**Annual Report & Financial Statements** _1[st] January – 31[st] December 2020_ To everyone who has supported us this year through such uncertainty with finance, prayers, advice, and friendship, THANK YOU. ## **Contents** |**Contents**|| |---|---| |Charity & Trustee Details|3| |Structure, Governance & Management|4| |Who We Are|5| |What We Do|6| |Founder & CEO Report|7| |Chair Report|8| |Treasurer Report|9| |School & Catalyst Report|9| |Events Report|10| |Community Café Report|11| 2 Statement of Financial Activity **13** ## **Charity & Trustee Details** ## **Status** N-Gage is a registered Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO) 1185170 ## **Registered Office** N-Gage 3000 Aviator Way Manchester Business Park Wythenshawe Manchester M22 5TG ## **Founder & CEO** Christie Spurling MBE **Trustees Role** David King ( _Chair_ ) David Thorpe ( _Treasurer_ ) Jenny Harrison Graham Russell Alistair Chamberlain Tricia Ramarozafy ## **Head Office Staf Role** Nick Coleman ( _Head of Community Engagement & Funding_ ) Daniel Savage ( _Admin & Events Officer_ ) Hannah ( _Community Café Worker_ ) Worthington 3 ## **Structure, Governance and Management** ## **Constitution** The charity was established under a Memorandum of Association and is governed under its Articles of Association. ## **Membership and Appointment of Directors/Trustees** The trustees and directors of the charity are the same people, collectively known as the Board or Board of Directors. The Board of Directors may, at its discretion, admit to membership, subject to the restrictions of the articles: - a) Individuals (over 18 years) who are interested in furthering the work of the Charity and who have paid any annual subscription laid down from time to time by the executive, and - b) Any Body, corporate or unincorporated association which is interested in furthering the Charity’s work and has paid any annual subscription (any such body being called in this constitution a ‘member organisation.) Upon admission to membership, a person or the representative of the organisation is appointed as a director company and when they cease to be a member also cease to be a member of the Board. The trustees who served during the year, together with any changes up to the date of approving this report are listed on page 2. ## **Trustee Recruitment, Induction and Training** The membership of the Board is reviewed annually by the board in accordance with its agreed procedures. Trustees are recruited for their commitment and the skills and knowledge they can bring to the organisation. All trustees receive induction information and training as appropriate to their needs and there is an opportunity to access ongoing training for personal development. ## **Register of Interests** Trustees are required to complete a form on appointment, which is updated annually, registering their interests, including the membership of other voluntary organisations. The Board procedures ensure that trustees do not participate in decisions in which they have an interest. ## **Organisation** The Board of Trustees shall consist of not less than 5 members nor more than 15 members, not less than 2 and not more than 12 members elected at the annual general meeting who shall hold office from the conclusion of that meeting. 4 At the annual general meeting of the Charity the members shall elect from amongst themselves a chairman, a secretary and a treasurer, who shall hold office from the end of that meeting. The day to day operations of the Charity are the responsibility of the Chief Executive, to whom the trustees delegate authority for operational matters including finance, employment and development, within the overall strategy agreed by the Board. ## **Policies** All N-Gage policies are reviewed and agreed regularly by the trustees and updated according to changes in legislation. ## **Finance and Accounting** The Board of Trustees shall comply with their obligations under the Charities Act 1993 (or any statutory re-enactment or modification of that Act) with regard to: - a) The keeping of accounting records for the charity - b) The preparation of annual statements of account for the Charity. - c) The auditing or independent examination of the statements of account for the Charity; and - d) The transmission of the statements of account of the Charity to the Commission. The funds of the Charity, including all donations, contributions and bequests, shall be paid into an account operated by the Board of Trustees in the name of the Charity at such bank as the Board of Trustees shall from time to time decide. All cheques drawn on the account must be signed by at least two members of the Board of Trustees. The funds belonging to the Charity shall be applied only in furthering the objects. ## **Annual Return** The Board of Trustees shall comply with their obligations under the Charities Act 1993 (or any statutory re-enactment or modification of that Act) with regard to the preparation of an annual return and its transmission to the Commission. ## **Independent Auditors** Ian Oulton, ACIB, DIP, PFS 51 Primrose Lane Helsby Frodsham WA6 0HH 5 ## **Who We Are** ## **Our Story** N-Gage is a Manchester-based charity that gives young people at risk of educational or social exclusion opportunities and skills to achieve their full potential. Working in partnership with schools, Greater Manchester Police, Manchester City Council and other partners we provide highly successful, flexible and targeted approaches to anti-social behaviour and educational exclusion. The charity was founded by Christie Spurling MBE in 2006 in response to his own experiences of educational exclusion. He is a believer in being part of the solution and all the programmes he has set up for N-Gage try to look at young people as a whole person. If young people are causing problems in school, it is likely that they may also be creating challenges outside of school. We are committed to encouraging all young people to be an active and positive part of their community, in school and out. N-Gage has a growing team of passionate staff and volunteers who combine creative skills and a commitment to young people with a range of projects and programmes across Greater Manchester. ## **Our promise to young people is:** - a) To view them as individuals. - b) To listen and respect their views and opinions. - c) To be honest with them. - d) To make new opportunities available to them. - e) To challenge and encourage them. - f) To offer support them. ## **What We Do** We work all across Greater Manchester, meeting young people where they are. It can be at our Catalyst Youth Centre in Burnage, through our detached work on their local estates with our Youth Vehicles, or in their schools doing 1-2-1 and group mentoring. 6 ## **Catalyst Youth** We believe that young people are valuable and incredible at bringing about change, so our mission is to help young people to reach their full potential in their community. As well as our youth centre in Burnage, we have two mobile youth vehicles that travel around various Manchester communities equipped with a wide variety of resources designed to help young people engage in positive activities and further fulfil their needs. ## **Schools Work** We’ve been working in and with schools since we first started. Getting alongside students who are disengaged from education and are at risk of exclusion is at the heart of what we do. We run 1-2-1 Mentoring Sessions, Group Sessions and are currently working on updating our school resources. ## **Trips & Holiday Clubs** During school holidays we run clubs and take young people out for trips. We provide them with a wide range of experiences such as the countryside, the seaside, activity centres, bowling, golf, laser questing. These projects give us the opportunity to get to spend quality time with the young people who attend our sessions. This gives more opportunity to challenge behaviour and encourage their potential. We know that these experiences build them up as individuals and develop their social skills, confidence and teamwork. ## **Community Café** The N-Gage Community Café opened in late 2019, located inside our Catalyst Youth Centre. It opens two mornings a week and provides a range of delicious and affordable teas, coffees and snacks. The aim over the next year is to develop activities and workshops within our café, which will benefit all in the Burnage area and develop cohesion and community spirit across the generations. ## **Founder & CEO Report** Like everyone involved in charity work, the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns forced us to pause lots of our face-to-face work early in 2020. It was hard not being able to deliver the work we do face-to-face with young people for much of the year. As the crisis grew and we got more information about the risks about how the virus spread, it quickly became apparent that the safety of young people, our staff and the wider community was more important than us continuing face-to-face work. We did manage to find a new way of connecting via activity bags and throughout the year hundreds of these were safely delivered to children and young people 7 who contact was not possible with. The packs included fun activities and information for them on where they or their family could access support if they needed it. This way of working was a way of working that we had never envisaged, and a special thanks goes to the team who helped bag up the packs and deliver them. We explored and discussed online working with the groups we had contact with and decided based on their feedback that as we are such a direct contact charity this was not something our young people were that keen on. It also opened up lots of debate about the digital divide between those who have access to the internet/laptops etc, and those who don’t, something we as a team have all taken for granted in the past. There is much to be learnt from the pandemic, and if it were to ever happen again some of the response to it for young people would be different. I want to thank all our supporters for their continued support, our funders for understanding our predicament and being flexible, and finally to all the staff trustees and volunteers who gave helped keep N-Gage running as best as we can during this time. I look forward to seeing our centre full and bus back out in the community doing the life changing work we all love so much. **Christie Spurling MBE,** _Founder and CEO_ **FRSA** ## **Chair Report** I am proud to be the Chair of N-Gage and work with our wonderful team and partners. It’s a great privilege to serve alongside the other trustees in support of Christie and the team as they transform the lives of young people in Manchester. 2020 was a period of restricted activity because of COVID lockdown regulations, but great support from our funders in adverse circumstances, further strengthening of our governance and defending our reputation. Ellie Walsh has left the board because work and study did not allow her to commit as fully to N-Gage as she would have liked. We wish her all the best for the future. We are very pleased that Tricia Ramarozafy has joined the board and brings a wealth of experience from her work in the youth justice system as well as her personal passion for helping young people in challenging circumstances reach their full potential. Amazingly our income remained steady in 2020. This is a testament to and recognition of the reputation, quality and impact of our work with young people. As a result, we were able to retain our sessional staff on the government “furlough” scheme and top up their pay to 100% from our own funds while many 8 activities were halted. I would like to thank all our partners, funders and individual sponsors for their continued support. The trustees have supported Christie and staff through this difficult time when they were not able to fully follow their passion for helping young people. We are so impressed by their innovative approaches to reaching out to with activity packs and in other ways. The transition to CIO (Charitable Incorporated Organisation) is now complete and provides us with a strong platform for future developments in our work. Somewhat unfortunately there has been confusion between a Stockport based, newly set up youth organization, NGL, and ourselves. Christie, with my support, is working hard to protect our hard-earned reputation which has been built up over many years. Prompted by the high profile BlackLivesMatter campaign the board are reviewing our Equality and Diversity values and principles to ensure we are aspiring to the highest standards. We intend to involve some young people in this review. COVID has given us pause for thought and we look forward to developing new strategies in a changed world where we know there is still a great, if not greater, need to positively impact on the lives of young people. Finally I would like to thank Christie, Nick, Daniel and the whole staff team once more for their unstinting and caring work with young people. ## **David King** _Chair_ ## **Treasurer Report** The overall income of N-Gage decreased from a level of £ 226,128 in 2019 to £217,550 for the 12 months to 31.12.20. This was mainly due to a decrease in grant funding and schools workshop income, although individual supporters’ donations increased by around 7%. Our grant funding partners have continued to support N-Gage during the COVID lockdowns and have extended deadlines for grant expenditure. Total payments reduced from £184,685 in 2019 to £148,135 in 2020 and consisted largely of salaries and related expenses (around 75% of the total), office rent (10%) and other expenses (15%). This reduction was largely due to 9 lower activity in detached work, and the closing of our youth centre because of COVID restrictions. Cash balances at the end of the year amounted to £4,013 in current accounts and £165,973 in the restricted account. Thanks to all our individual donors and grant funders for their faithful giving and support to N-Gage. **David Thorpe** _Treasurer_ ## **Schools & Catalyst Report** 2020 was a challenging time for our Catalyst Youth Work project. Up to the middle of March we continued successfully deliver 6 sessions per week across Burnage and Wythenshawe. We had started to engage with young people who attended our sessions for the first time. During our detached sessions it became apparent that the young people we worked with were starting to become cautious as news of Coronavirus started to become an everyday occurrence. As a result, our attendances started to drop, and we witnessed young people eager to get home rather than hang out in their local parks as they previously would have done. During the first three months of the year our Youth centre sessions continue to be well attended. These sessions seemed to be unaffected by the emergence of Coronavirus and we even welcomed some new members into our sessions just two weeks before lockdown. Sadly, when the country went into lockdown, we had to cease all sessions and wait for further guidance. During this time, we partnered with three other organisations to discuss how we could keep some form of engagement with our children and young people. During May we put together and delivered 40 activity packs to those children who had previously attended our holiday provision. This was a new idea for the charity and was received very well by those who received the packs. As a result, we wanted to go further and reach out to more children and young people by providing positive activities that will keep them occupied during on-going lockdown and restrictions. We were supported by BBC Children in Need and Tesco to supply over 200 Holiday Playscheme in a bag across Burnage and 10 Wythenshawe. Six children and young people who received packs in May helped us to develop these bags by carefully choosing activities that everyone their age would enjoy. Finally, we followed this up by delivering a further 200 bags at Christmas encouraging children and young people to be creative with decorations, providing festive activities as well as supplying them hot chocolate and a selection box. Throughout 2020 the National Youth Agency have delivered many sessions setting out guidance on what we were able to do for our children and young people. There have been 4 updates throughout the year as we moved from lockdowns to tiers and back to lockdown. All through this process we worked very closely with other partners across Manchester, funders and our board of trustees to discuss and plan what we could deliver in a safe and responsible way. Looking ahead to 2021 our hope is that we are allowed to carefully start to restart our sessions and once again provide our children and young people a safe space to meet and engage in positive activities. ## **Nick Coleman** _Head of Community Engagement & Funding_ ## **Events Report** The impact on charitable events and fundraising that COVID has had cannot be underestimated. On 23[rd] March all of our usual ways of meeting and interacting with supporters was put on hold due to national lockdowns, and that continued throughout the year. Luckily in January, before we’d ever really heard of coronavirus we were able to host the annual Ceilidh which was a great success and raised much needed funds. I’d like to thank Dave King’s organisational skills and enthusiasm for this event being such a success. For the rest of the year, we decided that in a year where everyone was experiencing such hardships and loss, that trying to do some online fundraising wouldn’t be appropriate due to people’s jobs and finances being hit so hard and relied on grants and funding applications to raise money. With much of 2021 still uncertain about when or how public gathering will take place, the future of fundraising events are unclear and a focus on increasing the amount of regular givers, rather than at one-off events may be the way forward. **Daniel Savage** _Admin & Events Officer_ 11 ## **Community Café Report** We opened pre-COVID every Monday and Wednesday from 9am-1.30pm serving affordable range of hot and cold drinks and snacks and it had started really picking up we began having several regular visitors. On a Wednesday, Quids In share the building with the café and this brings in a high volume of customers. Obviously, once lockdown hit we were unable to reopen for the rest of the year. There are also a number of problems with the roof that will need to be fixed before we can reopen safely. ## **Hannah Worthington** _Café Worker_ ## **Statement of Financial Activities 2020** 12 bnlls of r•ptyt I¥ 14$ 2011 Ad•nd in cwryk8 rrry •wnm*on. I Kl¥ 1445Mbl Art +1 Oct 2018 13 tioai B Oct 2￿lj 14 S1151T• Rec•lpts and p3yn*nts accounts CC16• Section A Recèipts p.. /TnÈn15 En¢Sts•mWV. $1 y*a' ** r* 1*1¥1 ImLYIE• 123.404 I•A.I 12.1 g?J•J 4*J•3 Section B Stalemenl ol assets and liabilitses at the end of the perio 15 i•DA 16 David Thorpe Treasurer 4/03/21 David King Chair 4/03/21 17