Homeworkers Worldwide (HWW) was registered at Companies House in 1999 as a not-for-profit company (#3796677), and all our activities in 2021 and 2022 were delivered through this organisation. (See 2021-2022 Bi-Annual report for Homeworkers-Worldwide-the company.)
In 2021 the HWW’s Board of Directors took the decision to register with the Charity Commission, and were advised that the best way to do this would be to create a wholly new organisation, as a Charitable Incorporated Organisation. Their application was accepted by the Charity Commission in August 2021, and the CIO Homeworkers Worldwide was registered at the time, Charity number: 1195399, with the Directors of the not-for-profit company becoming trustees of the new charity. At the time, the trustees’ plan was to make a straightforward and immediate transition from one organisation to the other, continuing our existing activities under the new structure.
However this proved difficult. At the time HWW was a junior partner in a larger multi-country, multipartner project which was providing over 75% of the not-for-profit company’s income. This project was funded by an institutional donor and led by a larger UK based charity. This lead organisation was reluctant for us to inform the donor of our new organisational status, for fear that this could result in a significant delay in the payment of the remaining funding for the whole project, and as a result, they did not permit us to transfer our work on this project across to the new charity structure.
At the time the majority of HWW’s activities were carried out through this project, although the organisation did deliver some work outside of this project – for example, our advocacy work around new European legislation making it easier for workers and communities to hold companies to account for human rights and environmental abuses within their supply chains.
Faced with the prospect of doubling our administration and governance costs until the project ends, HWW trustees explained the situation to the Charity Commission, which advised us to keep the new CIO dormant until the afore-mentioned EC funded project comes to an end in September 2023.
As a result, until this project ended in 2023, HWW continued to operate solely from its original notfor-profit company structure, with our new CIO remaining dormant, with no income or expenditure.
Hence between August 2021 and December 2022 the CIO Homeworkers Worldwide had no income and no expenditure, and is therefore submitting this nil return.