Greek Animal Rescue Trustees Report
The trustees of Greek Animal Rescue UK (GAR) present their annual report for year ended 30 November 2024. 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
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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
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The prevention of cruelty to animals in Greece.
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The advancement of public education in all aspects of care and protection of animals
Activities
In practical terms this means
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Promote, co-ordinate and provide funding for sterilising campaigns.
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Provide financial and practical assistance to local organisations and individuals involved in animal welfare within their community.
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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. We also have a budget for individual animal veterinary treatments.
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 medical and parasite 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 2024 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 who is known to us.
GAR offers a rehoming service with full back up provided for any animal we bring to the UK to ensure that none of them ever knowingly enter the UK charity rescue system. Rehoming is carefully managed and 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 37 dogs and cats this year which is a decrease of 34 in 2024. We know of charities that rescue from Romania also experiencing a large decrease. We think this is due to the UK shelters being so full now and increasing UK vets’ costs. We are fortunate to have an experienced behaviourist trustee who is overseeing this process very effectively and devised a detailed preadoption request check and works closely with the Greek rescuers and implemented a home check
procedure online. We have had another successful year in reducing the adoption failure rate by improving the matching of pets to adopters thanks to our behaviourist. We rehome most dogs through four trusted Greek rescuers who can be relied on to provide accurate details regarding the dogs’ character.
Financial Review
The financial statements indicate our financial results for the year.
Total income remains almost static at £983k in 2024. This is again due to legacies.
Donations and subscriptions have decreased by 3% from £227k to £220k in 2024. This is a concern being our core income, but we thought that this decrease would be higher due cost of living concerns. Some long-term high value donors passed on which is offset with legacies.
Investment Income this has increased by £18k to £24k. We now have fixed deposits with three separate organisations as well as with our current bank.
Legacies totalled an incredible £719k being an increase of £16k. We are very grateful to those people who remember GAR in their wills as this enables us to massively increase our work. Indeed, it is only due to legacies that we have been able to increase our vital neutering projects 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 if there is a particular part of Greece they prefer to help. Most of these testators are also known to our volunteer who liaises with our supporters.
Fundraising income has decreased by £10k to £15k. Due to our unrestricted funds we have not created any online fundraising appeals this year.
We had another successful London station collection raising £800 but this was £400 lower than 2023. We are very grateful to our two long-term supporters who do boot sales and craft fairs and manage Ebay sales. Ebay fundraising has decreased.
Other Income has decreased by £16k to £5k. This represents merchandise sales 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. The bulk the decrease relates to the medicines as we can no longer purchase in the UK. We must also acknowledge here our volunteer who creates our stunning calendar.
Total Expenditure has increased and our overall spend is again higher than our core income by £286k or over 200% as we continue to use generous legacies to support our work.
Greek Rescue Expenses
Due to these fantastic years of income from legacies requests, the trustees planned to continue with the sterilisation campaigns and 2024 is now the best annual result. The families or executors of the legacies confirmed again that this is the main request to primarily use the funds. In 2024 we sterilised 6112 dogs and cats which cost £266k. This is an increase of 1577 animals from 2023 and an increase in cost of £80k. We acknowledge the support from volunteers who negotiate with vets when required. We are very happy to have supported many new areas too including refugee camps.
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 the larger 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 use 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 this year.
Equipment cost has remained the same at £12k. We had intended to send a horse box trailer for a donkey sanctuary but had to abandon this idea due to Brexit and tax implications, but we fully recovered the costs for this. The bulk of the £12k this year represents shelters and hay containers for established equine and farm animal rescues. These are new organisations that we have supported this year.
Food costs have increased by £17k to £46k. We decided to expand our winter food funding to more welfare groups and individuals. This programme is very popular on social media.
Board and Kalyvia kennels which care for GAR sponsored dogs has decreased by £32k to £9k. The Kalyvia kennels closed as the premises needed renovations and we
decided not to try to find new contacts to manage it. Some GAR sponsored dogs have not been able to be homed in the UK and the charity is left with their ongoing board costs. Therefore, the policy going forward is to only rehome from volunteers who have rescued dogs that we can rely on to assess them accurately and increase our spend in supporting all rescuers with neutering, medical and food.
Neutering Greek Geography Report for the year 2024:
| Area | Cats | **Dogs ** | Area | Cats | **Dogs ** | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aegina | 100 | Loutraki | 40 | |||
| Amfissa | 30 | 60 | Megara | 225 | 90 | |
| Argos | 3 | 9 | Mesolonghi | 40 | 35 | |
| Athens | 870 | 23 | Nea Anchialos | 30 | 30 | |
| Corfu | 175 | 25 | Nemea | 3 | ||
| Crete | 300 | 30 | Orepos | 80 | 28 | |
| Didimoteicho | 45 | Parga | 60 | 6 | ||
| East Pelion | 80 | 65 | Patra | 20 | 20 | |
| Evia | 250 | 224 | Paxos | 35 | ||
| Filiatra | 40 | Platamonas | 50 | |||
| Florina | 5 | Porto Rafti | 100 | 30 | ||
| Grevena | 27 | Preveza | 60 | |||
| Halkida | 61 | 110 | Ptolemaida | 25 | 45 | |
| Halkidiki | 50 | 20 | Pyrgos | 10 | ||
| Ilioupoli | 75 | Rafina | 30 | |||
| Kalamos | 108 | Rhodes | 125 | 10 | ||
| Kallithea | 50 | Salamina | 50 | |||
| Kamena Voula | 60 | Samos | 156 | |||
| Kastoria | 20 | Schisto | 45 | 1 | ||
| Katakolon | 40 | Serres | 50 | 50 | ||
| Kivotos | 50 | 50 | Sifnos | 150 | ||
| Kos | 50 | Skopelos | 50 | |||
| Kozani | 2 | 101 | Thessaloniki | 230 | 224 | |
| Kyparissa | 100 | 4 | Topeiros | 157 | ||
| Lefkada | 1 | Volos | 221 | 89 | ||
| Leopatkarya | 50 | Xanthi | 10 | |||
| Lesvos | 39 | Grand Total | 4293 | 1819 | ||
| Total Animals | 6112 |
Transport cost has decreased by £59k to £32k. Where transport relates to rehoming this is recouped as much as possible with suggested adoption donation. We intended to lower these costs in 2024 to again increase our spend in supporting all rescuers with neutering, medical and food.
Medical costs are the same at £110k. 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. We intend to cap what we spend on individual animals in 2025 but help more animals this way.
Our other costs for administration, postage, insurance, regulatory and notary fees have remained the same at £14k.
UK rescue costs have increased by £4k to £16k. This is back up for rehomed dogs in UK. The increase is for UK vets costs.
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 neutering projects now which we are keen to continue.
Restricted Funds
The designated legacy for the purposes of neutering for the Island of Samos now stands at £3.1k. We supported one large scale cat neutering project and increased medical spend for Samos in 2024 costing £4.4k.
Investment Policy
We now have four fixed term investments for a variety of terms 1, 3 and 5 years and will investigate better investment options in 2025.
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 again 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 2025 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 as requested in the most effective way. We have established 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 £270£300k of our funds per year for the next 3-5 years. Had we not received these legacies in 2024 then funds would have depleted by £286k.
We will continue to focus on online awareness and have confirmed with executors that our social media will always reflect how funds are spent. We must acknowledge our volunteer who manages social media and creates very engaging posts for which we have received great feedback. Our volunteer intends to start using Tik Tok and exploring other forms of social media in 2025.
We intend to work together again with Animal Action Greece the UKs largest and longest established charity for large scale neutering projects on Evia Island.
We are still actively trying to find a charity Patron.
We are delighted that we have helped so many new and known rescuers with medical and food and expanded our neutering programmes. We aim to continue this increase in 2025.
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 2024
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 once again made a £400k profit for the year, with large legacies once again making a major contribution. A significant amount of interest is now being generated from investments.
Kelvin Speirs A.C. Tax Services Fyndings Station Road Plumpton Green Lewes BN7 3BX 15/7/2025
Greek Animal Rescue
Income & Expenditure account for the year ended 30[th] November 2024.
| 2024 | 2023 | |
|---|---|---|
| Donations & Subscriptions |
219,514 | 226,961 |
| Legacies |
718,537 | 702,598 |
| Fund Raising | 15,209 | 25,450 |
| Investment Income | 24,091 | 5,560 |
| Other Income | 5,374 | 21,542 |
| Total Income |
982,725 | 982,111 |
| Expenses | ||
| Greek Rescue Expenses | 505,705 | 503,917 |
| UK Rescue Expenses | 16,127 | 12,104 |
| Office Services | 7,788 | 8,777 |
| PPS & Journals | 4,635 | 4,650 |
| Advertising & Publicity | 1,282 | 171 |
| Merchandising | 3,257 | 2,695 |
| Donations | 10,747 | 12,533 |
| Total Expenses |
549,541 | 544,847 |
| Profit/ ( Loss) for the year |
433,184 | 437,264 |
| Balance Brought Forward |
1,354,011 | 916,747 |
| Balance Carried Forward |
1,787,195 | 1,354,011 |
| Represented By | ||
| Treasurers Account | 33,139 | 1,018 |
| Treasurers Account (2) | 1,979 | 905 |
| 30 Day Account |
561,762 | 950,083 |
| COIF Account |
15,000 | 15,000 |
| Fixed Deposits |
1,005,125 | 200,010 |
| Unity Trust |
113,571 | 113,103 |
| Paypal/cash I Hand |
3,150 | 9,916 |
| Nochex account | 53,469 | 63,976 |
| 1,787,195 | 1,354011 |
Approved by the board of Trustees on 9[th] September 2025 and signed on its behalf.
Laura Tregent Gillian Samarasekera Trustee Trustee
Notes to the accounts:
| Greek Rescue Expenses | UK Rescue Expenses | |
|---|---|---|
| Board |
9,071 | 4,487 |
| Equipment |
12,227 | 35 |
| Food |
45,803 | 2,842 |
| Grant |
30,174 | |
| Neutering |
265,914 | |
| Transport |
32,245 | 247 |
| Vet/Medical | 110,271 | 8,516 |
| Total |
505,705 | 16,127 |