SURREY HEATH CHORAL CIO performing as SURREY HEATH SINGERS Annual report for Charity Commissioners Sept 2022
BACKGROUND
We have an ongoing plan to achieve a lasting place in the life of our community and to reach a sustainability in financial, membership and audience terms that enables us to take on a variety of innovative projects each year with confidence.
This plan requires us to improve our music all the time and our reputation for performances, to achieve exposure in the community for both music and outreach, recruit new members and audiences, and to win soft and hard (financial) support from all aspects of our local community. Sometimes we can also achieve progress by innovative partnerships.
The strategic direction is clear and accepted, and was reaffirmed at the start of each year. While we retain our charitable and community focuses, we do everything to achieve goals that make our choir more sustainable. The management team is able to take on new challenges each year because everyone knows and accepts the model.
A REVIEW OF 2021-22
As was expected when we started this year, our practical targets as a Community Choir were still directly impacted by the Pandemic and the rules introduced by Government to combat it. However, through sound financial management we were able to maintain a strong financial footing for the future. The worst of the impact of Covid is now behind the CIO and we are able to perform realistic planning for the years ahead. We were negatively impacted in terms of membership total numbers and hence our income, but by the end of this year our membership had started to grow again and we remain a solvent organisation, with a future that we believe is considerably brighter.
We started this year with an Autumn Concert on Vivaldi and Purcell music, followed by a “come and sing” day in November 2021 aimed at growing our membership once again. This was followed by a traditional Christmas Concert in December with our partner choir Wholenotes. We were also able to start providing outreach activities once again that included several events over the Christmas period. These included singing carols to the Knights Foundation Charity’s children and families. We also supported the Frimhurst Festival in June 2022 in aid of overcoming poverty by defending human rights and promoting social justice for adults with learning disabilities.
For our Summer Concert we performed music from a selection of American Musicals which proved a great success with improved audience numbers.
These events were ahead of the curve with respect to many community choirs but signalled our return to providing all year services for our Community.
To address the need for growing our finances after the Pandemic we have now made a major change to our traditional venue for future rehearsals and concerts. With the exception of the 2022 Christmas Concert when we will have our last concert with Wholenotes at High Cross Church, our future is now with the nearby St Peters Church for the coming year. This will reduce significantly our ongoing venue costs and so avoid any cash flow issues that had started to reduce our reserves during the year.
MANAGEMENT CAPABILITY
Through all the external challenges we have maintained a full and vibrant management team with a variety of skills and experience that actually grew by the end of the year.
This was the fourth year as a new charitable organisation (Surrey Heath Choral CIO, No. 1179358) having converted from Surrey Heath Choral Society at the beginning of the 2018/2019 financial year. We are now starting to prepare plans for recruiting new Trustees to join during years 22/23 and 23/24 as several existing Trustees will have reached their 6 years involvement by September 2024. One such Trustee is our existing Chairman who we plan to find a successor for during the coming 22/23 year. It is also our plan to move our existing finance support to a more automated environment during the coming year.
OUTREACH PROJECT
Our outreach work is on a completely voluntary basis, by contrast with our concert programme where we expect members to attend as many rehearsals as possible and to perform in the concerts.
BUSINESS LINKS
Stewart & Co, a local firm of accountants very much involved with local business and the reconstruction of the town centre, act as our auditors indefinitely, on a pro bono basis.
QUALITY IN PERFORMANCE
Our feedback from audiences is actively solicited after every concert and a representative sample is posted on our website. For the last eight years, we judge that audience feedback has been unreservedly appreciative, and our regular audience say that the quality of performance has not been impacted by either a fall in membership or the impact of the pandemic.
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