@ Reach Out Scottish Charity Regulator REACH OUT COMMUNITY www.oscr.org.uk WELLBEING AND SUPPORT SCIO SCO52710 Registered SCIO Est. 2020 > $C052710 Community Wellbeing & Support Annual Report 2024 - 2025
DATE: Jul 28, 2025 PRESENTED BY: Shona MacDonald, Charity founder / Chairperson
A Message and Update from our Founder.
Hello Everyone,
Following up, from last years report, id like to begin with a massive “THANK YOU”, to our board members, volunteers and everyone who has helped us to grow Reach Out Community Wellbeing and Support to where we are at this present date (July 2025), thriving as Scottish registered charity SCIO SC052710, awarded to us on 26th July 2023 from OSCR (Scottish Charity Regulator).
Again this year, a massive Thank you, to Fiona Colbron-Brown at the EK Collective, for personally being there for me, to have someone support me, and also practice what i preach & pushing me out of my comfort zone, taking part in things like networking events and the “resident spotlight” vlogs! (thank you). Fiona & David at The EK Collective have continued to accommodated us, allowing us to remain within the EK Collective, which has enabled Reach Out to keep helping and supporting people within our community. Honestly, we couldn't have continued without their help, continuous support and generosity.
The second year as a charity has been challenging and has seen times of hardship, struggle and sheer determination. Our team decreased in the fact that our past board members moved on and it took us a little longer to put in place the new members we have to date, we had volunteers move on to other ventures also, wish them great success in their future.
With patience and moving forward with hope, we knew the right people would take their place within these roles, and they did! - I myself stepped in as chairperson, to which I'm more than happy to do, and will happily step down when the position is due to become available again in the future, look forward to working along side the next candidate, to help steer Reach Out to ongoing grow and potential.
We missed out in crucial funding and had to regroup and form a another plan of action ( as not moving forward was never an option!).
Our regroup worked and our minor setback, would in fact be the slight change in direction that Reach Out needed ( although we did not know it at the time), we where able to work quietly behind the scenes and really move forward with a stronger foundation, to allow us to steer our small charity in the direction we hoped it would go, to allow us to “reach Out” to those who need it most within out local community.
Finally the boost we needed!, Joyous and with clear vision we where able to continue to move forward and aim to keep delivering the wonderful service our charity Reach Out provides. As on 11[th] November 2024, we submitted our application for the CMHWF yr. 4, to Vaslan, and on the 14[th] February 2025, we where successful in gaining the much needed funding.
We Where over the moon and had the boost we needed, knowing we had everything in place for us to deliver our Befriending Initiative, the Befriending Initiative would be a continuous service, leading on from our “Check-in Service” or to allow new or existing service users to access the support they need due to isolation and loneliness within their community.
This year has been a journey to say the least!, a journey that has been worth it, seeing how many individuals and families we have supported over this past year. We do still have so much room for growth and learning.
Our aim this year will be to hope to have more volunteers to help out within our charity, to help deliver the Befriending Initiative, in turn we can offer a great training package to our volunteers, to keep our standards remain as the highest quality. Our main Focus in our second year as a SCIO Charity was to allow for growth, which were happy to report is happening. It was with great hope and determination for us to keep moving forward, thriving and grow our charity , see the need and make things happen, to help others to thrive and grow through our specialised emotional support
Again this year we have continued the ongoing partnership with our local foodbank - The EK Community Food Bank, allowing us to still offer a drop off service of food/personal care/clothing to those who cannot make it along to their local churches for whatever reason. Being able to keep offering this ongoing service has helped out our isolated members of our community immensely, so a special Thank You, to Karen Doran at The EK Community Food Bank for allowing us to work collaboratively.
Although 2024-2025 was at times, a stressful year! i am immensely proud of how far we have came and by how much Reach Out remains able to offer social inclusion to others within our local community and our aim to reduce loneliness is being met. The fact that we are still able to offer support through person centred emotional support in a therapeutic manner, crisis support and ongoing support to reduce social isolation and loneliness is our key goal, and I'm so happy we are able to maintain this level of service.
Thank You!
Kind Regards,
Shona MacDonald, - Charity Founder / Chairperson, Reach Out Community Wellbeing and Support SCIO SCO52710.
A Message from our Secretary.
Kerri Thomson
Echoing the vision from our Founder/Chairperson - In our second year as a registered charity, was to maintain growth, which has most definitely been met!. With growth brings challenges and thankfully Shona has stayed calm and focused with a clear vision on how to move the charity forward, and i think we can all agree she has done a wonderful job in doing that!.
Remembering back in 2020, Reach Out was a community initiative, an idea of Shona’s as she was diagnosed with a debilitating autoimmune condition, and unable to return to her previous job within the NHS. Shona seen the need for social inclusion, and could not see this type of support within her local community, so she made the community!. She put her idea to good practice and on 26[th] July 2023, her idea became the wonderful charity which i have the privilege on being a small part of today - Reach Out Community Wellbeing and Support SCIO SCO52710.
As the need for our services have increased and i feel this growth is happening naturally, again going back to what Shona said previously, we now have had to introduce a waiting list as we don't have enough trained support volunteers to help, which will be a main priority going forward this year.
We missed out in vital funding and we did wonder if we would manage to keep the charity going on a voluntary basis.. Which happily we where and that mainly goes down to the drive, determination and selfless acts of our charity founder - Shona MacDonald ( so thank you!). I have watching Reach Out Community Wellbeing and Support grow, and wish Shona and the team All the very best in their future.
My commitment to Reach Out is to help in anyway i can with the help and guidance from this wonderful charity, as i am also a member of our local community and raising my family here, i have seen first hand the support this wonderful charity can offer, and im very glad to be a part of Team Reach Out.
All the very Best
KerryThomson
Secretary - Reach Out Community Wellbeing and Support SCIO SC052710
Our Second Year in Numbers from Treasurer
Karen Dutch
Our performance this year did not start off quite to plan!, however, we remained focused, we had a small turnover to keep the charity going, which was all ready forecasted to be, so enough was in the bank to allow Reach Out to continue.
In year two we only required funds to help us run on the basic of needs, such as room hire, rates for our room at the EK Collective, fuel, travel expenses, parking tolls, refreshments for service users/group members, to hold events and any crisis or special requests from our service users and foodbank replenishment.
We are continuing to meet our goals and perform at our highest standards (budgeting and forecasting) to maintain our charity on a steady level.
Our main strategy following on from our first year was to build our charity with a secure foundation,
taking time to have all processes and paperwork in place. We will be applying for larger funds to allow us to have more sustainability within this next year.
Taking us onto year three - where we where able to raise small amounts of funds through fundraising, budgeting and forecasting for the year ahead, with planned funding in place to move the charity on and have staff members and more volunteers..
Our aims our aims for the next fianancial year will be to maintain the steady flow of funding/fundraising we have available. We will aim to secure continued funding from our current funders.. We hope to put on more community engagement programmes and events also, as this will enable us to raise much needed funds going back into the charity accounts.
Currently we receive 4 main sources of funds through our Charity. Without these revenues we would be unable to offer this type of support to people.
EK Comm Food Bank Donations R.O.C.W.A.S Fundraising
A. Cameron Lift Services Vaslan
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EK Comm Food
Bank
Donations
10%
R.O.C.W.A.S
Fundraising
20%
Vaslan
50%
A. Cameron
Lift Services
20%
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An overview on how we have managed to do what we do!
The pie chart above shows how we are able to help those most vulnerable within our community, via these streams of donations. Without this support we would not be able to hold our weekly/monthly groups, offer our check-in service, give people the much needed crisis support, help with foodbank or personal care support. Without funding or having the appropriate funds in our charity bank account, all of this would not be possible.
Having constant funds available means we can remain to offer ALL of our services FREE of charge to those within our community, this then takes the burden away from people, if they are struggling financially and would maybe there wise not attend groups, if there was a fee to pay to take part in the activity or purpose of that specific group.
In February 2024, we received the wonderful news that we had been successful in securing the Year.4 C.M.H.W.F
As a charity we rely so much on donations whether that be making a donation into our charity bank account, raising funds for us, buying our merchandise, donations or people donation items to any of our appeals and this is how much we have welcomed within the last financial year.
A special Thank you! - "A Star" in our community, We could not have delivered this crucial service if it was not for our corporate support we received from Mr A. Cameron - A. Cameron Lift Services, their
support and generosity has not only allowed us to purchase the contracted Reach Out phone for our check-in service. They have also allowed us to help put a smile on peoples faces, by asking us to help out with Crisis support and Special request support, which allows us to purchase items people/families may need to “make a house a home”, help with occasions such as Christmas appeal, Birthdays, special food requirements, help to “back to school or college” anything to help people out in their time of need, and general running costs such as Fuel, stationary and printing of ALL worksheets journals, flyers etc and refreshments we provide such as tea, coffee, juice, water, milk, cakes, biscuits, crisps, fruit and food on occasions..
Our Financial Statement
Our third party Audit annual / Accounts was carried out by an independent chartered accountants - Lisa from Cadzow Accountants, 194 Quarry Street, Hamilton, ML3 6QR.
Her detailed financial statement has been attached.
Many thanks to Lisa for carrying out this for us.
Teamwork is Key
Donations and Community working.
Our Community
Our Reach Out Volunteers
Our charity would not be possible if it was not for the selfless acts of our amazing volunteers. To which we would like to give the BIGGEST Thank You to each and everyone of.
In our second year as a charity we have had an increase of volunteers.
We now have two permanent reach out volunteer staff members.
We have four permanent volunteers, who have All undergone Reach Out Befriending training.
We have also have six Flexivolunteers, which are our students from Duncanrig secondary school or South Lanarkshire college, who have also undergone Reach Out internal training.
Lastly, we have three family volunteers ( our Founder/CEO’s) lovely children.
Donations and community
engagement - This allow us to keep up our Crisis support, we depend highly on donations ,we are glad to report that our donation drop-off point for pre-loved items remains to be a much needed service, and is running nicely from our unit at 28a Strathmore house.
We have been so appreciative of our Business Supporters, as a main contributor, which allows us to run our charity’s crisis support, which is a highly accessed and much needed service we provide. The Biggest THANK YOU goes to our Community Business Champion’s -
A. Cameron Lift Services, for your continued support 💚 .
The EK Collective, for your continued support and guidance 💙 .
The EK Community Foodbank & Calderwood Baptist Church, for your community partnership and allowing us to provide families/people with much needed foodbank/personal care packages 💗 .
Our local community and our Reach Out community, has more than doubled in this past year, we have welcomed many new members and original members who also still access our charity support/and or groups.
We have built this wonderful community from a strong foundation and can now offer a lot more services to our community, funding permitting!.
To our Community - We will always aim to help those most vulnerable and in need of support, those who feel lonely and isolated within our community, so they don't feel alone, connection is key to good mental heath and wellbeing.
We have been working hard with independent people and charities to build our best training programme & training packs, to deliver to ALL volunteers who give up their free time to help out within our charity, which will be of great benefit to ALL involved.
We Are Looking forward to moving forward and “Reaching Out” to more people/families within our Community.
Our message for the year ahead is simple - We will keep Reaching Out!