You may have noticed we’ve been a little quiet lately, especially on social media. That’s because while all looks calm on the outside, March and April have been super busy months at Chronically Awesome HQ, making the most of lockdown to get loads done. So we thought we’d pen a little update to let you know what we’ve been up to…
Our first project launches!
After more than a year of fundraising and working on getting it up and running, our exercise videos were ready to launch and we’d set a date to start filming, only to be hit by lockdown which meant our videographer couldn’t get together with our instructors to get filming. Frustrating though that was, we’ve worked hard (see below) to restructure the first few months of the project to make sure we can get going providing you with exercise videos while keeping our team safe.
Recognising the gravity of coronavirus on the chronic illness community – on our community – we’ve decided to offer the first few months worth of videos for free, so watch this space for those videos coming soon.
Restructuring the exercise videos.
As I mentioned above, we’ve had to rethink how we start our exercise video project given we can’t get together to film right now. That may sound simple, changing plans requires updated budgets and project briefs that get submitted to funders to make sure they’re happy with what is planned. While in the longer term (from around six months time) we’ll be running as planned, for the next few months some of our instructors will be filming from home, using equipment we’ve bought specially for the job. This means that while the quality won’t initially be quite what we set ourselves in terms of standards, we will be bringing you the project as promised. And, as I mentioned above, for the time being we’ll be offering these videos free to help you get through lockdown and shielding.
Looking forward.
Getting one project rolling means I (Ellie) have time to start thinking about the next one! It was clear from our market research that mental health needs to be the focus of our next piece of work, so that’s what we’ll be focusing on. It’ll take a little while to work up a project and a brief that marries need with practical workability, and that’s before fundraising to get it started, but know that we’re working on it!
New faces.
Projects beginning and new projects starting to be planned means new faces are joining the team. We’ll be introducing everyone via our blog, but we’re excited to welcome Sarah, Nikki and Beth to our exercise video team. We’re also bringing on board a fundraising consultant, Chris, who will help us identify and apply to funds that best fit our plans and ethos. All Chris, Nikki, Beth and Sarah have all already put so much time and effort into helping Chronically Awesome, and we’re incredibly grateful and excited to be working with them.
Our first Trustee Board meeting.
One of the main requirements to be a charity is that the organisation has a board of at least three trustees who oversee the charity and make sure the leadership and activities meet the objectives laid out in the constitution. At the end of April our Trustees met for the first time and had a four hour crash course in everything we’ve done to date, and where we’re headed next. The Board looked at the first drafts of some of our policies, approved our annual accounts for 2019-2020 and looked at how the group will work now that it’s formed.
Our Trustees will meet every three months going forward, via Zoom for now and then in person in the future to review everything from policies to accounts, budgets to personnel hires. You can find out more about the members of our Trustee board here.
Our first set of accounts and other practical stuff.
As someone with dyscalculia I’d been dreading getting last year’s accounts done, but done they are and everything adds up to the right amount, hooray! At this point as a small charity what we submit to the Charities Commission is quite simple, but it still needed to tally with our bank balance and I still needed to make sure I could provide receipts for all our expenditure. I’m relieved to say that moving forward we’ll switch from a plain old spreadsheet to proper accounting software to make sure we’re managing our money safely and effectively, especially as we start to run multiple projects.
Alongside the accounts we’ve been sorting out insurance (not easy with our proposed activities!), contracts and accounting software. We’re incredibly grateful to Debevoise and Plimpton for the support they’re giving through Unltd, Quickbooks for the two year discount they have given us, and Eversheds Sutherland for their support which came via the School of Social Entrepreneurs.
I think that’s the highlights, as I said, it’s been very busy! We’re excited to see what’s next!
