## 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, 2024 Oct 25 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. 2024 Oct 25 Annual Report to the Charity Commission 2023 2 of 5 **----- Start of picture text -----**
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 (£)
**----- End of picture text -----**
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. 2024 Oct 25 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