Annual Re ort to Charit Commission 2023 p y
Prepared on Behalf of the British Society of Rheology by Anders Aufderhorst-Roberts, Honorary Treasurer
Name of Charity
The British Society of Rheology
Registration number
249967
Address
Secretary British Society Rheology School of Engineering University of Warwick Coventry CV4 7AL
Trustees in 2023
Anders Aufderhorst-Roberts
Maria Charalambides Joseph Hodges Richard Simon Hodgkinson Christopher Ness Francesco Del Guidice Richard Stuart Graham Richard Lewis Thompson Monica S N Oliveira Claire McIlroy Joselio Batista Vieira Joshua Stephen Edward Marsh Richard L Watson Manlio Tassieri
About the British Society of Rheology
The British Society of Rheology (BSR), a charitable society focussed on the science of "the deformation of matter". The BSR's main objective is to promote the science and the dissemination of knowledge in the areas of pure and applied rheology to all.
The Society was founded as an informal British Rheologists' Club in 1940 and it has grown greatly since then, and today has over 200 members from the UK and further afield, distributed worldwide. However, it still strives to preserve the informal Club atmosphere with members drawn from both academic life and from a wide range of industrial activities. Our members come from many scientific disciplines including materials science,
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Annual Report to the Charity Commission 2023 1 of 5
engineering, medicine, chemistry, biology, biochemistry, physics, mathematics and computer science. All offices of the Society are honorary appointments, and an elected Council is the governing body. Members are elected to serve on Council for a period of four years.
The BSR organises several annual scientific meetings, including the Non-Newtonian Club, as well as providing many other services to its members, such as our own bulletin publication. Student members are invited to apply for travel awards (financial grants to help towards covering the costs of attending conferences worldwide), and each year we hold a competition for the best Ph.D. thesis in rheology, by awarding the Vernon Harrison Prize. We also make an Annual Award to a distinguished rheologist and periodically award the BSR Gold Medal for outstanding contributions to rheology.
Activities, Objectives and Performance in 2023
In 2023 the BSR organised three scientific meetings. In April 2023, the AGM took place as a hybrid meeting with the face-to-face component being held at Lake Vyrnwy. The conference at Lake Vyrnwy was a commemoration of Professor Ken Walters’ vast contributions to rheology research. In September 2023 we organised the Non-Newtonian Club at the University of Warwick, providing an informal rheology discussion group which provides low-cos meetings with the aim of bringing together experienced and not-so-experienced rheologists from industry and academia. Finally in December 2023 we held our Midwinter Meeting at Lincoln University on the theme of “Modelling & Measurement of Complex Materials: what works, what doesn’t, and what’s needed? “
The BSR was also busy in supporting members with improved online resources and in meeting rising demand for undergraduate bursaries. In summer 2023, we awarded two student bursaries, enabling students to carry out summer research at Durham University and the University of Manchester. We also have awarded four Early Career Travel Grants, three to travel to the international congress of rheology in Athens in summer 2023.
In 2023 we completed the launch of a new website with all members transferred in 2023. We have been steadily updating and extending the website offering new resources. These include “Meeting Videos” where we have linked videos of, so far, two NNC conference events and our previous AGM invited lecture. We also now offer training videos with links to our rheometer manufacturer sponsor’s training, together with a series of videos introducing rheology and polymer physics and linking various other online resources. We now also provide links to various open source softwares of relevance to rheologists (Reptate, I-Rheo, OpenFOAM, LAMMPS).
Our website is steadily increasing in content and functionality, and this has helped with managing our membership database. At the time of the AGM the BSR had 144 members and 62 honourary members,
The rheology bulletin has continued to provide reports of events and scientific articles to our members and there have been some particularly impressive summer bursary reports, which highlight the value of this scheme.
Financial Review
Our finances remain very healthy and although the end of year balance reports an overall loss of approximately £2000. This should be contextualised by the approximately £13k paid in deposits associated with organisation of the Annual European Rheology Conference, which was held at University of Leeds in April 2024 but for which initial deposits were paid in 2023. These are expected to be recouped in the 2024 financial year. In a typical year, this would therefore correspond to a surplus of around £11k. Most of this surplus comes from our publishing income from the Publisher’s Licensing Authority (around £10k). In 2023 the society’s investment income also increased due to increase in interest rates in 2023. This means that our current funds are returning a higher investment return this year (around £2k), more than double last year’s income. Plots of key metrics are given below.
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Annual Report to the Charity Commission 2023 2 of 5
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BSR Financial Activity 2006 -2023
100000
90000
80000
70000
60000
50000 Total Funds
40000
30000
20000
10000
-10000 [0] Income
2005 2010 2015 2020 2025
Expenditure
Year
Funds (£)
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The large increase in expenditure/income in 2023 is largely artificial, because registration/accommodation for the INNFM meeting at Lake Vyrnwy were processed directly through BSR payment processors.
The British Society of Rheology has no funds that are held as a custodian trustee.
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Annual Report to the Charity Commission 2023 3 of 5
The British Society of Rheology
249967
Receipts and payments accountspts and payments accountsts and payments accountspayments accountsayments accountsyments accountsments accounts
Receipts and payments accountspts and payments accountsts and payments accountspayments accountsayments accountsyments accountsments accounts CC16a For the period 01/01/2023 31/12/2023 To from
Section A Receipts and payments
| A1 Receipts | Unrestricted funds to the nearest £ |
Unrestricted funds to the nearest £ |
Restricted funds to the nearest £ |
Restricted funds to the nearest £ |
Endowment funds to the nearest £ |
Endowment funds to the nearest £ |
Total funds to the nearest £ |
Total funds to the nearest £ |
Last year to the nearest £ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Members subscriptions |
4,557 | - | - | 4,557 | 4,750 | ||||
| Donations | 135 | - | - | 135 | 145 | ||||
| Scientific meetings | 31,340 | - | - | 31,340 | 1,530 | ||||
| Awards,Prizes,Grants and Bursaries | - | - | - | - | - | ||||
| Publishing | 14,345 | - | - | 14,345 | 9,156 | ||||
| Website advertising | 1,200 | - | - | 1,200 | 400 | ||||
| Investment income | 1,903 | 86 | - | 1,989 | 732 | ||||
| - | - | - | - | - | |||||
| Sub total(Gross income for AR) | 53,480 | 86 | - | 53,566 | 16,713 | ||||
| A2 Asset and investment sales, (see table). |
|||||||||
| - | |||||||||
| - | - | ||||||||
| Sub total | - | - | |||||||
| Total receipts A3 Payments |
|||||||||
| 16,713 | |||||||||
Scientific Meetings |
41,277 | - | - | 41,277 | 1,467 | ||||
| Awards,Prizes,Grants and Bursaries | 6,507 | - | - | 6,507 | 6,847 | ||||
| Publishing | 3,146 | - | - | 3,146 | 2,532 | ||||
| Website maintenance | 3,002 | - | - | 3,002 | 224 | ||||
| Bankingand Insurance | 1,364 | - | - | 1,364 | 468 | ||||
| Truistee expenses | 71 | - | - | 71 | 14 | ||||
| - | - | - | - | - | |||||
| - | - | - | - | - | |||||
| - | - | - | - | - | |||||
| **Sub total ** | 55,367 | - | - | 55,367 | 11,552 | ||||
| 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 |
|||||||||
| 11,552 | |||||||||
| - 1,887 | 5,161 | ||||||||
| - | - | ||||||||
| 77,021 | 81,502 | ||||||||
| 75,134 | 86,663 |
Section B Statement of assets and liabilities at the end of the period
| CCXX R1 accounts (SS) Categories B1 Cash funds |
1 PayPal account Deposit account Details Current account Scott-Blair current account Membership current account |
Unrestricted funds to nearest £ 679 1,115 46,095 33,378 3,595 |
Restricted funds to nearest £ - - - |
Endowment funds to nearest £ |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Current account | 679 | - | - | |
| PayPal account | 1,115 | |||
| Deposit account | 46,095 | |||
| Scott-Blair current account | 33,378 | - | - | |
| 1 Membership current account |
3,595 | - | 15/10/2024 - |
| 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 |
Details Total cash funds (agree balances with receipts and payments account(s)) Details Details Presidential chain of office Details Signature |
84,862 |
|---|---|---|
| Dr. Anders Aufderhorst-Roberts Honorary Treasurer |
||
| Prof. Maria Charalambides President, Chair of Trustees |
CCXX R2 accounts (SS)
15/10/2024
2
CHARITY COMMISSION FOR ENGLAND AND WALES Independent examinerfs report on the accounts Section A Independent Examiner's Report Report to the trusteesl members of THE BRITISH SOCIETY OF RHEOLOGY On accounts for the year ended 31 December 2023 Charity no lif any 249967 Set out on pages I report to the trustees on my examination of the accounts of the above harity ("the Trust'l for the year ended 3111212023. Responsibilities and As the charity trustees of the Trust, you are responsible for the preparation basis of report of the accounts in accordan with the requirements of the Charities Act 2011 1"the Act'}. I report in respect of my examination of the Trust's accounts carried out under section 145 of the 2011 Act and in carying out my examination, I have followed the applicable Directions given by the Charity Commission under section 145{5)Ibl of the Act. I have completed my examination. I confim that no malerial matters have come to my attention (other than that disclosed below ') in connection with the examination which gives me cause to believe that in, any material respect". accounling records were not kept in accordance with $edion 130 of the Act or the accounts do not accord with Ihe accounting records Independent examiner's statement I have no concerns and have come across no other matters in connection with the examination to which attention should be drawn in order lo enable proper understanding of the accounts to be reached. Pleas8 delete the words in Ihe brackets rf they do not apply. Signed: Date: i*/ia /Sfl Name: David Collier Relevant professional qualificationls) or body (if any): Fellow of the Association of Charity Independent Examiners Address: 10 Marlborough Square Ilkley, LS29 8PU IER October 2018
Section Disclosure Only complete if the examiner needs lo highlight matters of concern (see CC32, Independent examination of charity accounts.. directions and guidance for examiners). NONE Give here brief details of any items that the examiner wishos to disclose. IER October 2018