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2023-03-17-accounts

Providing Bucket List events for people with secondary cancer

YOLO JO’S CHARITY ANNUAL REPORT 2023

www.yolojoscharity.co.uk email: contact@yolojoscharity.co.uk

Registered Charity Number 1172793

Report of the Board of Trustees for the Year ended 31st December 2023

Trustees and Members

The Members of the charity are its Trustees for the purpose of its Foundation model. Charitable Incorporated Organisation or CIO and who throughout this report are collectively referred to as the Trustees.

The three Trustees are as follows:

All Trustees give their time voluntarily and receive no benefits from the charity. Any expenses that are reclaimed from the charity are set out in the notes to the accounts. No serious incidents or other matters that Trustees need to report to the Charity Commission have occurred during this reporting period.

In addition to the 3 Trustees, we felt that we needed more help in certain areas so decided to form a committee for the everyday running of the charity. So we have the help of Sarah, when times get busy.

Legal Structure and Governance

The registered head office is:11 Stockton View Gainsborough Road Warrington WA4 6BJ

The charity is governed by its Constitution, which will be reviewed annually and revised if necessary in line with Charity Commission guidance and approval. The charity is incorporated through the legal status of a CIO, which means if the CIO is wound up, the Trustees of the CIO have no liability to contribute to its assets and no personal responsibility for settling its debts and liabilities.

Third Party Indemnity Insurance

The Charity is covered by a public indemnity insurance supplied by the following:-

Zurich Insurance Ltd.

Risk Management

The charity does not employ any staff. All work by committee members is voluntary. The current registered address and operating premises are the home address of Trustee David Williams.

This is the following:-

11 Stockton View Gainsborough Road Warrington WA4 6BJ

The charity does use a PO Box address for official correspondence.

Yolo Jo’s Charity PO Box 1318 WARRINGTON WA4 9SW

The financial risk of the charity is extremely low, with just the following annual outgoings which are essential in the promotion and everyday running of the charity. There were some inflationary increases to our running costs. Public Liability Insurance - £127.68 PO Box - Annual Fee £378.00

Objectives and Activities

The principle activity of the charity is to fund and organise memorable “Bucket List” events for people suffering from diagnosed “secondary/terminal cancer.”

The Charity was initiated by our Founder Mrs Joanne Williams and her husband David Williams. Joanne had been suffering from terminal breast cancer herself for over 5 years. During this time “Jo and Dave” lived life to the full, experiencing as many “Bucket List” events as possible. These included once in a lifetime holidays, weekends away, theatre shows, music concerts, etc. All these experiences provided Jo with many things to look forward to and enjoy. She truly believed the anticipation and excitement of them kept her going in the relentless fight against terminal cancer. Jo tried at all times to live life as normal as possible, with literally hundreds of hospital visits interrupting this life. But Jo was always planning her next “special treat” which made her smile and come as a relief from the many treatments she underwent.

Jo and Dave had already been supporting for 4 years the Marina Dalglish Foundation, another Liverpool based cancer charity. Jo had met Marina whilst having treatment on her first diagnosis at Aintree hospital in 2009. But sadly as Jo started to become extremely poorly at the start of 2017, she and Dave decided it was time to start their own charity. The whole ethos would be the treat people in her own position and to put smiles on their faces too. So “Yolo Jo’s Charity” was founded and registered with the Charities Commission in January 2017.

The main focus for the first 12 months were the following:-

Progress and Achievements

The Brand

One of the first tasks was to design a Logo and all associated branding. Thankfully a close friend of Jo’s was able to help with this task. After some to and fro with Jo, the logo was signed off. We were very happy that Jo saw the logo for the charity named after her before she passed away.

This logo and associated pink, black and white colour scheme was used across the whole brand, including the website, letterheads, business cards, posters and application form.

Raising Funds

The main cornerstone of our fundraising has been our annual 24 Hour Squashathon event. 2023 brought the 9th iteration of our event, returning for the 2nd time since an enforced 3 year absence due to COVID-19. We held the Squashathon in mid June at Warrington Sports Club, the usual home of the event. After much hard work and organisation, it was an overwhelming success, with 24 hours of continual Squash, with close to 80 players being involved. This year we didn’t hold the Charity night, which traditionally folllowed straight after the squashathon. Due to logistic issues with the venue and a lack of volunteers availability to.

However we still managed to raise on the weekend £3,385 through Squash entries and donations. This included the matching scheme, again by our regular benefactors VISA.

We have also had various small cash and online donations throughout the year. All these have been from friends and family of people whom we have arranged a “bucket list” events for.

Applicants and Events

We have had an amazing response from everybody who hears of the charity, saying what a wonderful idea it is to just try and put smiles on faces. It has been refreshing to be able to create such a personal link with applicants. Rather than the funds raised going into a huge pot, which is more often than not untraceable as to where these funds help the larger charities ie Cancer Research, Marie Curie and the likes.

With the passing of the COVID-19 virus risks even further in 2023, things getting back to compete normality. This enabled us to organise the events far more easily, with no hygiene restrictions at hotels etc. Thus with life in the country back to “normal” again, we saw applications up from 14 in 2021 to 16 in 2023. Only three of these applicants not actually progressing to fulfilling their event. However all 3 are still in the pipeline and just on hold for now, as they were not applicants health issues holding them back but other reasons.

This is a sample list of events we have organised in 2023:-

The feedback we have received from successful applicants that have been on their “Bucket List” event has been overwhelming. We were so pleased to arrange for Ruben and his wife to visit The Daffodil Hotel in Grasmere for an all inclusive foodie weekend.

Ruben & Lucy

“Thank you so much to Dave and everyone at Yolo Jo’s for arranging such a lovely and much needed spa break at the Daffodil Hotel in the Lakes.

We were booked in for the ‘Foodie Escape’ which included an amazing evening dinner, wonderful buffet breakfast and an afternoon tea! Also had a lovely lake view from our room, couldn’t have asked for more. We had such a lovely time and some great memories made.”

Progress and Achievements

Collaboration

As In 2022, we continued our collaboration with the Cancer care hospitals in Liverpool. The care nurses at Aintree, Donna Murray and her team, especially Vicky Kinsley and Michelle Cross, the specialist Cancer care nurses have since been sending us applicants again throughout 2023.

This collaboration has been very successful in previous years, however with the constant improvement of treatments for cancer the dynamic has changed slightly. The older ways of treatment usually meant 2 or three weeks away from the hospital. However this has changed in the last 2 years to more weekly treatment, hugely restricting applicants time and availability. So we have been advising applicants to think of more local, and simpler events, usually restricted to 1 or 2 nights. Or even daily events like theatre tickets, events and family meals etc. This does seemed to have helped the applicants achieve their goals easier this year.

We have also been collaborating with various McMillan and other similar cancer care charities, which we hope to expand going forward. In particular a former Aintree nurse, Tracy Gill, who has moved in the Hospice care side of cancer. She has been spreading the word and sending us applications throughout the year.

Our collaboration has also continued with “Breast Mates” group for ladies recovering from breast cancer based near St. Helens. We hope to receive more applications from them during 2024.

Facebook

Our main platform for reaching the public continues to be Facebook Social Media. It has proved very successful in spreading the word of Yolo Jo’s Charity. Applicants have been posting reviews of the events they have attended and this helps to promote further applicants to get involved with the charity. Also providing “happy memories” for their friends and family to view. We plan on continuing with this platform, as it is worldwide and also free at point of use.

Financial Review

A statement of financial activities provides a summary of our income and expenditure for 2022-2023. We have incurred costs of £1698.61. We have income from fundraising and donations of £9249.76 . The total expenditure on applications for Bucket list events is £5227.26 . Bank balance as of end of year is £48,013.78 .

Financial Outlook

After 7 full years of the charity being in existence, with our regular Annual Squashathon event and many smaller donations along the way. Yet again we find ourselves in the strong position of receiving more income than we are able to spend. This is mainly due to the nature of our charity remit of applicants having terminal cancer. This means due to the nature of their illness, there is a very small window of opportunity for applicants to achieve their bucket list event.

So for this reason, we have decided to concentrate on spending more on applications and also finding more applicants.

As a consequence of waning interest, lack of volunteers and being financially robust, we have decided to end our annual Squashathon event. This has been our main income stream since 2017, regularly raising over £10,000 per event. We still receive personal donations, which will keep funds ticking over. Although at the present rate of spend we have sufficient funds to cover events for years to come. So period of consolidation and application increase is our aim for the next 12 month period.

Future Plans

In 2022 we increased our catchment area to North West in its entirety, which did gain a extra applicants, Formerly we covered Wirral, Merseyside and Warrington. But after some discussion between the trustees, we thought it was a very positive move to expand this catchment area to cover the whole North West region. With this in mind and having gained a few more applications, we have now extended the catchment area to national level. This did gain us 3 new applications in 2023, so a worthwhile exercise. This does give the charity scope to gain applicants from personal contacts via association and also friends and family.

Venturing slightly away from “Bucket List Events” to help some applicants in different ways. It has become apparent over time, that we cannot actually advertise too aggressively, as after all the applicants are all diagnosed with a terminal illness. It would be insensitive of us at Yolo Jo’s Charity, if we did that. But it really has restricted our ability to provide as many events as we would like to. So we are commencing our efforts to diversify in the coming year even more than in 2022.

We are also considering making fixed sum donations to cancer hospices in the North West region. This is to speed up the distribution of funds faster with us having such a healthy bank balance again this financial year.

Dave Williams

Chair of Trustees Signed on behalf of the Trustees

A1
A3		 Receipts
Payments
Cost of fundraising
Cost of bucket list events
Internet
PO Box
Insurance
Media/Website
Total Payments		 2022 2023
EndingMar 2022 EndingMar 2023
6,216.49
(11.99)
(6,172.36)
0.00
(360.00)
(127.68)
0.00		 9,249.76
(1,200.63)
(5,227.06)
0.00
(378.00)
(107.99)
(11.99)
(6,672.03) (6,925.67)
(455.54) 45,689.69 2,324.09 48,013.78
Receipts
Donations
Donations Funeral
Donations tfer
Benevity Donation
Total
Payments
Internet
PO Box
Website
Printing
Insurance
Purchase
Catering
Bucket list
Media
Total
Net of receipts/payments
Cash		 Donations
Donations Funeral
Donations tfer
Benevity Donation		 Apr-22 May-22 Jun-22 Jul-22 Aug-22 Sep-22 Oct-22 Nov-22 Dec-22 Jan-23 Feb-23 Mar-23 Total
472.66
0
0
0		 0
0
0
0		 552.1
0
0
0		 8225
0
0
0		 0
0
0
0		 0
0
0
0		 0
0
0
0		 0
0
0
0		 0
0
0
0		 0
0
0
0		 0
0
0
0		 0
0
0
0		 9,249.76
0.00
0.00
0.00
Total 472.66 - 552.10 8,225.00 - - - - - - - - 9,249.76
0
0
-11.99
0
0
-7.65
0
-255.03
0
0
0		 0
0
0
0
0
0
0
176.81
0
0
0		 0
0
0
-290
0
-118.98
-600
-494.47
0
0
0		 0
0
0
0
0
-80
0
-997
0
0
0		 0
0
0
0
0
0
0
133.02
0
0
0		 0
0
0
0
0
0
0
-568.2
0
0
0		 0
0
0
0
0
0
0
-669.7
0
0
0		 0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0		 0
0
0
0
0
0
0
-600
0
0
0		 0
0
0
0
0
-104
0
-1305.49
0
0
0		 0
0
0
0
-107.99
0
0
-432
0
0
0		 0
-378
0
0
0
0
0
-215
0
0
0		 0.00
(378.00)
(11.99)
(290.00)
(107.99)
(310.63)
(600.00)
(5,227.06)
0.00
0.00
Total (274.67) 176.81 (1,503.45) (1,077.00) 133.02 (568.20) (669.70) 0.00 (600.00) (1,409.49) (539.99) (593.00) (6,925.67)
Net of receipts/payments 197.99 176.81 (951.35) 7,148.00 133.02 (568.20) (669.70) 0.00 (600.00) (1,409.49) (539.99) (593.00) 2,324.09
Cash 45,887.68 46,064.49 45,113.14 52,261.14 52,394.16 51,825.96 51,156.26 51,156.26 50,556.26 49,146.77 48,606.78 48,013.78