Over the last year we have continued to receive core funding support from Reading Borough Council and Berkshire Health Authority, as well as increasing our sources of income in the following ways:

• A grant of £1000 from Berkshire Community Foundation towards volunteer’s expenses.
• A donation of £425 from Reading’s gay pub, The Wynford Arms, collected from customers at a series of fund-raising events.
• £27.44 from a collection tin at the new gay pub, The Dove.
• The beYOU Salsa event, which while, being popular and good publicity for us, it also generated a small profit of £57.73.
• We also continued to receive regular donations from our valued supporters, via standing orders, totalling £170.

This past year has seen a significant rise in our rental expenditure, which has now increased to £2,700 a year. Our expenditure on training is carried over to next year, due to the timing of recruiting new volunteers. A training course is planned for the last week of September and first week in October, therefore this will mean an increased level of expenditure in the coming year.

Other than that our expenditure has followed a similar pattern to previous years, with the only other significant area of expenditure being advertising costs. We have been able to increase our support of volunteer’s expenses following the grant from Berkshire Community Foundation and would hope to continue with this in the future.


Abbreviated accounts

1 October 2001 – 30 September 2002






2002–2003 and beyond

Looking to the future we need to take account of the following:

• A heavy commitment to ongoing rental costs means we must secure further regular core funding support, either from granting bodies or individual donations. We are in the process of applying for charity status, which may assist in opening new sources of funding.
• Training expenditure commitments are likely to remain high as past experience shows that we have a steady turnover in volunteers.
• We are likely to further increase our advertising/printing costs as we develop our services, increasing local awareness, and developing the activities we engage in.

These challenges remain significant. Without an increase in our income we will end the next financial year with considerably depleted financial reserves, which would jeopardise the future of beYOU.

With this in mind we have set an increased revenue goal of £2000 for the coming year. We will be working on developing alternative sources of income, and looking at our expenditure priorities.

Maria Ottway beYOU treasurer maria@beyou.org.uk