Christian Aid has offset steady declines in grant and donation income by dramatically increasing its contract income by 104 per cent this year.
The additional revenue from contracts took its total income to £95.4m for the year ending March 2013, a marginal £100,000 drop on last year.
Christian Aid’s latest financial accounts show a year-on-year decline in donations since 2009/10 to £55.6m this year, a drop of 4 per cent on the previous year. Its accounts say that the absence of a major emergency in the year 2012/13 was the main reason for the fall in voluntary income. Its restricted donations for emergencies fell by 56 per cent.
The charity’s grant income also dropped, by 12 per cent to £27.4m, compared to last year.
But Christian Aid offset these income drops with a substantial boost in unrestricted income from contracts which rose by 104 per cent from £5.7m in 2011/12 to £11.6m in 2012/13. Almost £10m of this is the expansion of three contracts with the Department for International Development.
Christian Aid plans to increase its contract income, saying it will expand its capacity to take on more large contracts with donors such as DFID and the European Commission.
The charity’s income marginally fell from £95.5m in 2011/12 to £95.4m this year. It spent £96.6m on its charitable activity, a three per cent rise on last year, but it reduced spending on fundraising by 3 per cent to £12.2m. Earlier this year, Christian Aid announced it was training 110 non-fundraising staff in fundraising. It followed the charity’s decision not to hire a dedicated director of fundraising following the departure of Ruth Ruderham from the post in 2011.
Christian Aid also reduced its pension deficit this year by 21 per cent to a shortfall of £8m.
This year Dr Rowan Williams became the chair of Christian Aid. He said in the accounts that going forward the charity would continue to work on the structural causes of poverty, such as its commitment to campaigning for tax justice and fiscal transparency.
This year, Christian Aid played a leading role in the Enough Food for Everyone IF campaign, when it demonstrated how an estimated US$160bn that developing countries are losing to tax dodging each year could more than cover the extra US$50.2bn the UN has estimated to create a ‘world free from hunger’ by 2025.
The charity gave out grants worth £47.6m to 814 partners worldwide in 2012/13. It spent the most on grants in Africa (47 per cent), but the country who got the highest amount of grants was India, which received £6.3m in grant funding.
