2024-12-31-accounts

Bi Pride UK

TRUSTEES ANNUAL REPORT AND FINANCIAL STATEMENTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31/12/2024

Registered Charity Number: 1177128

Bi Pride UK

(Registered Charity Number: 1177128)

TRUSTEES’ ANNUAL REPORT 31/12/2024

The Trustees present their report and financial statements for the year ended 31/12/2024.

The Trustees believe that the financial statements comply with current statutory requirements and the Charity’s governing document.

REFERENCE AND ADMINISTRATIVE DETAILS

Charity Name:	Bi Pride UK
Charity Number:	1177128
Trustees:	A Baylas (previously Kay) (Chair)
	R Davey (Vice Chair)
	E Pooley (Secretary)
	A von Spreckelsen (Treasurer) (Resigned 17/02/24)
	K Barnett (Treasurer) (Appointed 01/02/2024)
	A Bond
	S Gossage
	C Appenteng (Resigned 12/10/2024)
	S Engineer (Resigned 23/05/24)
	S Jivraj
	A Lipley (Appointed 15/01/2024)
	A Changa (Appointed 15/07/2024)
	N Payne (Appointed 16/12/2024)
	A Glover (Appointed 20/01/2025)
Company Secretary:	E Pooley
Registered Offce:	5 Caledonian Road
	London
	N1 9DX
Bankers:	Lloyds Bank Plc
	120 Lewisham High Street
	Lewisham
	London SE13 6JG

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Bi Pride UK (Registered Charity Number: 1177128)

TRUSTEES’ ANNUAL REPORT 31/12/2024

STRUCTURE, GOVERNANCE and MANAGEMENT

Bi Pride UK is a Charitable Incorporated Organisation registered on 12/02/2018.

PUBLIC BENEFIT

The trustees have complied with the duty in section 4 of the 2006 Act to have due regard to guidance on public benefit published by the commission.

OBJECTIVES and ACTIVITIES

To promote equality and diversity for the public benefit and those belonging to one or more minority identity. Particular focus is on the elimination of discrimination against people self-identifying as or assumed to be attracted to more than one gender (including but not exclusively bisexual/romantic, pansexual/romantic, and polysexual/romantic people) by:

• Raising public awareness of issues and difficulties faced by people who experience attraction to more than one gender;

• Celebrating, respecting and highlighting the diversity of communities of people who experience attraction to more than one gender;

• Staging a periodic multisexual (‘bi pride’ festival, and smaller events throughout the year; and

• Such other objects as are charitable under the laws of England and Wales as the management committee shall in their absolute discretion determine.

ABOUT BI PRIDE UK

Between ‘gay’ and ‘straight’, there are so many shades of attraction beyond gender. We seek to create spaces for anyone who falls into that spectrum or thinks that they might.

Our community is vibrant and vivid, and people adopt many different labels to identify themselves, or even choose not to use labels at all. Whether you use bi, bisexual, biromantic, pan, pansexual, panromantic, poly, polysexual, polyromantic, queer, fluid, heteroflexible, homoflexible, something totally different, a combination of these, or even no label at all, we’re here for you.

Bi Pride UK’s mission is to create spaces where people who experience attraction beyond gender can be freely visible and celebrate themselves and their identities. It’s not enough to be ‘welcome’ at a Pride. We make up a very large proportion of the queer community – many stats actually say we’re over half the community – and we deserve to be visible and celebrated in our own right.

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Bi Pride UK (Registered Charity Number: 1177128)

TRUSTEES’ ANNUAL REPORT 31/12/2023

ACHIEVEMENTS and PERFORMANCE

Introduction

Beginning a new strategic period (2024-2026), we are proud of the successes of 2024 which have made a successful start to some ambitious plans for the charity for this new chapter, and continue a trend of several years of development:

• Our volunteer team continued to expand, including new volunteer roles created, some roles filled which had been advertised for quite some time, and all Trustee positions on the Board filled for the first time;

• We made our first steps into systematic impact measurement across the organisation with a new impact strategy to sit alongside the strategic objectives for 2024;

• Our 2024 flagship event moved to a new venue;

• We secured the charity’s first large grant, £20,000 from the National Lottery towards access costs at the event.

In recognition of the charity’s ongoing work, 2024 also saw us making the shortlist for Community Initiative of the Year at the Bank of London Awards. We have learned a lot from 2024, and our successes reinforce the ongoing importance of committing to accessibility, inclusion and centring marginalised experiences.

Our objectives

2024 was the first year of a new three-year strategic period, for which our key objectives are:

1. Increasing our organisational sustainability and continuity as a whole;

2. Embedding anti-oppression across the charity, both in internal processes and in service delivery, and being accountable on this;

3. Using our platforms and spaces to amplify and centre the most marginalised voices within bi communities;

4. Growing our recognition as an expert voice for bi communities in the UK, but never speaking on behalf of these communities;

5. Developing systems and tools to express our impact more clearly and comprehensively;

6. Building collaborative ways of working across all service delivery teams to foster innovation and creativity;

7. Working locally and collaboratively with bi people and communities across the UK.

These objectives were carried over from our previous 2021-2023 strategy, as we feel they continue to reflect our purpose and what we want to achieve as an organisation. We intentionally keep our specific objectives within each of these areas flexible to be reactive to the changing circumstances.

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Bi Pride UK

(Registered Charity Number: 1177128)

Our volunteers

Bi Pride UK has always been an entirely volunteer-run charity, and is therefore reliant on the dedication of a team of committed and passionate volunteers who believe in the work we do and want to help to create educational and celebratory spaces for the UK’s bi communities. We want to express our huge gratitude to every volunteer, from the Trustees who take legal responsibility for the charity, to our team Heads so capability running all the work on the ground, to the expert managers and officers in each team who make sure that Bi Pride UK can continue to have its impact on the ground.

After a year of significant volunteer growth in 2023, this trend slowed slightly in 2024, with more than 10 new year-round volunteers recruited. However, notable successes include filling some long-term vacancies on the Trustee Board; a new Trustee for community engagement was co-opted in January 2024 after the role had been vacant for over a year, and our first IT and digital Trustee was recruited in late 2024 (co-opted in January 2025, beyond the scope of this report). Additionally, following our previous Treasurer giving notice in October 2022 and agreeing to stay on until a replacement was found, we successfully filled this position in February 2024. These and two other Trustee appointments meant that we ended 2024 with a Board at its full strength of 11 Trustees for the very first time.

Beyond the Board, we also filled various volunteer roles across the charity. With the exit of our long-term Head of Volunteer Management, we were delighted that an existing volunteer from their team stepped up into this role. We also continued to embed the Volunteer Management team’s relationship manager model where Volunteer Managers support allocated teams across the charity with any volunteer recruitment needs, and recruited two new Volunteer Managers into this structure. Similarly, in late 2024, the Inclusion and Access team developed a similar structure of Access Managers working with other teams to ensure that inclusion and accessibility are considered in teams across the charity. Beyond the scope of this report, we have continued to expand this team in 2025.

In late 2024, three of our team Heads (Events, Fundraising, and Organisational Development) moved on from the charity, and the recruitment process for these roles continued into 2025, beyond the time covered by this report.

2024 saw some valuable volunteer management infrastructure developments:

• recruitment trackers for shortlisting, interviewing and onboarding volunteer candidates;

• standardised templates for communicating with prospective and successful candidates;

• procedures and trackers for managing volunteer exits.

We also began work on our volunteer reward and recognition strategy in 2024, including signing the organisation up to the Tickets for Good platform which allows us to offer discounted tickets to concerts and theatre to all volunteers.

As a remote charity, we primarily come together online, but in 2024, we brought

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Bi Pride UK

(Registered Charity Number: 1177128)

the team together in person twice outside of the annual flagship event. In March, we held an away day for the Trustee Board hosted for free by Quality Hotel Hampstead in London, with full attendance and a packed agenda considering strategy and budget planning, network mapping, and intra team expectations. This was followed in June by an away day for the whole team, generously hosted by TfL in their Southwark offices, where we reviewed our vision, mission and values, and thoughts about how we can maximise event-related fundraising and year-round comms. Both away days were in London, but had options for people to join remotely, and all volunteer expenses were reimbursed.

Our engagement and impact

Bi Pride UK’s three strategic pillars of work are our events work, our education and outreach work, and our communications work. This section gives an overview of what we have achieved in these three areas in 2024.

Bi Pride UK events

Our 2024 event took place on Saturday 31[st] August, at a new venue in the University of West London (UWL)’s Ealing campus. With over 1,040 attendees across in-person attendance and participation through our livestreams, the event was a little smaller than our previous events’ record at 1,350, but to our knowledge we continue to hold the record for the largest single-day bi-specific event in the world. Although we had fewer people on-site at the 2024 event, our livestream attracted higher numbers than the 2022 and 2023 events, demonstrating how valuable being able to participate remotely is for the bi communities. We are also eternally grateful to the on-the-day volunteers who make this all possible; in 2024 we had 37 volunteers supporting across the site in front-of-house and behind-the-scenes roles alongside 25 of our year-round volunteers as team leads.

Bi Pride continues to showcase incredible talent and expertise, drawing on broad experiences across the UK’s bi communities and beyond. Our Main Stage featured a roster of grassroots performers throughout the day, all beautifully co-hosted by the founder of Bitten Peach, Lilly Snatchdragon, and Sadie Sinner, the founder of the Cocoa Butter Club, and headliners comedian Emily Bampton and performer Norma Night. Over on our I Am Proud Stage, some fascinating speakers explored bi topics across five panels: accessibility and disability advocacy; bi+ poetry; bi visibility and invisibility online; bisexual sex education; and anti-colonial activism. The Community Hub, consistently a highlight for many attendees, hosted 40 stalls run by bi groups, LGBT charities, queer businesses and our corporate sponsors, and also featured our Bi Book Fair run for the third year in a row, with three author signings and several stalls selling bi and queer volumes.

In a commitment to continuous learning, there were several improvements to the content and format of the 2024 event based on previous events. For example, we received feedback for the 2023 event that attendees wanted to see longer panels on the I Am Proud Stage to allow for more in-depth contributions and longer Q&A sections, as well as longer gaps between panels so that the transitions were less disruptive and attendees had an opportunity to take comfort and refreshment

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Bi Pride UK

(Registered Charity Number: 1177128)

breaks without having to miss the next panel if they wanted to watch two consecutive sessions. As a result, we reduced the number of panels from 7 to 5 and increased them from 45 minutes to a full hour, and this was appreciated.

Responding to some accessibility challenges we experienced at the 2023 event and evaluated through a post-event accessibility review, we had determined that we needed to find a new venue for the 2024 event. Potential venues are assessed against many criteria including accessibility, appropriate spaces and affordability, and in our search for the 2024 venue we also prioritised having a step-free main stage and a single step-free route around the venue for all participants, allowing us to offer as much parity as possible in attendees’ and contributors’ experiences, whether or not they use mobility aids. Supported by an accessibility consultant, we assessed the UWL venue thoroughly before hiring the space, and at time of hire were confident that we could avoid the key issues of the previous venue.

Accessibility is a key priority, and a range of access features are part of the fabric of our event. As well as support from the access consultant mentioned above in the run up to the event, on the day there was BSL interpretation on both stages, a mobile changing places toilet unit for people who need more facilities than a standard accessible toilet provides, free sanitary products in all toilets, a sensory room for people to use whenever they need it, ear defenders available to borrow free of charge, livestreaming the event throughout the day, a multi-faith prayer room, three welfare officers from the queer-run welfare provision company SafeOnly, and dedicated access volunteers located throughout the site. BPUK’s event budget includes ring-fenced accessibility costs, with more than 40% of 2024’s event budget spent on access features; at the same time, keeping the event free to attend is itself an access commitment we make to our communities. We were also aware that our event was taking place shortly after a period of far-right rioting, with tensions high and many from the global majority feeling afraid in public spaces in the hostile environment that it created; we had contingency plans in place in case of any direct impacts that could affect our attendees near the event event or more broadly across London and beyond.

However, not everything went to plan. We experienced a number of venue-related issues outside of our control, such as learning at the eleventh hour that we would be unable to de-gender all of the toilets within the event footprint, and that there was construction work in several parts of the venue we were expecting to be able to use. We also received feedback that the location in Ealing was unpopular, as it was a fair distance from the nearest public transport options, and this may have been a contributing factor in the slightly lower than expected attendance on the day. As a result of these issues, we have concluded that another new venue is required for future events; a more suitable and central venue was found for 2025 beyond the scope of this report.

Comments from attendees on the day underline the importance of running an event like ours: people feeling affirmed, telling our volunteers how much being surrounded by community means to them, and sharing that they’ve made long-term friendships at our previous events and come back as a group. In the weeks and months following the 2024 event, we conducted our first post-event

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Bi Pride UK

(Registered Charity Number: 1177128)

survey with attendees, contributors and volunteers, and alongside our event accessibility review process initiated in 2023, this has given us valuable insight into how we can continue to improve future events, as well as highlighting more clearly the impact that our flagship Bi Pride event has for our communities:

“The stalls, programme, thoughtfulness about accessibility and general vibe of a lovely community were great! Thank you so much for all you do, I look forward to this every year”

“Enjoyed supporting queer small businesses and sitting in on thought-provoking talks”

“I'm grateful for the reflectiveness and consideration the team puts in.”

“Bi Pride remains the only pride event I've attended where I felt welcomed and accepted without any sense of feeling 'not queer enough' and this aspect of it is so refreshing.”

Community engagement

In our second strategic pillar of work, we engage with the wider communities on bi inclusion, helping to build bi inclusive spaces beyond our own organisational activities. An important aspect of this is our work with other Prides across the UK. We are members of the UK Pride Organisers Network (UKPON), and three of our Trustees attended the UKPON conference in Reading in October 2024, building connections with other Pride organisers. We also plan every year to attend other Prides around the country, providing a bi presence where there may not otherwise be one, or collaborating with local bi groups where those exist. In 2024, several of the Prides we had planned to attend were the focus of boycotts in connection to some of their corporate sponsors, which we decided to participate in, but beyond these, we attended Student Pride in London and Sparkle in Manchester, running a Bi Pride UK stall at both. Our attendance at Prides has a huge impact for bi attendees and their allies at these events, as they feel seen and celebrated in their local community. We find it particularly important to be present at Sparkle, celebrating the trans and non-binary communities, and there is always a lot of demand from the people we meet at it to deliver more for bi people in the North, which we hope we can do in future.

Beyond our engagement with Prides, we had several opportunities to contribute bi inclusion perspectives in a variety of spaces. For example, we participated in a roundtable on funding for LGBT+ organisations organised by LGBT charity Consortium, sharing vital perspectives on how chronically underfunded bi organisations are and how these organisations need to be funded to deliver bi inclusion training and consultancy to the wider LGBT+ communities to achieve a dual purpose of centring lived experience in training about our communities and offering a source of unrestricted funding.

Alongside this, our partnership with Consortium since 2021 to deliver the Bi Community Fund, a micro grants programme for bi groups across the UK, was

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Bi Pride UK

(Registered Charity Number: 1177128)

spent down in 2024. We contributed £4,000 towards this fund, with a further £1,000 added to the pot to make a total of £5,000. 2023 saw six grants of funding three bi activism organisations and three pieces of original bi theatre, while the grants awarded in 2024 funded a further five bi organisations around the UK and a queer organisation to deliver bi-specific work. The grants totalled almost £4,000 of funding distributed, alongside £1,200 paid to the lived experience panel members recruited to make decisions on how the funding should be awarded. This brings the fund to a close, and we hope it will be only the start of a process of expansion for funders to include bi groups explicitly in their grant programmes.

We have also continued to contribute on wider policy matters which are of concern to our communities and through which we can add the weight of our voice to broader conversations. Most significantly, in March 2024 we responded to a consultation published by the Department for Education on draft non-statutory guidance for schools and colleges in England on children questioning their gender. We fully support the right of children to explore their gender identity and gender presentation, and the important role that school staff can play in this process, and our organisational response to the consultation reflected this.

We continued to be recognised as an organisation for our contribution to conversations on bi inclusion. In 2024, this was illustrated by invitations to events such as Pride receptions at the Nordic Embassies and the Royal Danish Embassy in London, being contracted to deliver bi inclusion training by organisations such as the Department for Education, and invitations to share our experiences with other LGBT+ organisations such as speaking at a meeting of Bi The Way, the bi group formerly part of LGBT+ older people’s charity Opening Doors London. 2024 also saw the publication of a chapter written by Bi Pride UK’s Chair in It Ain’t Over Till the Bisexual Speaks , an anthology on bi activism in the UK, and our Chair spoke at a book launch event in May 2024. This chapter tells some of the background of how Bi Pride UK was founded, and maintains Bi Pride UK’s priority of exploring intersectional themes, in this case that of religion and bi activism.

2024 has been a valuable year for developing impact measurement and research. Alongside our new 2024-2026 strategy, our Research and Impact Manager began developing our first impact strategy and associated measurement mechanisms. The focus was on collating the data sources we already have access to internally and establishing a baseline in certain measures, including the inaugural post-event community feedback survey launched after 2024’s flagship event, with the intention to build upon this in future year based on what we learn from this process. The key reflection from this work was that we were casting the net too wide, attempting to monitor too large a set of measures, and the continuing work on this in 2025, beyond the scope of this report, has attempted to be more focused in its remit. Alongside this internally-looking data collection work, we have also initiated a research relationship with the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), engaging a team of 5 student researchers to conduct a literature review on the topic of ‘ the scale of the bi umbrella community and its demographics (particularly across different under-represented or marginalised groups) ’. We received the research report produced beyond the scope of these accounts, and have continued to develop the partnership with LSE in 2025.

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Bi Pride UK

(Registered Charity Number: 1177128)

Communications

As our third strategy pillar, our media and communications work contributes towards us creating virtual spaces for bi people to connect with their communities and feel seen and celebrated. Although we had some volunteer turnover across the year, at its height this team comprised 8 volunteers including their respective Trustee, making it our largest year-round volunteer team.

A big focus for our comms work is promoting our annual flagship event and engaging people with it virtually beyond those present on the day. Our in-house design volunteers create all the event assets, including promotional flyers, adverts and native assets for contributors to share with their own networks, social media announcement and info posts, on-the-day signage, maps and stage imagery, and visual content for the Bi Pride UK website. The team also works hard to secure media coverage of the event; in 2024, this included articles by Bi Community News, Country and Town House, GCN, Advocate and Pink News covering the date announcement, with LGBT Consortium also shared the event on their website and the Bisexual Brunch podcast recording a promotional interview.

As mentioned above, our livestream is a crucial part of the flagship event, both allowing us to reach audiences who can’t attend on the day, but also allowing people to catch up on content after the day itself, as we post recordings of most of the content, as long as the contributors have given permission. In 2024, we used Twitch to steam our Main Stage and Facebook for the panels on the I Am Proud Stage. Over 300 people joined the livestreams on the day, with more than 330 having viewed this content on catch-up. Beyond this, we saw some great online engagement with the event. Our online reach on Instagram was in excess of 20k across all content on the day, with cumulative story views of more than 23.5k, including some behind-the-scenes type content. We’re proud that our event is designed to reach greater audiences than just those who can attend in person, as this reminds us that people experience many barriers to participation and we need to be thinking constantly about new ways people can ‘attend’ virtually.

We experimented with an Instagram collaboration with activist Dee Whitnell (@s3xtheorywithdee) who spoke on a panel at the 2024 event; this was a great success with 40.3k views across two reels reflecting their experiences of the event. We also see consistently positive feedback on the event through social media. There were more than 40 pieces of publicly-shared user-generated content in relation to the event on various platforms:

“I had an amazing time performing @BiPrideUK over the weekend! Happy Bi Visibility Month! It was an honour to rep queer sexuality as a pan/bi disabled+ neurodiverse queer femme.” (Twitter/X)

“@biprideuk the most inclusive, accessible, beautiful event I’ve ever been to” (Instagram)

“@biprideuk you have my heart. Never seen such a welcoming and accessible

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Bi Pride UK

(Registered Charity Number: 1177128)

space!” (Instagram)

“I had the joy of having a market at @biprideuk yesterday and it remains the absolute highlight of my year. Meeting so many fellow m-spec people and all round wonderful humans, everyone sharing their experiences. Thank you so much to everyone who supported and came and said hello. I am still feeling so so proud.” (Instagram)

“It’s great to play a part in sponsoring a smaller pride and charity that helps to support those more marginalised within the community. An all-day event filled with performances, music, poetry, and some pretty cool colleagues.” (LinkedIn)

When we asked our followers for their highlights, responses included “Those Incredible Performers”, “the volunteers, just incredible people”, “just hanging out with other bi folk who ‘get it’”, “meeting up with two others who were also going alone and having the best day together”, “the sense of community/family amongst the volunteers”, and both the Bi Passing Colonial Legacies and the Poetry panels. This feedback highlights everything we want people to feel about the event: engaging and thought-provoking content, accessible experiences, and the powerful coming together of community.

Our presence on social media has continued to grow across 2024, including a steady increase in followers on Instagram, and growth of more than 500% on our TikTok channel. We have identified that using current memes to create lighthearted but educational posts creates some of the most engaging and popular content. We also captured video and photo content at our 2024 event, which we then used to put out videos on our platforms to great success. 12 Instagram reels with content from the day generated 76,879 views, and on TikTok we put out 10 videos, two of which went viral with 18.8k and 30.5k views respectively. Our most popular TikTok, posted on 13th December 2024, has over 1.1million views and earned us almost 1000 new followers. While social media engagement and growth is something that charities celebrate for its ability to reach bigger audiences, for Bi Pride UK it is also something that demonstrates our work towards our strategic goal to engage bi communities and individuals in the UK and beyond through virtual means, and as this expands, it increases the number of people who see our work and are affirmed and celebrated through it.

Another measure of the impact of our comms work is through an ongoing recognition of Bi Pride UK as an expert voice across a broad range of topics relevant or of interest to our communities. For example, in April we were interviewed by a student at PA Media Academy writing a piece about the renaming of one of the London Overground lines for the Mildmay Hospital, which played a major role for patients with HIV/AIDS as a dedicated AIDS hospice, and in June we went on Virgin Radio to speak about the experiences of bi people at Pride events. We also continue to be mentioned in online publications about bi people and their experiences, such as an article in the i about dating as a bi person, and in articles about Bi Visibility Day/Week/Month such as one by the Music Publishers Association and another by Queen Mary’s, University of London. We are delighted to see that our organisational profile and brand continue to grow in visibility, and

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Bi Pride UK

(Registered Charity Number: 1177128)

hope that we can use these platforms to be part of moving forward the conversations about and visibility of bi experiences.

Our fundraising and governance

We would be unable to achieve the successes outlined above without strong fundraising and governance in the charity as a whole.

As already mentioned, in 2024 we recruited and appointed four new Trustees to our Board. Our Board structure has 11 positions, including a Chair, a Vice Chair, a Treasurer and a Secretary; other than the Chair role, each Trustee role corresponds to a team of non-Trustee volunteers, typically with a Head leading the team. In our eight-year history to the end of 2024, we have never had a full Trustee Board, with some roles such as the IT and Digital Trustee having been particularly difficult to fill; however, this role was our final position filled in 2024, with the aforementioned Trustee formally co-opted at the beginning of the 2025 financial period.

From a fundraising perspective, although we saw a drop in the capacity of our fundraising team with a few volunteers needing to step away from their roles, 2024 was a relatively successful year. We were able to maintain almost all of our sponsorship relationships with corporates who sponsored us in 2023, with the exception of the impact of the General Election on the Environment Agency, a government agency. Alongside EY as a Silver sponsor, Sky as a Bronze sponsor and AutoTrader as a Titanium sponsor, all multi-year relationships, we were delighted to welcome Vodafone back as a Silver sponsor, having previously sponsored our very first event in 2019. We are also proud that we secured a £20,000 grant from the National Lottery’s Awards for All programme to cover a significant proportion of the costs of our accessibility features at the 2024 flagship Bi Pride event, including BSL interpretation, a sensory room, a RevoLOO mobile changing places unit, livestreaming throughout the day and the attendance of a queer welfare team from SafeOnly. In 2024 we also saw a slight increase in our income from regular individual giving, and we are so grateful for this show of support from our communities.

In 2024 we were able to make some valuable progress on internal capacity building and developing the organisation. This included the work already mentioned on an organisational impact strategy led by the Research and Impact Manager, and some work begun by the Head of Organisational Development on organisation-wide project planning to identify crunch points in team availability across the year. As the first year of a new three-year organisational strategy, 2024 was also a year for testing an ongoing strategic review process: in the final quarter of the year, we began an organisation-wide process to review and assess our progress against strategic objectives for 2024, and use this process to adjust the objectives for 2025 to reflect the successes and challenges of 2024. This process, which continued into the first quarter of 2025, allowed us to reach a more realistic picture of what we want to achieve in the year beyond the scope of this report.

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(Registered Charity Number: 1177128)

Bi Pride UK

FINANCIAL REVIEW

Bi Pride UK had another year of financial growth in 2024 with a 13% increase in income to 2023. Our income for the year was £40,768, which included our biggest single grant income to date of £20,000 from the National Lottery Community Fund, towards event accessibility costs. We were also grateful to receive £13,000 in event sponsorship towards our 2024 event from returning sponsors. The Trustees took a decision to decline sponsorship from one potential corporate sponsor based on the results of our due diligence checks; it was found that they did not align with the guiding principles detailed in our fundraising policy and that the reputational risk to Bi Pride UK would outweigh the benefit of accepting the sponsorship.

It is an ongoing objective of Bi Pride UK to expand our funding sources to diversify beyond corporate sponsorship, and in 2024 this included income for training delivered and panel appearances, merchandise sales and stallholder fees from the Community Hub at our event. We also have a modest but consistent donation stream from individual donors across various donation platforms, including donations given by attendees of our flagship event when booking their free event ticket. We have further expanded donations received beyond purely financial support as we have received corporate donations in the form of meeting space provided to us without charge by TfL and Quality Hotel Hampstead. These were used for Trustee and volunteer away days which provided opportunity for planning and organisational development.

Our largest expenditure in 2024 was once again our flagship event, with a total cost of £41,590. This includes the venue hire, equipment and tech support for two stages running in person and via live-stream. We pay all performers and panellists a fee as well as reimbursing performer, speaker and volunteer travel and subsistence costs. We also prioritise providing an event that is as accessible as possible, which accounts for over 40% of our event cost. Other notable expenditure for 2024 is our travel and accommodation expense that has increased by 50% due to increased travel costs and a growing volunteer team.

RESERVES POLICY

We increased our reserves level from £30,000 to £35,000 in 2024, recognising the increased cost of running our annual flagship event. In the first quarter of 2025, beyond the scope of this report, we introduced our first formal reserves policy setting a minimum of £35,000 (one year’s event) and a maximum of £70,000 (two years’ events) to be reviewed annually by the Trustees at the beginning of the financial year as part of the budget setting process.

FUTURE PLANS

Closing the 2024 financial year, Bi Pride UK was in a strong position to develop into the coming years: the volunteer team is dedicated to the charity’s work and continuing to grow; we have developed relationships with new funders and maintained those with existing funders; there are new relationships and partnerships forming across the charity; and we have maintained our reserves for a second year without using any of these funds. Although we have not achieved

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Bi Pride UK

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everything that was in the first year of our 2024-2026 strategy, we have a better understanding of what is achievable within the current capacity and, as a result of our first mid-strategy review and annual impact strategy, are going into 2025 with a stronger set of objectives for the year’s activities, and an improved way to measure and report on the success of our work and its impact.

Priorities for the coming year include finding a new venue for our 2025 flagship event, inducting our newest Trustees and reaping the benefits of having a full Trustee Board, recruiting into three vacant team Head roles as well as ongoing recruitment across the charity, increasing the number of Prides we attend around the UK, and continuing to explore new avenues for funding including further grants towards our flagship event and other costs. Ongoing work to improve our impact measurement work will help us to stay on track with these goals and make reporting easier in future, and work towards funding and implementing a CRM will contribute towards this.

We look forward to bringing our communities on this journey with us.

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Bi Pride UK

(Registered Charity Number: 1177128)

STATEMENT OF TRUSTEES RESPONSIBILITIES

The Trustees are responsible for preparing the Trustees Report and the financial statements in accordance with applicable law and United Kingdom Accounting Standards (United Kingdom Generally Accepted Accounting Practice).

Charity law requires the Trustees to prepare financial statements for each financial year which give a true and fair view of the state of affairs of the company as at the end of the year and of the surplus or deficit of the company for that period. In preparing those financial statements, the Trustees are required to:

• select suitable accounting policies and then apply them consistently;

• make judgements and estimates that are reasonable and prudent;

• observe the methods and principles in the Charities SORP;

• prepare the financial statements on the going concern basis unless it is

• inappropriate to presume that the company will continue in business;

• state whether applicable UK Accounting Standards have been followed, subject to

• any material departures disclosed and explained in the financial statements.

The Trustees are responsible for keeping proper accounting records which disclose with reasonable accuracy at any time the financial position of the charity. They have general responsibility for taking such steps as are reasonably open to them to safeguard the assets of the charity and to prevent and detect fraud and other irregularities.

This report has been prepared in accordance with the Statement of Recommended Practice – Accounting and Reporting by Charities (FRS 102 - 2019).

This report has been agreed by the trustees on 30 October 2025 and signed on their behalf by:

Avi Baylas (Chair of Trustees)

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Bi Pride UK

(Registered Charity Number: 1177128)

INDEPENDENT EXAMINER’S REPORT FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31/12/2024

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Bi Pride UK

(Registered Charity Number: 1177128)

STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL ACTIVITIES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31/12/2024

Prepared on a Receipts and Payments Basis

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Bi Pride UK

(Registered Charity Number: 1177128)

STATEMENTS OF ASSETS AND LIABILITIES AT THE END OF THE PERIOD FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31/12/2024

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Bi Pride UK (Registered Charity Number: 1177128)

NOTES TO THE ACCOUNTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31/12/2024

1. Comparative Expenditure Breakdown

2. Comparative Income Breakdown

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Bi Pride UK

(Registered Charity Number: 1177128)

3. Financial Review and Receipts and Payments accounts may not align in all cases, details of key examples are:

• a. Event expenditure detailed in note 1) Comparative Expenditure Breakdown is inflated in 2024 when compared to the financial review, due to final payment for the 2023 event venue (£11,110) falling in early 2024.

• b. Event Sponsorship detailed in note 2) Comparative Income Breakdown differs from Financial Review due to outstanding sponsorship income for 2023 (£4,000) which was settled in 2024, while outstanding 2024 sponsorship income (£6,500) is to be settled in 2025.

• c. Restricted Funds closing balance relates to a 2024 event accessibility cost that is included in the financial review, with payment to be settled in 2025.

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