Charity Number: 1179191 ## **The Electronics Club CIO** **Report and Accounts** **For the period 1[st] January 2020 to 31[st] December 2020** The Electronics Club CIO Report and Accounts – **1[st] January 2020 to 31[st] December 2020** Charity Information Registered Charity Number 1179191 Contact Address 39 Borough Close Kings Stanley Gloucestershire GL10 3LJ Principal Objects To provide teaching materials to children and young people in order for them to learn electronics. Trustees Luke Briner (appointed July 2018) Naomi Briner (appointed July 2018) David Hughes (appointed July 2018) The Electronics Club CIO Report and Accounts – **1[st] January 2020 to 31[st] December 2020** ## Trustees Report The Trustees hereby submit the Report and Accounts of The Electronics Club CIO (“the CIO”) for the period of 1[st] January 2020 until 31[st] December 2020. The accounts have been prepared on an income and expenditure basis and have not been indepently examined. ## Background The Electronics Club was formed due to a lack of educational resources aimed at children and young people in the subject of electronics. Luke Briner and David Hughes as electronics and practical engineers along with Naomi Briner, a primary Headteacher decided that we could produce these resources for relatively little money and produce a large benefit to both the UK and globally. The Charity was registered as a CIO in July 2018, a CIO being chosen as a vessel that would maximise the ability to sell certain resources at a later date in order help with income. As a charity we would also be able to receive donations from appropriate trusts or individuals. As a small charity, currently not generating much content, we have considered 3 Trustees to be a reasonable number for the time being but once some momentum has been achieved, we would like to increase the number to reflect the size of the organisation as it might grow. ## Review of Activities Although we have not formally released materials yet, some significant steps have been taken towards being ready to release products of a suitable quality: - 1) Headed paper has been printed for correspondance, particularly to grant-awarding Trusts - 2) Some initial attempts have been made to edit together suitable videos, although more work is required with this - 3) A suitable filming “studio” has been completed in the garage of Luke Briner - 4) Research has been carried out into the National Curriculum and specifically what targets apply to which NC levels that relate to Electronics directly or indirectly. Although it is important to get a series of products available for use, there are a number of existing challenges: - 1) Ensuring that the quality of what is released is suitable to be used in schools and is suitably engaging, certainly before producing too much - 2) Having a full-set of lessons planned and produced so that a school will have enough of these to cover, for example, the whole of NC levels 1 and 2 - 3) Getting the quality right for the lesson plans themselves - 4) Having a suitable amount of content on the website so that it is useful as a resource - 5) Being able to supply or direct schools to suitable electronic kits that can be used to follow along with the lessons ## Public Benefit The public benefit of the charity should be fairly evident from the Principal Objects but we see a massively important gap in the education market which is not currently being met by the Department for Education and anywhere where an individual teacher might have the skills and interest, this is not apparent across the country. Instead of bemoaning this situation, we intend to provide the resources that will enable schools particularly to run lessons or even after-school clubs to get children both interested and proficient in electronics design and manufacture. We don’t want to sit back and watch an even bigger gap between the skills market and education. The Electronics Club CIO Report and Accounts – **1[st] January 2020 to 31[st] December 2020** It would be our long-term goal to inspire the education industry to re-create an electronics curriculum and make it a significant part of science or a subject in its own right so that young people do not have to wait until A Level to get their first chance to do anything useful with electronics. ## Financial, Fund-raising and Grant-making policies Currently, the CIO has existed with the financial support of its Trustees. We are close to the point where an injection of cash would be useful, particularly related to high quality video production and we will shortly be approaching some grant-awarding Trusts for this. There are a number of highwealth organisations and individuals in the UK who have a vested interest in a larger skills supply in electronics who would hopefully provide grants to purchase equipment, perhaps pay people parttime etc. Initially, we are not looking to recruit staff but once we get past launch, the need for an administrator is the most likely need and to be able to pay them at least a nominal wage provides some security for us as an organisation. There is an opporunity also in the longer term to make money from either sponsored visits (sponsored by commercial organisations or by e.g. schools or events) or otherwise to sell products – perhaps branded electronic kits, that would benefit both the recipients – who could then carry out all of the electronic projects and don’t have to source components themselves – but also the CIO who could make some markup on the reselling of these. Money is not solicited from the general public although as a public-focused CIO, we would accept donations from people who see the work we do as valuable. The CIO does not have any outstanding guarantees or secured debts. ## Reserves Policy There are no current ongoing creditors to the CIO that would present a risk to the finances. The Trustees are financially supporting the CIO in its birth stage but as time moves on and we hope to grow significantly, it is a point of regular review to see what finances are like in order to help direct decisions. ## Risk Management With significant experience across a number of industries, the current Trustees are very familiar with risk assessment. Due to the current nature of work, which largely takes place privately and is uploaded to the web, there are very few risks that require any remediation. However, as the work extends to possibly include school visits etc. we will re-evaluate our Standard Operating Procedures to protect both us and others. We have produced an initial release of the following documents: - 1) Building a safe culture - 2) Complaint handling procedures - 3) Financial Risk Management - 4) Safe recruiting procedures - 5) Safe working procedures - 6) Safeguarding policy statement All three of the current Trustees are currently DBS-checked but with Naomi Briner as a Trustee and a Headteacher, we would use her experience and knowledge to draft appropriate practices for contact with children when the need arises. The Electronics Club CIO Report and Accounts – **1[st] January 2020 to 31[st] December 2020** We do not currently have a social media presence so there is currently no abuse risk there. ## Summary of Finances Due to little production of our main resources and some problems with accessing our bank account (since resolved), no money from the bank account was used in this period for expenses. Luke Briner has also started making a regular tax-efficient gift to the charity bank account to ensure there is always a small amount of working cash, this gift was started in November of this period. ## Statement of Trustees Charity law requires us as trustees to prepare accounts for each accounting year which record the receipts and payments of the charity for the year. The trustees are responsible for keeping proper accounting records which disclose with reasonable accuracy at any time the financial position of the charity and enable us to ensure that the financial statements comply with the Charities Act 2011. The trustees also have a responsibility to safeguard the assets of the charity and to take reasonable steps to prevent fraud or any other irregularities. The trustees confirm that to the best of their knowledge these accounts comply with applicable law. ## **BY ORDER OF THE TRUSTEES** **……………………………………………………..** **Date ………………………………** **Luke Briner (Chairman)** ## The Electronics Club CIO ## Report and Accounts – **1[st] January 2020 to 31[st] December 2020** ## Receipts and Payments Account |Receipts and Payments Account|||| |---|---|---|---| ||**Restricted**|**Endowment**|**Unrestricted**| |**Opening balance**|**0**|**0**|**100**| ||||| |**Receipts**|||| |Grants|0|0|0| |Sales|0|0|0| |Donations|0|0|120| |Other Income|0|0|0| ||||| |**Total Receipts**|**0**|**0**|**0**| ||||| |**Payments**|||| |Utilities|0|0|0| |Equipment|0|0|0| |Web and hosting|0|0|0| |Staff costs|0|0|0| |Sundry|0|0|0| |Materials|0|0|0| ||||| |**Total Expenditure**|**0**|**0**|**0**| ||||| |**Net of Receipts**|**0**|**0**|**0**| ||||| |**Closing Balance**|**0**|**0**|**220**| ||||| ## Statement of Assets and Liabilities |Statement of Assets and Liabilities|||| |---|---|---|---| ||Unrestricted|Restricted|Endowment| |**Cash funds**|||| |Bank account|220||| ||||| |**Other monetary**|0||| |**Investment assets**|0||| |**Retained assets**|0||| |**Liabilities**|0|||