CANCER

Bloodwise 33
STRATEGIC REPORT
REGIONAL GIVING
Our regional fundraising continued to go from
strength to strength. In total the team raised £4.6
million, an increase of £0.4 million (9%) on FY14
(£4.2 million). Although our awareness campaign in
September is primarily to raise awareness of blood
cancers and their symptoms, we believe this will also
have a positive impact on regional giving in FY16.
SPORTS AND CHALLENGES
Our sports and challenges teams raised £5.2 million,
representing a 11% increase on the previous year
(FY14: £4.7 million). Thanks to the support of Frankie
& Benny’s, part of The Restaurant Group, we saw
significant growth in income from our London to
Paris cycling event and our title sponsorship of the
Blenheim Palace Triathlon generated a £0.2 million
increase in income.
CORPORATE AND HIGH VALUE PARTNERSHIPS
We’ve been working with Wickes to beat blood cancers
since 2006 and since then they’ve raised an incredible
£4 million, with another strong performance in
FY15. We’re fortunate to have a number of smaller
partnerships but our priority will be to secure at least
one new partnership before the end of the year.
Income from trusts was slightly down this year – but
we’re increasing resource in the team, to help us
manage our relationship with trusts more effectively
and have time to focus on larger applications for
some of our most innovative patient activities. We
were once again indebted to Fighting Leukaemia
and Children with Cancer for their support of our
research into childhood leukaemia.
The reduction in large gifts, which are more cost
effective to generate, led to a deterioration in our
fundraising cost income ratio, something we’ll be
working hard to rectify in FY16. We’ve already taken
steps to restructure the large gifts team. This was
completed before the start of FY16 and a new Head of
Major Funding has already been appointed.
LEGACIES
The underlying trend for our legacy income is stable,
with a healthy pipeline. However our annual legacy
income has a track record of being underpinned by
one large legacy of generally over £1 million. This
didn’t happen in FY15; consequently legacy income
was £6.2 million (FY14: £6.8 million).
INVESTMENT INCOME
Investment income was similar to the previous year,
at £1.4 million (FY14: £1.5 million). However we assess
investments on a total returns basis, income and
gains, and on this measure investments generated
£4.8 million, more than double the returns for FY14
(£2.3 million).
When all income and gains are taken into account we
ended the year at £24.1 million, an increase of £1.6
million (+7%) on FY14 (£22.5 million).
MONEY TO OUR MISSION
The rather disappointing fundraised income results
are to some degree offset by the fact that through
partnership we’ve leveraged resource to our mission
in other ways that isn’t reflected on the statement of
financial activity.
This can be as a result of our research investment
leveraging funding from elsewhere or by catalysing
further downstream activities.
For example a £5 million investment by Innovate UK
has led to a cell-based therapy trial for acute myeloid
leukaemia. There’s also been £2 million of support
from a Wellcome Trust biotech spin-out company
called 14MG to perform next-generation sequencing
of samples associated with the Haematological
Malignancy Research Network, with an associated
fellowship worth up to £0.3 million. Actual income
from research was similar to FY14, at slightly more
than £0.2 million.
Bloodwise trading as Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research Company limited by guarantee 738089
Registered charity 216032 (England & Wales) SC037529 (Scotland)