report of Mosaic LGBT+ Young Persons’ Trust which we usually just refer to as Mosaic. We are a Charitable Incorporated Organisation and provide a range of services for teenagers from across London who are LGBT+.
Our objects are
*** TO RELIEVE THE MENTAL AND EMOTIONAL DISTRESS SUFFERED BY YOUNG PERSONS WITHIN GREATER LONDON AND THE SURROUNDING AREA, WHO ARE LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER (LGBT), BY THE PROVISION OF ADVICE, EDUCATION AND SUPPORT WITH THE OBJECTS OF INCREASING SELFESTEEM AND POSITIVE IDENTITY AMONGST SAID PERSONS.**
*** TO PROMOTE EQUALITY, DIVERSITY AND COMMUNITY COHESION AS WELL AS TO ELIMINATE DISCRIMINATION IN RELATION TO LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENDER (LGBT) PERSONS BY ADVANCING EDUCATION AND RAISING AWARENESS OF ISSUES AFFECTING SAID PERSONS.**
We summarise our objectives into a simple aim: to support, educate and inspire LGBT+ young persons from across London.
Governance
Our Board
Mosaic has a very active Board of Trustees and we have tried very hard to ensure we have as diverse a Board as possible and that we listen to what these diverse voices are saying.
In summer our longest serving trustee, Gemma Benton, told us she intended to step down early in 2023. We also had a resignation from Josie Youd who was taking a career break and going travelling, so could not continue. We decided to recruit some new trustees and asked each of our trustees to re-evaluate their commitment. Leigh Fontaine decided to step down when their term ended and Sophie McGuirk-Cummings and Kieran Ferdinand decided with new trustees coming on Board they too could step down and have their replacements recruited at the same time.
Graysen Whittaker took over from Gemma as Vice Chair at the start of the year and Gemma remained a trustee for a further month to ensure an orderly handover.
The following trustees served during 2022 – 23:
Ken Batty Chair (reappointed as Chair for a further 3 years) Gemma Benton Vice Chair (resigned as Trustee 1 February 2023) Leigh Fontaine Safeguarding Trustee (resigned 31 March 2023)
Norman Powell Emma Palmer Gavin Doyle Christos Papaioannou Graysen Whittaker (Elected Vice Chair from 1 January 2023) Kieran Ferdinand (Resigned 31 March 2023) Sophie McGuirk-Cummings (Resigned 31 March 2023) Josie Youd (Resigned 15[th] June 2022)
With the planning around the departures being so orderly we have been able to recruit several new Trustees who will commence their term of office on 1 April 2023. We appointed the following to the Board:
Ash Bungarnayak (Board Secretary)
Ben McGlynn-Moore Charles Alderwick Deuvaunn Darroux Holly Singlehurst Imogen Webb (Safeguarding Trustee)
Jo Wittams Madison Pollard-Shore
Christopher Shearer-Wright
Our process for recruitment was to advertise the roles widely, including on Charity Jobs, Linked In and through personal approaches. A panel of Trustees and a panel of young persons interviewed all the applicants and then selected those who we felt brought most to the Board.
The Board met 6 times during the period under review. Three times for a 2 hour meeting via Zoom and three times for a half day face to face meeting.
Board Committees
While our Board meets regularly the detailed work is done in Committees. Each committee met 5 times in the year.
Our Frontline Services committee has oversight of everything we do that involves our young persons. This is also the committee that provides assurance to the Board on the quality of our safeguarding. It is chaired by a Trustee with deep experience of youth work and safeguarding.
Our Finance, Risk and Governance Committee has oversight over our finances. They ensure the risk register reflects our risks and the mitigations we have in place. They also ensure that do all that is necessary to meet our regulatory requirements and have good governance. It is chaired by a Trustee with deep experience of charities and charity governance.
Our Marketing and Fundraising committee has oversight over our marketing and fundraising. During the year our Trustee with marketing experience stepped down and so the Committee was chaired by a volunteer with outstanding marketing experience. They were supported by the Board Chair and by a Trustee with deep experience of fundraising and fundraising regulation.
Staff and Volunteers
Our founder, and Executive Director, Lukasz Konieczka, led the Trust throughout the period. Lukasz continues to inspire us with his vision for what Mosaic could be and he is as creative in identifying new programmes for us as he has always been.
Our second employee changed during the year. In May we said goodbye to Hugh O’Keeffe who had worked for us since 2019, as he left us to take up a new role. It was a very amicable departure and Hugh has come back several times on a sessional basis to cover the youth club when we were short-staffed due to holidays and sickness.
Our advertisement to find a new Services Manager had over 300 applicants and we finally whittled this down to a number we could interview. We appointed Klara Lievens, a Belgian national. who had previously been an intern on the Erasmus programme. We then had a long delay while we secured a work visa for her and she finally joined us in January 2023.
The impact of that delay in joining was mitigated by Klara volunteering for us for a few weeks in the summer and then doing some remote work for us after that. Even so, with only one member of staff, we were not able to run all of the programmes we would do with two. In particular, we were not able to restart our Sunday youth club, as had been planned, though that was started at the beginning of April 2023.
What we were able to do is to expand our school-based mentoring programme and we talk below in detail about the numbers. School-based mentoring enables us to reach a group of young persons who would otherwise be without support and its expansion is an important part of our vision of reaching more LGBT+ young persons.
Everything Mosaic does has volunteer mentors involved. At schools and at youth club, in our summer and winter residential activities, in our major events like Homoween and Clothes Swap we have volunteers giving their time. Just as an example in three areas: during the year under review we had over 800 hours of mentoring at our Wednesday youth group, 360 hours in schools and almost 800 hours at residentials. The Trustees believe that Mosaic benefits hugely from the contributions of our staff and volunteers. We would like to record our profound thanks for all they do. Their commitment is hugely impressive.
Mosaic Strategy
During the period in question, the Trustees reviewed and updated our strategy. We identified several key points.
Firstly, we want to remain centralised in one place. Our model is to offer a youth club that meets in central London and always has a critical mass rather than offer smaller groups in various boroughs across the Capital. We feel that dissipating our resources is manageable but spreading the young persons across several groups would not work.
Secondly, we wanted to expend our energy in 2022 – 23 deepening the services we offer rather than offering fewer services to a larger number. Making a decision between these two was forced on us by having only one member of staff and we envisage that in subsequent years we will be offering a greater number of services to a greater number of young persons.
So, for example, we increased the number of counsellors we had; we built a programme to offer our young persons paid work experience in businesses – and gained funding for a third worker to enable us to do that; we added to the number of clothes swaps we ran; and we launched a new event our summer garden party. While our strategy going forward will be to increase the number of young persons we work with, in the year under review we focused on more offerings for the existing group.
Thirdly, we identified that we were not getting enough funding from grants and foundations and were becoming over-reliant on local authorities contracting with us for charitable activity. We decided to employ, on a contract basis, a professional fundraiser. She started with us right at the end of our previous financial year and so we had a full year of fundraising. At first sight, the role has not been successful – by 31[st] March she had only raised £15,000 in additional funding. However, in the first two weeks of April 2023, not covered in this report, we secured 4 years of funding for our second worker and for our culture club; and a seed grant of 1 year’s funding to employ a third worker to drive our work experience. The value of these grants, over the time they cover is almost £300,000/
Finally, the trustees looked at the space where our young people meet. It was leased by Camden Council to a development charity, who then sublet it to us and a number of other community organisations. We had long been dissatisfied with the management of the facility and we, rather than the leaseholder, had arranged donations to cover redecorating the building and getting repairs done. In early 2022 the development charity was wound up and, without a formal lease in place, we ran the space. Camden carried out vital repairs to the outside of the building including repairing a collapsed drain that made the entrance almost inaccessible. They also cover the costs of heating and lighting. For our part, we have continued to carry out basic repairs and also invested in new equipment – most importantly new chairs, the old ones being very damaged after a major ingress of water. The trustees recognise the risk of not having a formal lease while seeing the benefits of having access to the building when we need it, maintaining it to our high standards, and now, getting a small income from subletting.
Review of our work
Youth Club
Our Youth Club has been delivered weekly every Wednesday, had had regular attendance and has grown in numbers throughout the year. Our Sunday youth club was scheduled to open in this period but it didn’t happen due to a delay in recruitment of the member of staff who required a visa. We re-launched the Sunday Youth Club in April 2023, just out of the period covered in this report
Young persons have reported that workshops delivered throughout the year as part of the youth club curriculum were interesting, insightful and educational. Young persons rated their improvement in knowledge on a 10-point scale scoring knowledge before and after the workshop citing an improvement on average of 3.75.
Youth club sporadically was requested to be delivered in a hybrid fashion by members and that was possible thanks to the technology we have on site.
Social Connections
One of the biggest impacts Mosaic has is in the reduction of isolation and loneliness and that is achieved by installing values of community and building peer networks. Part of that process is extended online where young LGBT+ persons engage with each other through the DISCORD server. It is a supervised environment making sure our members can chat, play games and give each other support as well as somewhere mentors can reach out to young persons who might need additional support. DISCORD also proved to be a valuable tool in democratising the service as more members were able to share their thoughts and perspectives on service delivery and innovation.
Residential Provision
Mosaic delivered two residentials. Summer Camp in August which took place in Wales and included Pride Youth Games in Scotland and Winter Retreat in the February half term in Brighton.
Summer Camp was a great experience. Young persons took part in raft building, abseiling as well as workshops, walks and water activities.
At Winter Retreat young persons were able to take part in LGBT+ exhibitions in Brighton as well as cooking and part-taking in fun activities and workshops.
Both residentials have had the best evaluations to date. Based on feedback from previous residentials staff looked to adjust programming to make sure that there was a balance between activities that were compulsory and those which were not.
Events
In Summer 2022 we launched a new event - our summer Garden Party. We took over the beautiful Phoenix Gardens in Soho and had a wonderful afternoon. It is going to be very firmly part of our annual calendar going forward.
Homoween is our annual Halloween Party. It is one of our most popular events and we know that our young persons put a lot of effort into costumes and makeup and ensuring it is a really fun event. As always it received positive reviews from our members who attended.
Culture Club
Culture Club again proved to be one of the most popular Mosaic activities. Through the Club our young persons are offered a cultural outing on average twice a month. This becomes more intense during June as it is Pride Month and February as it is LGBT+ History Month. In the period under review young persons were able to see performances like ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show’, ‘I, Joan’ and ‘My Son’s a Queer, but what can I do about it?’. One of the benefits of being in London is that it is never difficult to find suitable LGBT+ cultural events where our young persons can learn more about their community and culture.
Wellbeing
Mosaic recognises the need for preventative work that helps to maintain well-being and as part of our approach, we have offered our members the opportunity to go to Kew Gardens to reconnect with nature, take part in canal site bike rides and even trips to cat cafe for those who don’t have pets at home.
Part of wellbeing we believe is physical activity and that is why we offered our members outings to Alexandra Palace for ice skating as well as walks and cycling trips. We also purchased ping pong, croquet and badminton equipment.
Psychotherapeutic services
Mosaic has offered drama therapy individually to young persons who enjoyed the process and reported it to be an impactful experience for young persons who got involved.
We launched our counselling pilot in 2020 and it was highly successful. During the period in review our one-to-one counselling was regularly running close to capacity, but we have been able to match young persons with a counsellor on average within 6 weeks. All evaluations showed that young persons enjoyed the process and saw it as impactful. We know that talking therapies can have hugely positive effects on the mental health of young people and that is what we have seen.
Environmental and Ethical Review
Mosaic has conducted its environmental impact assessment making sure that our negative impact is limited. We declared Mosaic to be plastic-free and replaced all the cleaning products with environmental alternatives alongside our refreshments purchasing which have shifted towards making sure of socially-just products replacing those that are not.
We run regular quarterly Young Persons’ Clothes Swaps offering opportunities for young persons to have access to ethical and environmental fashion while reducing waste. Events become more popular every time they take place. Leftover clothes were donated to TrAID a local charity shop assuring a further positive impact on the environment and communities.
Employability and Career Hub
Mosaic Trust is keen to support members in employment and further education. We have had a new mentor starting who specialises in advising members on their UCAS applications and university, course choices. It proved to be a very well-received opportunity by young persons who didn’t know what was important to them.
Employability advice through CV writing, getting ready for interviews and the general world of work preparation. This meant that young persons were able to get support in securing employment.
Pride Engagement
Pride is critical in building our members' engagement with the LGBT+ community. Mosaic has facilitated members engagement in Student Pride, Pride in London and Trans Pride Brighton. They proved to be a successful and very engaging way to bring our young persons closer to their community.
Celebration of our anniversary
Our 20th anniversary occurred during lock-down and we were not able to celebrate it as we might have liked. However during 2022 Biennial Metrocultures partnered with us to record a radio play that was a reconstruction of the very first Mosaic’s sessions. This was based on research by an artist who interviewed the first members of the staff and produced an engaging, amusing and accurate depiction of the founding of Mosaic.
Showcase
Each year we take time in January to celebrate what has been achieved in the previous year and “Showcase” our work. We hear from our young persons, from staff, from mentors and from parents too. This year, at the kind invitation of Professor the Lord Norton of Louth, we held our Showcase in the House of Lords and over 50 funders, supporters, mentors, staff, trustees, young persons and their families came along. It was a huge success and a great opportunity for everyone to celebrate what we do.
Financial Report
Mosaic is financially well-managed. We have clear financial controls and proper budgeting. We raise money from various sources, though, as mentioned earlier, the Trustees identified a risk of over-reliance on Local Authority funding compared to grants and foundations.
We continue to raise significant funds from within the LGBT+ community, and in the period covered raised almost £23K. This was similar to the previous year, when we had had a focus on this and increased the amount by almost £10K. We believe a focus in the coming year will enable us to add a further £10K to this. We believe strongly that we need to be connected to the LGBT+ community and we think funding from the community is one measure of that.
We raised £22K through corporate donations and similar to the previous year. Again this was a focus item two years ago when we had doubled corporate donations. We believe that our new work experience programme will enable us to increase corporate donations in the coming year.
The biggest single source of funds for Mosaic is local authorities and to a lesser extent the NHS, funding our charitable activity. The re-organisation of the NHS saw us lose funding from several CCGs and while we increased our local authority funding the total amount declined in 2022-23. We had already recognised our overreliance on these funds and were increasing our focus on trusts and foundations.
As a result of that focus we saw our funding from trusts and foundations grow from less than £3K to £64K – and as previously mentioned that has increased further in the year ahead.
As a result, the Trustees think we have a very balanced income stream, not over-reliant on any one source of funding.
2022-23 saw our planned spending significantly decrease. There were two reasons for this, both already covered in this report. Firstly, we had only one member of staff for most of the year, when we had planned to fund two. Secondly, our building hire costs reduced greatly.
One further factor shows up in the accounts. In March we had several payments which were restricted funding intended for the following financial year – which inflated our income.
In all we had income of £183K and expenditure of £139K. This surplus, added to the reserves we already had, means we went into April 2023 with £185K in the bank. While at first sight this looks large, in reality, with three workers from July 2023, it is about 9 months' expenses. This meets our goal of having between 9- and 12-months operating costs in the bank. Our main sources of income, local authorities and trust funds both have long decision cycles so we believe this protects us going forward.
Summary
This year has been a year of consolidation. We have deepened the services we offer. We have a new member of staff in place, with a third worker who started in July 2023. We have financial stability. We have a new group of Trustees who are now working alongside our more experienced members producing a balanced, but appropriately challenging, Board. We believe this provides a solid foundation for the year ahead and look forward to supporting educating and inspiring the LGBT+ young persons of London.
| Unrestricted funds |
Restricted funds |
Endowment funds |
Endowment funds |
Total funds | Last year | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| to the nearest £ |
to the nearest | £ | to the nearest | £ | to the nearest £ | to the nearest £ | |||||||
| A1 Receipts | |||||||||||||
| Kickstart refund | - | - | - | - | 9,065 | ||||||||
| Grants | 22,900 | 41,500 | - | 64,400 | 2,850 | ||||||||
| Donations | 43,990 | - | - | 43,990 | 43,632 | ||||||||
| Charitable Activity | 65,832 | - | - | 65,832 | 94,213 | ||||||||
| Investment Income | 913 | - | - | 913 | 286 | ||||||||
| Other income | 8,536 | - | - | 8,536 | 4,472 | ||||||||
| - | - | - | - | - | |||||||||
| - | - | - | - | - | |||||||||
| Sub total(Gross income for AR) | 142,171 | 41,500 | - | 183,671 | 154,518 | ||||||||
| A2 Asset and investment sales, | |||||||||||||
| (see table). | |||||||||||||
| - | - | - | - | - | |||||||||
| - | - | - | - | - | |||||||||
| Sub total | - | - | - | - | - | ||||||||
| **Total receipts ** | 142,171 | 41,500 | - | 183,671 | 154,518 | ||||||||
| A3 Payments | |||||||||||||
| Advertisingand Promotion | 11,811 | - | - | 11,811 | 3,507 | ||||||||
| Administration | 7,661 | - | - | 7,661 | 2,812 | ||||||||
| Culture Club & Events | 14,667 | - | - | 14,667 | 11,612 | ||||||||
| Rent | - | - | - | - | 4,200 | ||||||||
| Staffing Costs | 47,674 | 26,500 | - | 74,174 | 91,648 | ||||||||
| YoungPersons Support | 14,490 | - | - | 14,490 | - | ||||||||
| Wellness Activities | 7,280 | - | - | 7,280 | 8,811 | ||||||||
| Staff & Vols Training,Travel & Support | - | - | - | - | 1,908 | ||||||||
| Residential Activities | 9,206 | - | - | 9,206 | 8,398 | ||||||||
| Youth Group Equipment/Supplies | - | - | - | - | 4,428 | ||||||||
| **Sub total ** | 112,789 | 26,500 | - | 139,289 | 137,324 | ||||||||
| A4 Asset and investment | |||||||||||||
| purchases, (see table) | |||||||||||||
| Fixed Assets | 10,970 | - | - | 10,970 | 1,644 | ||||||||
| - | - | - | - | ||||||||||
| **Sub total ** | 10,970 | - | - | 10,970 | 1,644 | ||||||||
| **Total payments ** | 123,759 | 26,500 | - | 150,259 | 138,968 | ||||||||
| **Net of receipts/(payments) ** | 18,412 | 15,000 | - | 33,412 | 15,550 | ||||||||
| A5 Transfers between funds | - | - | - | - | - | ||||||||
| A6 Cash funds last year end | 152,085 | - | - | 152,085 | 136,535 | ||||||||
| **Cash funds this year end ** | 170,497 | 15,000 | - | 185,497 | 152,085 |
Section B Statement of assets and liabilities at the end of the period
| Categories B1 Cash funds |
Details Details Total cash funds (agree balances with receipts and payments account(s)) |
to nearest £ Unrestricted funds |
H57 Restricted funds |
to nearest £ Endowment funds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 170,497 | 15,000 - - 15,000 |
- | ||
| - | - | |||
| - | - | |||
| 170,497 | - | |||
| OK to nearest £ Unrestricted funds |
OK to nearest £ Restricted funds |
OK | ||
| to nearest £ Endowment funds |
(HARITY (QMMISSIO FOR ENGIAND AND WAL Independent examiner's report on the accounts Section A Independent Exaininer's Report Report to the Irustsesl members of Mosaic LGBT+ YouryJ Person5 Tmsi On accounts the year ondod 31 March 2023 Charlty no. 1166676 Set out on pages ReIlts and PaYnrts Acc(MJnts pwJes l and 2 I rep)rt to the trustees my examthauon of the accounts of the at tharity (Ihe Tfusf) for the year ended 3110312023 Rosponslbllltlos arnl basls of As the charty trustees of the Trus( ate responsfi)le for the report preparan of the accounts in accordan with the reqUirennts ofthe Chajilies Act 2011 fthe Att). I report in respect of my examlnaion of the Trust's accounts carried out under seclkjn 145 of the 2011 Act and In Calng out my examlnatlon, have followed the applicable Direcuons glvEn by the Charty Commission under se(Ap)n 145(5)(b) of the A I have completed my eyamlnan. I confirm that no material matters ha)R come to nry attentknn In connection with the examination whlch gEs cause to tElle that in. ary m*rlal respect l. accounting records were not kept In accordance wlth SeCn 130 of the Acl or 2. the ax)unts do not accord wkh the acu)unng records Independent examiners statemeirt I ha no cOnmS and ha come auoss no other matters In connectKJn wtth the examination to which attentlon should be drawn In order to enable a proper underSlandg of the accounts io te reached. Date: 17 January 2023 Howard Lane Relevant professional quallflcatlon(s) or body Of any): FFNJFIPA Address: Pro-Fli Ing Ltd 68 Canterbury Grove London SE27 LWA IER
Section B Disclosure Onty complete rf the examiner needs to huhlight n*rs of concetn (see CC32. I[KleTrdent eimInatIon of tharity aco)unts: dliections and gukjance (Dr ex2rnirs}. GIV8 here brief detalls of any Itoms that Ihe examlner wlshes to dlsclose.