Governance and Management

The BEARR Trust is an English-registered charity constituted by a Declaration of Trust dated 27 April 1992 and supplemental Deed of Variation dated 14 December 1995. Based in London, BEARR is managed by a board of trustees with a wide range of relevant expertise. Trustees are appointed for three years, renewable by mutual agreement.

BEARR’s trustees aim to run BEARR with as low overheads as possible. The trustees volunteer significant amounts of management time, in addition to their trustee duties, while other volunteers contribute translating, interpreting, event management and finance skills.

The trustees and volunteers are supported by part-time paid consultants: our Information Officer, our Small Grants Officer, and our Website Assistant.

For more information, please see The BEARR Trust’s Annual Report and Accounts for 2023

Download or read BEARR’s 2022 Annual Report.

Annual Review

This Annual Review presents a shorter, reader-friendly version of our annual accounts capturing the essence of our work over the past year.

You can learn more about our activities in the 2023 Annual Review.

How we raise and spend money

The BEARR Trust is regulated in the UK by the Charity Commission, and we are registered with the Fundraising Regulator. Our full accounts are independently examined and published annually (see above). 

All decisions on fund-raising and expenditure are made by BEARR’s trustees, who meet six times a year to consider progress and chart future activity of the organisation. They plan fundraising campaigns, appeals, and approaches to specific grant-givers, and decide how income should be spent and how the charity should be managed. Income varies from year to year, but comes from charitable foundations and individual donors in the UK and in other countries. Due diligence is applied to ensure that donations received are from bona fide organisations and individuals. Applications to The BEARR Trust for grants from organisations in the region where we operate are evaluated by trustees and either approved by the Board as a whole or delegated to sub-groups of trustees.

In 2024, we raised approximately £147k. Of this: 

• £62k was for our Ukraine Appeal. Funding included £12k from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s Community Initiative (with £6k provided by the Bank and the remainder in matching public donations); £30k in donations from charitable trusts; and £18k in generous donations from members of the public. 

• £80k was for our General Fund, which covers our Small Grants Scheme and the costs of running the charity. Around £64k came from charitable trusts, with the remainder from public donations and the donations made for our lectures and conference. 

• £5k was from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, for our project From Group Therapy to Community Cohesion, which supported community-based organisations in Ukraine in 2023/24. 

In 2024, we spent approximately £181k. Of this: 

• £98k was spent on the Ukraine Appeal. This was spent in 57 grants to 26 community-based organisations in Ukraine and Moldova to provide humanitarian assistance. 100% of funds in the Ukraine Appeal go direct to partners in Ukraine and Moldova. 

• £37k was spent on our Small Grants Scheme. This funded 11 grants to community-based organisations across the region to support the community integration of displaced people. 

• £32k was spent on running The BEARR Trust, including staff costs, IT and administrative costs. This means that administration and management costs were about 17% of BEARR’s total expenditure. 

• The remainder funded the costs of our lectures and conference, and the final year of our FCDO-funded project. 

We ended the year with a deficit of £34k, all of which is linked with the Ukraine Appeal, and a balance carried forward of £63k. 

Would you like to support our continued work with community-based organisations in Eastern Europe and Central Asia? Please click here to donate or contact info@bearr.org to find out how you can help. 

NOTE: Figures for the year ending 31 December 2024 are provisional. The 2024 Annual Report and Accounts will be published later in 2025.

Policies of The BEARR Trust

• You can read BEARR’s Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Policy here.
• You can read BEARR’s Sanctions, Financial Abuse and Terrorism Policy here.
• You can read BEARR’s Safeguarding Policy here.

In addition to the policies published here, we maintain a range of other policies that guide our work and which are regularly reviewed and updated. These include the Trustee Code of Conduct, Conflicts of Interest Policy, Procurement Policy and Whistleblowing Policy.

Five-year Framework 2021-2025

At the end of 2020 the Trustees agreed a new five-year framework for BEARR’s activities, coinciding with the period of our multi-year grant. This now takes account of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, and of climate change. You can read BEARR’s objectives for 2021-2025 here.