Interviews

Age UK's first financial year

Finance | Vibeka Mair | 21 Feb 2011

Age UK, the charity formed from the merger of Help the Aged and Age Concern England, has released its first annual report. Group finance director Charles Scott discusses the results.

Age UK’s first annual report for 2009/10 reveals its income was £160.7m. This is £9.6m less than Age Concern England and Help the Aged generated in their last operating year combined. However Age UK managed to make a profit of £1.3m for the year, compared with a combined loss of £3.8m by Age Concern England and Help the Aged in 2008/09.

Scott says the charity’s commercial businesses have helped its profitability:

“Two-thirds of our income comes from commercial areas,” he says. “We have 470 shops, a highly successful insurance and personal alarm businesses, as well as fundraising and legacies. So although our income fell, contribution from those businesses actually slightly increased so money available for doing stuff was actually the same prior to the merger.”

Mergers have been given a higher profile in the charity sector recently. The government would like to see more happening and charity lawyers are seeing a steep rise in enquiries on the subject. But, although many appreciate the positive aspects of mergers, such as avoidance of duplication, some warn it will lead to loss of services and identities of individual charities.

Scott says Age UK has largely avoided this concern:

“Help the Aged and Age Concern grew up filling the gap left by the other. But we got to the point where there was a tipping point and we would start to compete with each other if we wanted to grow more. So when we merged the two organisations were largely complimentary. We removed duplications such as similar jobs or too many offices.

“But in the actual delivery of service and income stream generation there wasn’t much duplication so we have managed to hold on to things that both charities did as part of the Age UK brand.”

Age UK also spent less on fundraising last year, Scott says this was a conscious decision to wait to invest in fundraising until more people knew the brand.

The Age UK brand is now recognised by 2/3 of the UK, says Scott, and the charity is keen to build on this success.

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Directory: Age UK
Who's Who: Charles Scott