This document contains 3 reporting areas:
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Report on 2025 activities prepared for the AGM
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Report on the delivery of books in 2025
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A summary of 2025 accounts
Own Books AGM, 2[nd] February 2026 (J De Bastion)
Welcome everyone to our 13[th] AGM.
Last year was another very busy one for Own Books. We managed to secure the most funding we’ve ever had, thanks to our lovely grant writer Lynne. Alison has been able to regularly deliver books to our out-of-reach schools by post. Alistair, Christophe and Dawn have also been busy too delivering to our local schools. 21 new educational settings have been added to our program, so we are approaching 140 in total. As is our usual practise we never advertise so all new schools find out about us through word of mouth and local connections and teacher recommendations. Please see Alison’s report for more details.
Over the year we ran 8 A Day to Dream Workshops, 6 Early Years workshops (‘The Great Big Storytime’) funded by our Passionist & HoE grants, and ‘The Great Big Phone Off’ for Year 6s funded by the National Lottery.
My ‘Mindful Parenting’ book was reprinted (500 copies) and these are being sent to our schools.
Unfortunately we were hacked, and had to tighten our security on the website enquiry page, but this has now been completed and we should be much safer from hackers.
Due to the noticeable falling away of Word of Books’ deliveries this year, I looked for a new supplier and earlier in the year Awesome Books came forward and suggested an exciting collaboration with Own Books. Negotiations are still in development, but at the time of writing we are taking on more storage at Montague to accommodate a pallet of 3000 books, to be processed and delivered by us. This is a trial experiment so we will see how the relationship works in practice! One of the advantages this Christmas is that a Coventry school asking for a book for each child was sent 600 books directly by Awesome Books.
John and Judith left our board of trustees, so our board now consists of Dawn, Alison, Julia any myself.
I would just like to say a huge thank you to all of our volunteers; Alison for doing such a complex and time consuming administration, Lynne for writing such successful bids and bringing in all the funding, Julia for keeping our accounts in order, Dawn for her fantastic relationship building with our local schools, Alistair and Cristophe for running all our books around the Midlands, and Carley who helps me with my admin. Own Books is going from strength to strength and is robustly managed with your support.
2026 is the Year of Reading and so I hope that this year will be our busiest year yet!
Many thanks
Julie
Book Delivery Report (A. Shaw)
I am very happy to report that we have a grand total of 13 schools on our list who receive books from WOB. Deliveries have been very sporadic this year from WOB and reports from Joseph are very infrequent. We estimate that each school has had one box from WOB in the school year 24/25 Somewhat disappointing.
We took on 18 new schools in the school year 24/25 9 of which went on the BWB list and the remainder are local. Giving us a total of 137 schools (we have taken on 7 new schools already in 2026)
We now have 3 lists of schools;
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Supplied by WOB
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Supplied by BWB
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Supplied from the cupboard at Montague and not on either list above
I am in the process of developing a new and easier system to count book deliveries to schools and will keep everyone updated. Since we started recording in 2024 we have posted 214 boxes with BWB and volunteers have delivered at least 818 bags of books.
We have established a relationship with Awesome Books who can supply us with books. We are trialling a project to receive a pallet of 3000 books, sort them and deliver them to schools locally/Coventry. We will be hiring a storage unit at Montague and will see how effective this project is once the books are delivered and the cost of running the project.
Alison and Dawn will devise a feedback form for schools so that we can report to Awesome Books.
Awesome Books are also able to supply books to schools for a book fayre of no less than 500 books. We will have to talk to the schools first. One school held a book fayre, but we haven’t heard back how it went.
Julie and Dawn are in frequent contact with local schools in
Leamington/Warwick/Stratford and we are able to react quickly with deliveries of books from our own store as and when required. We also try to set up new schools with a good supply of books.
Any religious books collected are taken to St Mark’s Church in Leamington, usually 1 or 2 bags.
We had a large donation (12 boxes) of resource books from a school supply company that went into liquidation. These were beautiful and varied multi copies of resource books. Some were delivered to a school in Wigan, Manchester. The rest have been separated and sorted before delivering to local and Coventry schools.
In 2025 our wonderful team of volunteers made 79 deliveries and dispatched 379 bags of books. That’s about 4 or 5 bags per school each delivery.
We delivered 56 boxes from BWB via UPS to schools in our out of reach areas in the school year 24/25. We have already delivered 91 boxes in 25/26. UPS Delivery costs have increased slightly but still offer good value per box. We need to look at funding for this and to ensure that we still have enough to fund this. Julia has reported a cost of approx. £900 in delivery so far.
We continue to collect books from Oxfam bookshop and the Guide Dogs charity shop in Leamington on a weekly basis. Thank you to Alistair, Christoph and Dawn for the expert navigating the Warwickshire roads and delivering to schools in Warwickshire, Coventry and Birmingham.
– Own Books Summary of Accounts for 2025 (J. Gibson)
The accounting year ran from 1[st] January 2025 to 31[st] December 2025. Figures given here are rounded to the nearest £.
For 2025 the income was £13,190 mainly from £6,000 in restricted grants (Edward Cadbury & YAPP Charitable trusts), £6,581 from donation and grant (primarily Soroptomist and L&D Seccombe) and £600 fee for speakers at SWFT Early Years Conference.
We had expenditure of £17,691 taken primarily from the restricted grants funds.
From restricted grants the project costs were £11,291 and core costs £5,755.
The core costs expenditure by each main category was:
£ 794 - IT
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£2,449 - Postage / Print / Stationery (core only)
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£2,075 - Volunteer Expenses
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£ 437 - Audit / Insurance / Governance
The £600 fee received from SWFT was paid to the 2 speakers at the conference.
IT costs this year included costs of increasing the security.
Early in the year we needed to have the 2024 accounts checked and the cost is within the Audit / Governance category.
At year end there was £23,412 in the bank account. There is no other money; also, there are no other assets.
Late in the year an interest paying deposit account linked with our current account was opened and we will receive a little interest each quarter.
Of the cash balance of £23,412:
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£14,167 relates to restricted funds (i.e. where the money is for specific purposes and should be reported to the grant donor)
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£9,245 is completely unrestricted funding (i.e. ‘Free’ for any Own Books costs and does not need to be reported to any donor)
GRANTS
This shows the grants open at start of 2025, grants received during 2025, the 2025 grant spend and the balances at close of 2025.
| Grant | Amount Rec’d (Orig.) |
Date **Rec’d ** |
£ Spent - total |
£ Spent - total |
£ Spent in 2025 |
£ Balance |
Notes | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| YAPP 2024 | £1,000 | Aug 2024 | £956 | £853 | £0 | @@ Closed June ’25 with £44 balance |
||||||||
| YAPP 2025 | £1,000 | July2025 | £924 | £924 | £76 | |||||||||
| Edward Cadbury Trust |
£5,000 | June 2025 |
£962 | £962 | £4,038 | For Core exp. | ||||||||
| Passionist(2ndset) | £6,000 | Oct 2024 | £5,999 | £5,359 | £1 | @@ | ||||||||
| Lottery Community Fund |
£20,000 | July 2024 | £9,051 | £7,069 | £10,049 | Current allocation: Core: £4,645 Proj.: £5,404 |
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| HOE – Cov, Warks, S’Hull Comm Fund |
£2,000 | Aug 2024 | £1,997 | £1,879 | £3 | @@ |
Notes: 1. The accounts are simple and based on cash accounting – money is recorded in the year it is received or paid out – there is no need for pre-payment nor accrual recording. 2. @@ The small balances after reporting to the donors are transferred to the ‘Free’ monies balance.
See separate CC16a Receipts & Payments Accounts
| Charity Name | Charity Name | Charity Name | Number | Number | Number | CC16a | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| For the period from |
01/01/2025 Period start date |
To | 31/12/2025 Period end date |
||||
| Section A Receipts and payments | |||||||
| A1 Receipts | Unrestricted funds to the nearest £ - 7,181 9 - - - - - 7,190 - - - 7,190 - 21 624 - - - - - - 645 - - - 645 6,545 791 1,909 9,245 |
Restricted funds to the nearest £ 6,000 - - - - - - - 6,000 - - - 6,000 794 2,449 2,075 11,291 - 437 - - - 17,046 - - - 17,046 - 11,046 - 791 26,004 14,167 |
Endowment funds to the nearest £ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
Total funds to the nearest £ 6,000 7,181 9 - - - - - 13,190 - - - 13,190 794 2,470 2,699 11,291 - 437 - - - 17,691 - - - 17,691 - 4,501 |
Last year to the nearest £ |
||
| Grants | - | 29,000 | |||||
| Donations,transfer & refunds | 7,181 | 226 | |||||
| Bank Interest | 9 | - | |||||
| - | - | ||||||
| - | - | ||||||
| - | - | ||||||
| - | - | ||||||
| - | - | ||||||
| Sub total(Gross income for AR) | 7,190 | 29,226 | |||||
| A2 Asset and investment sales, (see table). |
|||||||
| - | |||||||
| - | - | ||||||
| Sub total | - | - | |||||
| Total receipts A3 Payments |
|||||||
| 29,226 | |||||||
IT / Internet / telephone |
- | 726 | |||||
| Printing/postage / stationery | 21 | 2,795 | |||||
| Volunteer expenses | 624 | 2,281 | |||||
| Projects /project management | - | 9,648 | |||||
| Bank charges / interest | - | - | |||||
| Governance | - | 209 | |||||
| - | - | ||||||
| - | - | ||||||
| - | - | ||||||
| **Sub total ** | 645 | 15,659 | |||||
| A4 Asset and investment purchases, (see table) |
|||||||
| - | |||||||
| - | |||||||
| **Sub total ** | - | - | |||||
| Total payments Net of receipts/(payments) A5 Transfers between funds A6 Cash funds last year end Cash funds this year end |
|||||||
| 15,659 | |||||||
| 6,545 | - 11,046 | - | - 4,501 | 13,567 | |||
| 791 | - 791 | - | - | - | |||
| 1,909 | 26,004 | - | 27,913 | 14,346 | |||
| 9,245 | 14,167 | - | 23,412 | 27,913 |
CCXX R1 accounts (SS)
08/04/2026
1
Section B Statement of assets and liabilities at the end of the period
| Categories Signed by one or two trustees on behalf of all the trustees B5 Liabilities B3 Investment assets B2 Other monetary assets B4 Assets retained for the charity’s own use B1 Cash funds |
Details Details Details Total cash funds (agree balances with receipts and payments account(s)) Details Cash in current bank account Details Signature J.M. Gibson |
Unrestricted funds to nearest £ 9,245 - - 9,245 |
Unrestricted funds to nearest £ 9,245 - - 9,245 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9,245 | 14,167 | ||
| - | - | ||
| - | - | ||
| 9,245 | 14,167 | ||
| OK | |||
| J.M. Gibson | JULIA GIBSON | ||
CCXX R2 accounts (SS)
08/04/2026
2