When you make a donation to a charity, you have every right to know how that money will be used. We want to be as transparent as possible about our finances in order to reassure all of our wonderful donors that we are using their money wisely and effectively to help as many Vizslas as possible.
You can view our charity details and financial information on the Charity Commission’s public register of charities – please do have a look…
Our 2024-25 income and expenditure is listed separately below. Our 2025-26 accounts will be shared here at the end of our financial year (May 2026) and all of our previous accounts can be accessed by visiting our entry on the Charity Commission website.
As the long term figures show, several times our outgoings have been more than our income, due to a variety of unforeseen emergencies. We do maintain reserves for just such situations, as well as to ensure the charity’s overall financial resilience, however we are very keen to reassure our supporters that we will never ‘hoard’ money unnecessarily. Further information can be found in our official Reserves Policy.
As you can see from our financial breakdown, our general running costs are very low – just under 7% of our total outgoings, and a large amount of that is spent on the indemnity insurance that is an unavoidable requirement for every rehoming charity. We do not have any official premises to maintain, and we do not have any salaried staff. We are all volunteers working from our own homes. This means that over 93p of every pound we spend goes directly towards helping the dogs in our care.
Vet bills and behavioural rehabilitation are our largest expenses; many of the dogs surrendered to us for rehoming require professional assessment and training before they are ready to move on to new homes, and others (particularly elderly dogs) often have medical conditions that are not covered by insurance. We are always happy to pay for behavioural input and/or veterinary treatment if it will allow a Welfare dog to live a happy and healthy life.
Our 2024-25 income from all donations was down slightly from the previous year, but the dedicated efforts of our fundraising team made up the difference, meaning our overall income has remained steady, despite the current very challenging financial climate. As well as our regular auctions and raffles, the online shop has been a steady source of income for us, with many supporters keen to wear our ‘Vizsla Welfare’ branded hoodies and gilets.
In addition to this, we are still claiming as much Gift Aid as we possibly can – apologies if you are one of the many adopters or generous donors we have pestered repeatedly about a Gift Aid form but as you can see it really does make up a sizeable chunk of our income!
If you have any questions about our finances, our accounts, or how we spend our money, please do get in touch.