BeatBullying was forced into administration after bids to secure £1.2m from the Department of Health and £1.1m from the European Commission failed, trustees revealed in a document handed to creditors today.

The charity went into voluntary liquidation on 7 November and has appointed Antony Batty and Co to manage the process. Trustees have also met with Charity Commission after filing a serious incident report.

Trustees said that they received an offer to buy the BB Group via a pre-pack administration, including the transfer of staff, on 31 October but the sale was unsuccessful.

The document said the charity's financial situation became critical earlier this year when, after being unable to secure funding, the charity advised a major funder of its plans to merge its BeatBullying and MindFull operations.

The financial review that followed resulted in the funder moving from paying monthly in advance to monthly in arrears. “This funding change meant that cash flow became critical,” trustees said.

In August PWC was appointed to provide financial and restructuring advice. The board began holding bi-weekly meetings and had daily calls to manage the cashflow and restructuring.

The charity’s bank accounts were frozen on 13 October when the first notice of intent to appoint administrator was filed, and further committed and planned funds were cancelled.

Failed funding applications

Trustees said that the charity started 2014 with £2.3m in secured funds and the charity was working on applications worth more than £5m.

In June Department of Health funds worth £1.2m over three years for MindFull were not awarded, “despite positive expectations”.

The next month the charity was unsuccessful in securing a second round of funding from the European Commission, worth £1.1m over two years. BB Group scored 85 per cent on the application where 86 per cent won the funding.

Senior management and trustees agreed a plan to cut costs by £430,000 through the merger of BeatBullying and MindFull, as well as further redundancies.

Trustees said: “The lack of UK funding specifically for anti-bullying became an acute issue in 2013.”

This led to the charity to try to resell its online peer mentoring platform, Cosmo, to other charities. The charity also cut the cost of operations and reduced staffing numbers.

In the summer of 2013 the charity had to renegotiate contracts and secure a loan from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation after an expected second round fund was not won.

“As a consequence and in line with the loan agreement a further round of redundancies mostly across the tech team had to be made,” the document said.

We Are Cosmo to be struck off company register

Companies House has written to the directors of We Are Cosmo, which was set up by BeatBullying to distribute the Cosmo software, to tell them that the company will be removed from the register.

The First Gazette notice is dated 25 November 2014, and gives directors three months to provide a reason that it should not be dissolved.

We Are Cosmo is one year late filing its first set of accounts. According to the latest annual return filed with Companies House, We Are Cosmo has four directors: Emma-Jane Cross, chief executive of the BB Group; Sarah Dyer, group director of digital at the BB Group; Sarah Long, chair of the BB Group, and Tim Waldron, vice-chair of the BB Group and civil society consultant.

It is the second time that Companies House has started the process of removing We Are Cosmo. In February 2014 it began but discontinued a month later after receiving further information.