ANNUAL REPORT 2022-2023
Due to the change in the reporting year from the calendar year to the financial year, this report covers the period January 2022 until April 2023. Future reports will be April to April.
Between January 2022 and the end of the academic year in July 2022 we continued to teach in Coldfall, Brookfield and Rickmansworth Park Schools and added a new school - Holy Trinity & St Silas (Camden).
New Schools and activities
In September 2022, with the start of the new school year, we continued to run the clubs in these four schools and introduced Saturday afternoon club sessions for children at the Acol Bridge Club in West Hampstead. These sessions provide an important opportunity for the children from the different schools to come together to play at the weekend. The Acol sessions will also play an important role when the current Year 6 children move on to various senior schools in September 2023, as we will no longer have the opportunity to teach them in school. Without this facility, the children would probably have to give up playing. We make a charge of £10 per child for these sessions, which helps to cover the cost of paid teaching support there from bridge teacher Gabi Johnson and England Under-21 squad members, James Cater and Rufus Barnett.
New schools added during the Autumn term were St. Andrew’s Primary School, Enfield and Immanuel College (Junior School) in Bushy. Immanuel will make a contribution to the charity (amount to be determined) as they are a fee-paying school. We also started teaching at UCS Junior Branch, another independent school in the Spring term, and received a small income from them.
In March 2023 we took 26 children from four of our schools to compete in a tournament organised by English Bridge Education and Development (EBED) in Loughborough. This was a wonderful opportunity to take part in a proper competition and the children had a great day out. We hired a coach to transport them to Loughborough, which was a significant expense, but we were able to raise contributions from parents and bridge players to cover the cost, as well as a grant from EBED.
Income Sources
Income sources during the year have been these individual donations, Acol subscriptions, and the contribution from UCS. In addition, we continue to create bridge videos for experienced players and to ask them to make small, regular contributions via Patreon for which they are rewarded with early access to videos and the opportunity to play challenges against our experts. We currently receive around £240 per month through this channel.
I have started providing teaching to a small number of adults who make donations to the charity in recompense. This has been fairly sporadic sessions with only two individuals in the current reporting year but has expanded to include a group of parents of four of our school learners as of April 2023 and this will provide another (albeit low level) source of income.
Challenges for the future
Recruiting and retaining volunteers continues to be the greatest challenge that we face. People are reluctant to commit to helping regularly, and some do so for a while and then lose interest and give up. In order to continue to resource the after school clubs we have had to move to a model where we pay the team leader in each school and aim to recruit enough volunteer help to be able to run the sessions: The paid teachers are: Bridget Rampton (Coldfall and Holy Trinity), Suzanne Anisfeld (Rickmansworth Park and Immanuel) and Sandie Weinberg (UCS).
Sustaining this level of expenditure on teaching support will not be feasible in the long term so it will be necessary to cut back on the number of schools where we teach in the future and to concentrate on a smaller number os schools and the Acol Club sessions.
NEW TRICKS ACCOUNTS APRIL 2022-APRIL 2023
Cash in bank 5/4/2022 1891.16
Income
| Acol kids subs | 1735.00 |
|---|---|
| Teaching | 553.00 |
| Smaller donations | 946.13 |
| Larger donations: | |
| Cafe Bridge | 1400.00 |
| Lutterworth BC | 793.58 |
| Janet de Botton | 1000.00 |
| Jon Harris | 1000.00 |
| EBED | 450.00 |
| Patreon | 2809.00 |
Total income 10,877.67
Expenditure
| Teaching: | ||
|---|---|---|
| Bridget Rampton (Coldfall & Holy Trinity) | 2480.00 | |
| Gaby Johnson (Acol Saturdays) | 607.66 | |
| Suzanne Anisfeld (Rickmansworth Park | ||
| and Immanuel) | 1610.00 | |
| Sandie Grant (UCS) | 210.00 | |
| Rufus Barnett (Acol Saturdays) | 440.00 | |
| James Cater (Acol Saturdays) Teaching total |
200.00 5547.66 |
|
| Coach to Loughborough tournament | 895.00 | |
| Tech support | 266.74 | |
| Quiz software for website (Opinion Stage,annual) | 254.11 | |
| Accounting software (Sage, £7.20 pm) | 28.80 | |
| Liability insurance (Hiscox, £9.80pm) | 19.60 | |
| Disclosure & Barring | 15.00 | |
| Total Expenditure | 7026.91 | |
| Cash in bank 5/4/2023 | 5,500.57 |