## **Greek Animal Rescue Trustees Report** 

The trustees of Greek Animal Rescue UK (GAR) present their annual report for year ended 30 November 2023. The charity is organised in such a way that the trustees discuss regularly how best to manage its affairs. As there are no paid employees, the organisation also relies on the continued support of a small number of volunteers to manage its activities. 

## **Charitable objectives** 

1. The relief of suffering of animals in Greece in need of care and attention by the provision of funds, materials and equipment for the care, accommodation, and treatment of such animals 

2. The prevention of cruelty to animals in Greece. 

3. The advancement of public education in all aspects of care and protection of animals 

## **Activities** 

In practical terms this means 

- Promote, co-ordinate and provide funding for sterilising campaigns. 

- Provide financial and practical assistance to local organisations and individuals involved in animal welfare within their community. 

- Lobby the Greek government for better, properly implemented animal welfare legislation. 

**Sterilising campaigns** are the most effective way to reduce stray animal overpopulation in Greece. GAR manages many different size campaigns throughout Greece from intensive programmes sterilising hundreds of animals to small local campaigns for just a few local animals. 

**Assisting local organisations** with their own rescue work improves the welfare of animals living on the streets. This assistance is generally in the form of medication particularly tick treatments. We also consider urgent food requests and provide a winter food payment to the food suppliers of the groups we support. These groups are often the local animal welfare volunteers that we assist with our TNR Trap, Neuter and Release sterilisation programmes. 

**Lobbying the Greek Government** is primarily assisting when requested too at a local level. Animal welfare legislation in Greece is reasonably good with each municipality 



being responsible for the health and care of all street animals within its geography. However, this legislation is not always implemented effectively. 

## **Achieving our goals** 

**Sterilising campaigns** and support for local animal welfare volunteers and rescue work. Through these grants for sterilising projects, we have maintained and continued to expand our network of contacts in Greece which often enables us to respond to calls for help more effectively too. 

**We work with a wide variety of local** charities and animal welfare organisations and individuals in Greece. We provide treatments and food for street animals that is distributed by animal welfare volunteers. To ensure that funds are used for the intended purpose, all grants for neutering or payments for veterinary work are paid direct to the vets’ bank account only. All animal transport costs, and food are paid direct to the transporter company and food suppliers. 

We have historically supported two animal welfare groups monthly on Kos and Salamina being set up by the charity founder and will continue to support these trusted partners for the foreseeable future. We have maintained the support for Salamina again in 2023 being an area exempt from benefits of tourism and notorious for animal dumping. However, we do not intend to extend this activity for regular payments to other organisations as we do not want a reliability on our support and our priority is to address the source of the problem by focusing on funding neutering nationwide. 

**We continually encourage the reporting of animal abuse** to the Greek government both at local and national level. The current Greek government established the role of a Special Secretariat for the Protection of Companion Animals. 

## **In addition to our charitable objectives** 

**GAR offers a limited rehoming service** with full back up service for any animal we bring to the UK to ensure that none of them ever knowingly enter the UK charity rescue system. Rehoming is limited to a few lucky animals as we have limited resource and facilities in the UK to provide backup service for failed homes. The total cost of preparing and transporting an animal from Greece has increased and has never been fully covered by the suggested adoption donation but this often generates continued charity support. 

GAR has facilitated the rehoming of 71 dogs and cats this year. We are fortunate to have an experienced behaviourist trustee who is overseeing this process more effectively and devised a detailed preadoption request check and works closely with the Greek rescuers and implemented a home check procedure online. We have increased the suggested adoption donation and reduced the adoption failure rate by 



improving the matching of pets to adopters with the help of our behaviourist and this will enable us to continue this service in the future. 

## **Financial Review** 

The financial statements indicate our financial results for the year. 

**Total income** has increased from £613k to £982k in 2023. This is entirely due to exceptional legacies. 

**Donations and subscriptions** have decreased by 17% from £244k to £226k in 2023. This is a concern being our core income and the fact we were able to produce a newsletter in 2023 having missed this in 2022. We feel we should still produce 1 newsletter per year as some key donors are not online and although generally in decline, we understand that many still prefer to receive a hard copy edition. 

**Investment Income** this has increased by £5k having been very little in 2022. Fixed term deposit bonds were not attractive in 2021-2022 due to very low interest rates and so we could not commit funds long term for these then. We now have fixed deposits with 3 separate organisations as well as with our current bank as noted by our auditor. 

**Legacies** totalled an incredible £702k. We are very grateful to those people who remember GAR in their wills as this enables us to massively increase the amount of work we do. Indeed, it is only due to legacies that we have been able to increase our vital neutering work the last few years. We always approach the executors to confirm of any preference as to how legacies are to be spent in helping animals in Greece and most of them are known to our volunteer who liaises with our supporters and feedback is provided to them. 

**Fundraising** income has remained on trend at £25k. We must acknowledge our volunteer who manages Facebook and creates very engaging fundraising appeals across all our social media platforms and promoting online shopping platforms Give as you Live, Easyfundraising. 

We had a very successful London station collection raising £1400. We are very grateful to our long-term supporters who do boot sales and craft fairs and we also acknowledge our three volunteers who manage Ebay sales. 

**Other Income** has doubled by £11k to £21k. This represents merchandise sales from online and on stalls and reimbursement of medicines to Greek welfare groups where they have fundraised locally or sought other charities to fund and pay GAR. Merchandise increased due to the production of the newsletter, but the bulk of the 



increase relates to the medicines.  We must also acknowledge our volunteer who creates and manages selling our stunning calendar. 

## **Greek Rescue Expenses** 

Following the previous good years for income from legacies, the trustees planned to continue with the sterilisation campaigns and 2023 is now the best annual result. The families or executors of the legacies confirm that this is the main request to primarily use the funds. In 2023 we sterilised 4534 dogs and cats which cost £185k. This is an increase of 265 animals from 2022 and a decrease in cost of £13k. We acknowledge the support from volunteers who negotiate with vets when required. 

We are continuing to support local schemes for assisted sterilisation of owned dogs. The reason being that many Greeks do not sterilise their own dogs and when they inevitably fall pregnant, the resulting pups may be dumped at a shelter or in boxes and roadside bins impacting the stray overpopulation. We are very keen to sterilise Greek Shepherd dogs and have particularly supported this in Megara and parts of Northern Greece. 

Neutering prices vary greatly all over Greece mainland and islands – a female dog being from €70 to €140 now. We only ever pay the vets direct and, in many areas, vets have set high prices, and the use of foreign vets is rarely permitted anymore and since Brexit, British vets can no longer get a permit. We have always received more requests to neuter cats than dogs. We have an Athens based vet highly experienced with large scale neutering projects that is committed to providing reasonable prices and we have been fortunate that licensed premises in other parts of Greece have welcomed him to assist locally particularly in Evia this year. 

**Equipment** cost has increased by £2k to £12k. In 2023 £8k has been spent to purchase a horse box trailer for a donkey sanctuary as confirmed with an executor and we intend to ship this to Greece in Spring 2024. 

**Food** costs have increased by £14k to £28k. We decided to expand our winter food funding to more welfare groups. This programme is very popular on social media. 

**Board and Kalyvia kennels** which care for GAR sponsored dogs has increased by £2k to £42k. We typically sponsor around 10 dogs at any time. 



## **Neutering Greek Geography Report for the year 2023:** 

|**Area**|**Total  Cats**|**Total Dogs **|
|---|---|---|
|Aegina|150||
|Aisopos||30|
|Amfissa||60|
|Andros|202|21|
|Athens|444|17|
|Corfu|73|82|
|Crete|108|51|
|Didimoteio||25|
|Drama||30|
|Drosia|25|5|
|East Pelion|28|45|
|Evia|187|39|
|Filiatra|50||
|Halkida & Orepos|210|166|
|Igoumenitsa|127|4|
|Kalamos|90||
|Kastoria||20|
|Kavala|50||
|Kilkis||60|
|Kivotos|35|30|
|Kos||25|
|Kozani||43|
|Leptokarya||25|
|Loutraki|55|40|
|Meganissi|103||
|Megara|245|40|
|Messini|55|30|
|Nikaia|100||
|Paros|80||
|Patras|10|17|
|Paxos||30|
|Pelion||50|
|Pireus|50||
|Preveza|50|10|
|Rhodes|20||
|Salamina|50|176|
|Samos|207||
|Serres|50|50|
|Thessaloniki|8|32|
|Trifila|10|40|
|Volos|195|45|
|Xanthi|65|65|
|**Total**|**3132**|**1403**|





**Transport** cost has increased by £14k to £92k. Where transport relates to rehoming this is recouped as much as possible with suggested adoption donation. We intended to lower these costs in 2023 and so note this increase is too high. We will monitor this in 2024 and discuss at our monthly reviews how to make transport costs more cost effective. 

**UK rescue costs** have decreased by £16k to £12k. This is back up for rehomed dogs in UK. This is the lowest it has ever been, and we acknowledge that this is thanks to our behaviourist who oversees the rehoming. 

**Medical** costs have decreased by £6k to £112k. This is a combination of medical purchases and payments to Greek vets for individual animal care. We continue to receive increased requests annually to provide tick treatments thus preventing fatal Mediterranean diseases transmitted by ticks and as noted for other income there has been an increase in reimbursement from other charities for requested purchases. We intend to cap what we spend on individual animals in 2024 but help more animals this way and to also fund more parasite treatments. 

**Our other costs** for administration, postage, insurance, regulatory and notary fees have increased by £7k. The production of the newsletter that was missed in 2022 being a factor, £1000 telephone for our volunteers who liaise with all the rescues in Greece and increased courier costs within Greece for distributing medication and parasite treatments. 

## **Financial Reserves Policy** 

Based on our working requirements and the obvious risks and uncertainty associated with our income particularly as core income is in decline and expected to decline further, the trustees believe that £250k remains an appropriate unrestricted reserve to maintain when we typically spend now around £150 to £180k per year just on our main objective of neutering. We have many long-term projects now. 

## **Restricted Funds** 

The designated legacy for the purposes of neutering for the Island of Samos now stands at £7.5k. We supported two large scale cat neutering projects on Samos in 2023 costing £2.5k neutering 207 cats. 



## **Investment Policy** 

Interest rates for these deposits had plummeted the last two years and it was not worth considering tying up funds with such low returns offered but we now have 3 fixed term investments for a variety of terms 1, 3 and 5 years. 

## **Trustee’s Response to the Independent Examiners Report and future goals** 

The trustees recognise the comments of the independent examiner in that we have been very fortunate to have made a significant profit, but consideration needs to be given for when legacies are not received as these cannot be relied on. We expect a larger decrease in core donations in 2024 due to the ‘cost of living crisis’ and have seen that this is the situation for other UK charities. 

We have a responsibility to our supporters and executors to ensure that their funds are used in the most effective way. Therefore, we will establish budgets on all expense categories to be adjusted in the event of an emergency response to wildfires or floods and have a medium to long term plan where we intend to spend around £250-300k of our funds per year for the next 3-5 years. Had we not received these legacies in 2023 then funds would have depleted by £265k. 

We will continue to focus most on online fundraising and awareness and have confirmed with executors that our social media will reflect how funds are spent. We intend to promote the transport of the horse box trailer to Greece as a fundraiser. We have contacted a match funding platform for the first time and hope this is a successful project to help to establish a mobile clinic for Karditsa, to be as effective as the one we jointly funded with AAG Animal Action Greece for Evia. We are also very happy to have started to work together with Animal Action Greece which is the UKs largest and longest established charity helping the animals of Greece for a longer-term project to help an estimated 600 stray dogs at a dump site in Northern Greece. Currently large-scale neutering projects are planned and food and medical provision. We are still actively trying to find a charity Patron. 



## Greek Animal Rescue 

Income & Expenditure account for the year ended 30[th] November 2023. 

||2023|2022|
|---|---|---|
|Donations & Subscriptions|226,961|244,704|
|Legacies|702,598|333,032|
|Fund Raising|25,450|25,381|
|Investment Income|5,560|281|
|Other Income|21,542|10,481|
|Total Income|982,111|613,879|
|Expenses|||
|Greek Rescue Expenses|503,917|466,156|
|UK Rescue Expenses|12,104|28,177|
|Office Services|8,777|2,943|
|PPS & Journals|4,650|2,078|
|Advertising & Publicity|171|163|
|Merchandising|2,695|2,005|
|Donations Designated|12,533|99,187|
|Total Expenses|544,847|600,709|
|Profit/ (Loss) for the year|437,264|13,170|
|Balance Brought Forward|916,747|903,577|
|Balance Carried Forward|1,354,011|916,747|
|Represented By|||
|Treasurers Account|1,018|79,689|
|Treasurers Account (2)|905|1,709|
|30 Day Account|950,083|731,707|
|COIF  Account|15,000|15,000|
|Fixed Deposits|200,010||
|Unity Trust|113,103||
|Paypal/Cash Hand|9,916|2,291|
|Nochex account|63,976|86,351|
||1,354,011|916,747|





Approved by the board of Trustees on 9[th] September 2024 and signed on its behalf. 

Laura Tregent Trustee 

Gillian Samarasekera Trustee 

Notes to the accounts: 

|Greek Rescue Expenses||UK Rescue Expenses|
|---|---|---|
|Board<br>|15,491|4,032|
|Equipment<br>|12,347|162|
|Food<br>|28,309|1,777|
|Grant<br>|31,940||
|Kalyvia (Board/Medical)|26,271||
|Neutering<br>|185,811||
|Transport<br>|92,091|699|
|Vet/Medical<br>|111,657|5,434|
|Total<br>|503,917|12,104|





## Independent Examiner’s Report 

## To the Trustees of Greek Animal Rescue 

I report on the accounts of the above for the year ended 30th November 2023 

## **Respective responsibilities of trustees and examiner** 

The trustees are responsible for the preparation of the accounts. The charity’s trustees consider that an audit is not required for this year under section 144 of the charities act 2012 (the charities act) and that an Independent Examination is needed. 

It is my responsibility to: 

Examine the accounts under section 145 of the charities act. 

To follow the procedures laid down in the general directions given by the Charity Commission (under section 145(5)(b) of the Charities Act and to state whether any particular matters have come to my attention. 

## **Basis of Independent Examiner’s report** 

My examination was carried out in accordance with the general directions given by the Charity Commissioners. My examination included a review of the accounting records kept by the charity and a comparison of the accounts presented with those records. It also includes consideration of any unusual items or disclosures in the accounts and seeking explanations from the Trustees concerning such matters. The procedures do not cover all evidence that would be required of an audit and consequently no opinion is given as to whether the accounts present a true and fair reflection, and the report is limited on this basis. 

## **Independent Examiners Report** 

The charity has made a significant profit for the year thanks to some large legacies. Whilst regular legacies continue to be received, consideration should be given to making plans for years when these might not be received. 

This year’s legacies were received towards the end of the accounting period, and I understand significant capital has already been placed in interest bearing investments. 

Kelvin Speirs A.C.Tax Services Fyndings Station Road Plumpton Green Lewes  BN7 3BX 31/7/2024