## **DECEMBER 2025** ## **WILLOW’S RAINBOW BOX** **CHARITABLE INCORPORATED ORGANISATION: (REGISTERED NUMBER 1186779)** ## **ANNUAL REPORT** _Including Receipts and Payments Accounts for the Period from 1 July 2024 to 30 June 2025._ ## **Section 1: The Charity** Willow’s Rainbow Box is a registered CIO that aims to support women, birthing people 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 throughout England and Wales. The charity has six dedicated Trustees - 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. _Willow’s Rainbow Box table display at Gravesend Gurdwara_ ## **Section 2: Message from Chairperson and Founder - Amneet Graham** Willow’s Rainbow Box has grown, thrived and strengthened during 2024/2025. It has been an excellent calendar year for the charity - with collaboration playing a key role. This report will cover the **accounts** for **financial year 2024/2025 (year ending 30 June 2025)** and **activities** from the **calendar year of 2025** . After the financial year end, the charity received an amazing £16,147 in August 2025 from The National Lottery Community Fund - securing the next couple of years of activities and stock into hospitals across the UK. Our team are busy working away getting boxes into hospital units on our waiting list - and have completed the first 100 boxes across 3 NHS Trusts this calendar year. This financial year also saw our first large collaboration project - an art exhibition about baby loss and pregnancy after loss. This exhibition was co-created with Abigail’s Footsteps charity and The Worst Girl Gang Ever Foundation. You can see photos and more information further on in this report. It has been a really exciting year and an important year in our development. We remain as committed as ever to supporting families through pregnancy after loss and we are grateful for all support given to us to help our beneficiaries this calendar year. ## **Section 3: Activities from the past calendar year** ## **Boxes:** Since January 2025, the charity has sent out 134 boxes via self referral and 100 boxes directly to NHS Trusts. This data was recorded on 17/11/2025. **3** North East North West London and South East South West East Midlands West Midlands Yorkshire and Humber Other areas of UK East Geographical spread in 2025 This chart illustrates the geographical spread of box provision from 2025. The most popular region for our boxes continues to be the South East - followed by the North East. These figures are for our self referral boxes. NHS stock for 2025 was sent to the South East, South West and West Midlands. With the charity’s continued relationship with NHS trusts across the country, it is expected that geographical spread will widen over the next calendar year. _Snapshot of the spread of boxes across England and Wales in 2025. Blue markers are self referral, orange markers are NHS stock and yellow are purchased boxes._ **4** _Amneet (chair/founder) at Gravesend Gurdwara Health and Wellbeing Fair November 2025_ As part of the charity’s ongoing commitment to being an inclusive organisation, breaking barriers and improving access to their services, they took the decision this calendar year to record some pieces of demographic data from beneficiaries. The charity now records ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender as part of their data collection. The reason behind this is to understand beneficiaries and where the charity can improve reach and build more relationships. There should be sufficient data for reporting by the 2025/2026 Annual Report. ## **Collaborations in 2025** ## **Baby Loss and Pregnancy After Loss Art Exhibition** The ‘We Remember’ art exhibition was a big collaboration project with charities Abigail’s Footsteps and The Worst Girl Gang Ever Foundation. The project started in June 2024 with creative workshops for bereaved families and culminated in a beautiful exhibition in March 2025. The charities secured £1000 of funding from Kent Community Foundation to fund the artist workshops. The workshops were facilitated by local artist Sonnia Montes. Families created decoupaged shoes with messages about baby loss. **7** _Bridget (Treasurer) and Amneet (Founder/Chair) with ‘Rays of Hope’ installation_ _‘Walk in our shoes’ installation_ The exhibition was well attended and provided valuable support for families in the area. For the charities, it provided a space to raise awareness of their services and develop networks. _Feedback from attendees_ **----- Start of picture text -----**
Wings Installation
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_Hidden Grief - the forgotten fathers_ **8** BBC News Article _Quote from ‘Pregnancy After Loss for Military Families’_ ## **Pregnancy after loss for Military Families** In August 2025, the charity worked with Dandelion Military Families - a grassroots organisation working to improve military parental mental health and early parenthood experiences. Together, they released the ‘Pregnancy After Loss for Military Families’ booklet during Rainbow Baby Week 2025. The resource bought together stories from military families about their experiences of pregnancy after loss. These families have unique challenges that they face - along with the stress and anxiety that already comes with pregnancy after loss.The charity felt it was important to provide a platform to highlight these stories. This work provided an excellent opportunity to create new networks and to raise awareness of the charity’s services to families who may not have known about them before. The resource can be found here. **9** ## **Research involvement, conferences and stakeholder groups** This calendar year, the largest project that the charity had involvement in was the Stillbirth Priority Setting Partnership steering group. The group met monthly to discuss and prioritise a set of questions about stillbirth that were provided by families. The charity contributed to this important work alongside other charities and professionals. The charity began work with the MATREP study team in 2024. This study was led by Professor Alexander Heazell and a team of researchers at University of Manchester and Oxford University. The study aimed to investigate family experiences of review tools used when a baby has died or been seriously injured at birth. The charity’s role in this work was to help promote the survey amongst families in its network. The chair attended the results meeting in Westminster earlier this calendar year. In April 2025, the chair spoke at the Maternal Mental Health Summit about the charity and the impact of pregnancy after loss on Maternal Mental Health. The talk was well received and attracted new followers and supporters for the charity. The charity continues to attend meetings for the All Parliamentary Group for Baby Loss where possible. The chair also attended the Motherhood Group’s Black Maternal Health Conference this year. _Founder/chair Amneet Graham speaking at the Maternal Mental Health Summit 2025_ **10** ## **Rainbow Baby Week 2025** Rainbow Baby Week is the charity’s annual campaign week that takes place 16th August - 22nd August. This calendar year, the week consisted of a mix of video content, guest blogs and resources co-created with the community. As already mentioned, the charity released its booklet of stories from military families. The charity also released ‘Caring for you and caring for me’ - a booklet of stories from midwives and healthcare professionals who have been pregnant after loss whilst caring for pregnant families. The collection can be viewed here. _Quote from “Caring for you and caring for me”_ The chair also hosted pregnancy after loss video chats with: Professor of Obstetrics, Professor Alex Heazell Co- founder of India’s first baby loss support space, Swagata Majumda Counsellor Manisha Sheth Founder of The Vilomah Foundation, Catherine Maclennan. During Rainbow Baby Week, the charity also took its next step in service expansion. The charity opened up their boxes for free to families in Wales. The week was a huge success - **11** attracting over 60 new followers on Instagram and generating over 80K views. The charity received recognition and post shares from a number of organisations, including Royal College of Midwives. ## **Social Stats from calendar year 2025** The charity’s most popular platform continues to be Instagram. The charity posted across Instagram, Facebook and TikTok during Rainbow Baby Week. The chair also posted across her LinkedIn. The charity created a series called ‘Stats Sunday’ this year. They asked questions to the public about pregnancy after loss, shared responses and created articles to share on LinkedIn. The topics covered in 2025 were: Did pregnancy after loss impact your relationship? Did pregnancy after loss impact on your decision to use antenatal support services such as hypnobirthing, classes and doulas? Did pregnancy after loss impact on your postnatal journey? Did being a UK benefit/welfare recipient impact on your experience of baby loss or pregnancy after loss? Does pregnancy after loss impact on life at work? Does pregnancy after loss impact on your decision to use private scanning services? Does pregnancy after loss impact on a person’s choice of how/where to birth their baby? **12** ## **PR** This calendar year, the charity have had some media features. BBC South East covered the ‘We Remember’ exhibition and also did a feature on the charity after a supporter completed a fundraising campaign, travelling from Medway Hospital in Kent to RVI Newcastle via public bus services only. This story was also featured by The Chronicle. The charity are working with their PR consultant, Kiara Patrick, to keep growing their media presence. **13** ## **Fundraising** : Fundraising in 2025 has been a success. The charity planned for 2025 to be a year of income generation and becoming more sustainable and they have achieved this through funding this calendar year. In December 2024 - this financial year, the charity launched its ‘Raise for Rainbows’ campaign. The focus of this campaign is to encourage people in the community to take part in any challenge to raise money for a stock of boxes at an NHS unit on the charity’s waiting list. Two people completed a challenge this calendar year. Charity Trustee, Jen, completed 6 half marathons (ending with the Great North Run). Jen raised an amazing £650 towards funding boxes for the RVI in Newcastle. The second challenge that took place was an epic bus challenge. In September 2025, Daniel Graham (husband of founder/chair, Amneet) travelled from Medway Hospital in **14** Gillingham, Kent to the RVI in Newcastle via public bus services only. The journey took just over 18 hours and raised funds for boxes for the RVI in Newcastle and for Medway Hospital. The charity was awarded National Lottery funding in August 2025 - outside of this financial year, but within the calendar year, securing box provision across England over the next 2 calendar years. The funding also supports the provision of boxes to 8 NHS Trusts in England from the charity’s waiting list. The charity was also awarded £1000 this financial year from Kent Community Foundation to support the work on the ‘We Remember’ exhibition. £1000 of funding was also received from ShareGift in April 2025. **15** ## **Trustees and volunteers:** Nicola Govindan stepped down as a Trustee in February 2025. The charity thank Nicola for her support throughout her time as Trustee. There have been no further volunteer or trustee changes this calendar year. ## **Section 4: Plans for the next calendar year** The funding provided by The National Lottery Awards For All provides an exciting calendar year ahead for Willow’s Rainbow Box. The charity’s main focus will be distributing boxes to those NHS Trusts on their waiting list. The charity will also be more active in marketing their boxes - and attending events and opportunities to do so where possible. The boxes have regularly had new items added to them. The charity has made funds available to add an additional resource within the next 2 calendar years. There will be work done within the next calendar year with the community to research and understand further resources that would help our beneficiaries. Although the charity has funds to support its activities over the next 2 calendar years, they will still be applying for funding to help support their longer term fundraising strategy. Trustees will also engage with training provided by a consultant to help with strengthening the charity as it grows. The increase in box demand, as well as the quantity of boxes being shipped to the NHS units, means that the charity needs to focus on building resource. There are plans in 2026 to hold some ‘box making’ events in the area local to the chair. The idea is to gather volunteers in the community together to help create the boxes - bringing people together to support the charity. The charity hopes to work on more collaboration projects in 2026. A big project is the ‘Migrant families baby loss mini series’ which they will focus on and work in partnership with other organisations. PR and media coverage need to grow for the charity in 2026 to help raise awareness of the charity’s activities. The charity also aims to to be a verified account on Instagram within the next 12 months. As well as this, the charity’s board recognises the importance of attending **16** events and conferences to network with others in the community. This will be a focus area for the next calendar year. The charity needs to look to the future and its sustainability. This will inevitably involve paid positions at the charity. To get to this point, the charity needs guidance and to develop the policies/structures needed for employment. This may not happen in the next 12 months, but it is a goal that the team are working towards within the next 2 calendar years. There are plans to hold another Rainbow Baby Week in August 2026, following the success of the previous campaigns. ## **Section 5: Accounts - covering the financial year 2024/2025** ## From the period 01/07/2024 - 30/06/2025. |||||| |---|---|---|---|---| ||**Unrestrict**
**ed funds**
**2024/25**|**Restricted**
**funds**
**2024/25**|**Total funds**
**2024/25**|**Total funds**
**2023/24**| ||**To nearest**
**£**|**To nearest**
**£**|**To nearest**
**£**|**To nearest**
**£**| |**Receipts**||||| |Donations|1,638|180|1818|338| |Fundraising receipts|948|-|948|365| |Income from charitable activities|28|-|28|44| |Grant income|-|1,000|1000|270| |||||| |**Total receipts**|**2,614**|**1,180**|**3,794**|**1,017**| **17** |||||| |---|---|---|---|---| |**Payments**||||| |Materials|458|178|636|2465| |Shipping|397|394|791|607| |Insurance|268|-|268|224| |Marketing and promotion|66|73|139|181| |Fundraising costs|47|-|47|57| |Administrative costs|81|-|81|123| |Other charitable activities (baby loss art
exhibition)|0|1079|1079|-| |||||| |**Total payments**|**1317**|**1724**|**3041**|**3657**| |||||| |**Net receipts for the period**|**1297**|**-544**|**753**|**-2640**| |**Transfers between funds**|-60|60|-|| |**Cash funds June 2024**|2267|510|2777|5415| |**Cash funds June 2025**|3504|26|3530|2777| **18** |**Statement of**
**Assets and**
**Liabilities as**
**at 30 June**
**2025**||||| |---|---|---|---|---| |||||| ||**Unrestricted**
**funds**|**Restricted funds**|**Total funds**|**Total funds**| ||**2025**|**2025**|**2025**|**2024**| ||**To the nearest £**|**To the nearest £**|**To the nearest £**|**To the nearest £**| |**Cash funds**||||| |Cash at bank|3504|26|3530|2777| |||||| |**Total cash funds**|**3504**|**26**|**3530**|**2777**| |||||| **The accounts were approved by the Board of Trustees and authorised for issue on 17th December 2025.** ## **Section 6: Trustees, volunteers and acknowledgements.** The charity would like to thank the Trustee Board for financial year 2024/2025: Amneet Graham - Trustee and Chair Jennifer Dowson - Trustee and Secretary Katherine Hately - Trustee Leeanne Wanless - Trustee **19** Lucy Willis - Trustee Bridget Langford - Trustee and Treasurer Nicola Govindan - Trustee and Communications (Resigned February 2025). ## **Charity Volunteers in financial year 2024/2025** Elly Roper - Website Co-ordinator Gemma Morris - Social Media Admin Chris Weaver - Website donation Lisa Stephenson - Fundraising Manager Kiara Patrick - PR Consultant Meghan Butler - Box packing operations ## **Partners/corporate in financial year 2024/2025** ## **Box items partners :** Kicks Count Action on Postpartum Psychosis NDL Visual (printing) ## **Fundraising:** Paula Alionyte - appointed in March 2025 as Fundraising Consultant to support trustees with training in 2026. **20** ## **Baby Loss and Pregnancy After Loss Art Exhibition** Abigail’s Footsteps The Worst Girl Gang Ever Sonnia Montes (artist) St George’s Art Gallery, Gravesend House of Leyla, Gravesend Kent Community Foundation Contact details: Website: www.willowsrainbowbox.co.uk Email: hello@willowsrainbowbox.co.uk Facebook: @willowsrainbowboxproject X: @Willowsrainbow **21** Instagram.. @willowsrainbowbox