## SURREY HEATH CHORAL CIO performing as SURREY HEATH SINGERS Annual report for Charity Commissioners Sept 2023 

## 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 2022-23 

As was expected when we started this year, our practical targets as a Community Choir were still directly impacted by the Pandemic as membership remained lower than it was before the 2020 pandemic and this impacts our levels of income whilst our outgoings remain similar. However, through sound financial management we once again were able to maintain a strong financial footing for the future. We remain a solvent organisation, with a future that we believe is improving year on year. 

The last year has seen us consolidate our new home in St Peters Church. The welcome we have received from the community has been outstanding. The support and help has allowed us to present ourselves in a very positive way. We now have been catapulted into the 21st Century with the provision of online streaming of concerts and availability of our performances on YouTube. This provides good material for the St Peters Church website and is transformational in our quest to present the choir to newcomers at the click of a button. 

Our action to trim costs by moving to the new venue has been very helpful to balance the books. In 2024 we will also be using St Pauls in Camberley for our Christmas Concert to accommodate the increased audience we now seem to be able to generate, but our other concerts will be held at St. Peters. 

Our Musical Director has continued to teach and lead us in such an enthusiastic and positive manner. The events this last year were many and varied. All of them were a success and a credit to the choir. 

## CONCERTS PERFORMED 

During the past year we performed 4 concerts: An Autumn Concert of the Faure Requiem; our annual Christmas Concert that included both Christmas carols and Handel’s Messiah; a Spring Concert focusing on Bryd and Stainer; and a Summer concert of Opera arias and choruses. All were well received by our audiences. 



## 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 fifth 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 23/24 and 24/25 as several existing Trustees will have reached their 6 years involvement by September 2024. One such Trustee is our existing Chairman who will be replaced at the start of the 23/24 year. Our plan to move our existing finance support to a more automated environment is already undeway. 

## 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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