## **NOVEMBER 2021**
**WILLOW’S RAINBOW BOX**
**CHARITABLE INCORPORATED ORGANISATION: (REGISTERED NUMBER 1186779)**
## **ANNUAL REPORT**
_Including Receipts and Payments Accounts for the Period from 1 July 2020 to 30 June 2021._
## **Section 1: The Charity**
Willow’s Rainbow Box is a registered CIO that aims to support women and families going through a new pregnancy following a pregnancy loss or neonatal loss. The charity’s focus is to help reduce anxiety and promote positive mental health and wellbeing for families going through this journey, through the provision of online support throughout the UK and physical goods/services in Newcastle upon Tyne and surrounding areas. The charity has six dedicated Trustees - all of whom have experienced the loss of a baby and all of whom bring different angles and experience to the work of the charity. The Trustees work to the highest standards and represent the three Charity values: empathetic, approachable, supportive.
## **Section 2: Message from Chairperson and Founder - Amneet Graham**
The last 12 months have been a challenge for many people and many charities. After Covid-19 arrived, people and organisations have had to adapt their way of life and business. We have had to make changes to how we operate. Lockdown gave us an opportunity to explore and research new ideas and projects. Although our primary activities remained on hold for most of the year, we used the time in the best way possible and were still able to offer some form of support to beneficiaries.
This report will cover the activities of the charity from the last 12+ months, as well as plans for the future and accounts for the year. The charity, like many others, paused some services during 2020 and early 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
## **Section 3: Activities from the past year**
## Boxes:
We resumed our comfort box service in April 2021. To help reduce contact and spread of the virus, we moved to box postage rather than collection. We have posted 17 boxes since we started our service again, averaging at around 2 boxes per month. We opened up our box service to Northumberland, North Tyneside, South Tyneside, Gateshead and Newcastle. We have been able to successfully financially sustain this service.
## Dads and Partners:
We spent a lot of time researching and virtually engaging with dads and partners during 2020. This helped to inform the creation of our dads and partners resource. The resource went live in March 2021. There is an online resource on our website - with practical tips, self care tips, a hypnobirthing track of partners, a couples’ birth plan template and signposting. The resource was produced as a result of discussions we had with dads and partners who have been on the journey themselves. We also have a physical leaflet in our comfort boxes which signposts to the website resource.
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## Private scanning vouchers:
The pandemic made it really tough for families who wanted to be together for scans. We asked our beneficiaries if they made use of private scanning facilities and if they would benefit from a voucher to help towards this. Families were overwhelmingly in favour, although we haven’t had anyone take up any of the 10 vouchers that have gone live. We are unsure if we will continue this service next year due to lack of demand.
## Baby Loss and different communities:
We started our work into highlighting baby loss in different communities by creating our South Asian baby loss mini series in 2020. In November 2021, we released our second series which was our ‘Black baby loss mini series.’ This series highlights a series of stories from Black families who have experienced baby loss and in some cases - pregnancy after loss. Our aim with these series is to give a platform to hear from different communities about their experiences. It’s important to us that we hear from a diverse range of communities about baby loss - as this also helps to break silence and cultural taboo around loss and increase support for subsequent pregnancy.
## Social Media:
The charity has grown on social media, with over 960 Twitter followers, over 930 Instagram followers and over 590 followers on Facebook. We continue to run #RainbowBabyHour but during the last 12 months we have moved this to Instagram stories. This was following discussions that most engagement was happening on Instagram and people appreciated the anonymity.
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## Fundraising:
The charity continues to be funded on the generosity of individual giving and from our own small fundraising events. In the last 12 months, we have taken on a new volunteer fundraising manager who has experience working with grants and bids so this is something we could explore in the future. We used to rely on in person fundraising at fairs and community groups events. We have adapted during the pandemic and this year we hosted our first virtual charity race - the ‘Rainbow 7K’.
## **Section 4: Future plans for the next year**
At present, our boxes are still only available for people in certain areas of the North East. It is a long term aim for the charity to expand our services to other areas in the UK. At our upcoming AGM, we will be discussing and voting on this and will be planning our next steps regarding consultation with current beneficiaries and conducting surveys to understand demand.
As well as looking at geographical expansion, we also plan to review the items in our boxes and to look at what more items we can include or what items we want to change. As always, this will be done after consultation with our beneficiaries and review of our available funds.
We plan to launch our regular Zoom support sessions for pregnancy after loss in January. These will be facilitated by our Chair Amneet who has facilitation experience and is safeguarding trained with DBS. The idea for this came after we asked beneficiaries if they would benefit from this support and there was overwhelming support for it.
In terms of fundraising, we will look at grants and bids as a source of income over the coming year. We will also plan for more virtual fundraising such as the virtual race we organised this year. We are keen to get an online store set up on our website so that we can also sell merchandise as a fundraiser too.
The charity plan to expand on the ‘Baby loss in different cultures and communities’ section of the website, covering more communities and cultures. There may also be plans to get involved with other organisations working in different communities and cultures and to link up with some digital work and podcast opportunities.
The charity will continue to build its website with more digital forms of support and resources for beneficiaries.
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The charity would also like to appoint a Media and PR volunteer in the next 12 months to help with boosting coverage and raising profile.
## **Section 5: Accounts**
|**Receipts and Payments for the Year Ended**
**30 June 2021**|||
|---|---|---|
||||
||**Unrestricted**
**Funds 2021**|**Total funds 5**
**Dec 2019 to 30**
**Jun 2020**|
||**£**|**£**|
|**Receipts**|||
|Donations|379|818|
|Fundraising receipts|23|87|
|Other income|150|-|
||||
|**Total receipts**|**552**|**905**|
||||
|**Payments**|||
|Materials|20|258|
|Shipping|37|-|
|Fundraising expenditure|-|36|
|Insurance|183|82|
|DBS checks|-|92|
||||
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Receipts and Payments for the Year Ended
30 June 2021
Total payments 240 468
Net receipts for the period 312 437
Cash funds at 30 June 2021 312
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Statement of Assets
and Liabilities as at 30
June 2021
Unrestricted funds Unrestricted funds
2021 2020
£ £
Cash funds
Cash at bank 749 437
Total cash funds 749 437
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## **The accounts were approved by the Board of Trustees and authorised for issue on 25 November 2021.**
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## **Section 6: Trustees, volunteers and acknowledgements.**
The charity would like to thank the Trustee Board for 2020/2021:
Amneet Graham - Chair
Jennifer Dowson - Secretary
Anthony Wardle - Treasurer
Katherine Hately - Trustee
Leeanne Wanless - Trustee
Ruth Kelly - Trustee (creative and design)
## **Charity Volunteers:**
Elly Roper - Website Co-ordinator
Gemma Morris - Social Media Admin
Chris Weaver - Website donation
Lisa Stephenson - Fundraising Manager
Lucy Hallimond - Fundraising Assistant
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## **Partners/corporate in 2021**
Baby I Love You Scan Studio South Shields
Contact details:
Website: www.willowsrainbowbox.co.uk
Email: hello@willowsrainbowbox.co.uk
Facebook: @willowsrainbowboxproject
Twitter: @Willowsrainbow
Instagram: @willowsrainbowbox
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