Treasurer’s report for year ending 31/12/2023
The value of our portfolio value as of 31/12/2023 was £2,961,210 (£2,899,957 as of 1/12/22). Dividends in year ending 31/12 amounted to £59,847.22. The fund has been below M£3 since the invasion of Ukraine. However, as of February 2024 the fund once again climbed back over M£3 and as of 29/02/24 was worth £3,040,544. We are yet to exceed our peak of £3,290, 950 at the end of 2021.
Our portfolio with Rathbones has not performed particularly well against benchmarks with total return of 5% underperforming the Charity Total Return Strategy Benchmark by 4.4% (benchmark 9.4%). We were also well down against our other target of CPI +3%, i.e. 7%.
Outgoings: We paid for all our 2023 students out of the current account, amounting to some £73,680. Another big expenditure included £5,000 for the Eden Camp Memorial Rock. We managed this because our current account was very healthy at the beginning of the year because of the small number of students coming during the Covid and post-Covid years.
Banking: We have successfully opened and started using our new Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) account. The benefits of this include being able to look at our balance online rather than waiting for a paper statement and we can double authenticate payments without the need to send cheques around. However, given the delicate state of the banking industry and the negative reports in the press about CAF I think we ought to keep our Bank of Ireland account live, it doesn’t cost anything, as insurance against the worst happening.
We have also opened a Paypal account. The initial impetus for this came from USA visitors to Servigliano who wanted an online payment facility they were more used to. What Paypal provides in addition to the ability to receive payments is a way to charge for subscriptions or other regular payments.
End of year (2023) bank balances:
CAF: £45,691
BOI: £4,561
Paypal: £17,40
Donations seemed to have dried up somewhat. Apart from Anne Copley’s generous donation of her appearance fees and the Moynitrust, there has been little in the way of donations coming through. However, we recently heard news that Ursula Graham a long-term supporter of the Trust has left 1/8th of her estate to the Trust in her will. At present her executors are still awaiting probate so we have no clear idea of what this immensely generous bequest might mean for us.
Plans for 2024:
Our budget suggests that we will have to dip into our funds to cover the record number of students as well as the large projects with Cambridge and NARA that are beginning to require funding.
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