Blue Room Accounts

[richard]

Hi All

 

The Blue Room is pleased to be able to give members full details of our accounts, and specifically what is happening regarding our support of the chosen charity.

 

The accounts for Y/E 2006 took us rather longer to complete than expected, and since they were completed both Peter & Richard have been rather snowed under with (paid) work meaning that getting the information on here has taken rather longer than expected, however I am now happy to attach to this post a copy of our accounts as submitted to Companies House etc for Y/E 2006 (Please note that our Year End is 31st October).

 

Unfortunately, due to various circumstances (see below) our revenues fell off sharply just after the end of these accounts and, while waiting all those months for the accountant to finalise the numbers, it became necessary to use most of the cash reserves to pay our on-going operating expenses, mainly our server rental, to remain operational. In effect, since the end of 2006 the Blue Room has been trading at a loss

 

This is the first year that full accounts have been produced for the company, and it has highlighted some issues that we need to address, namely:

 

- When the company was formed we used a small amount of space on a site which Richard already had, and used limited bandwidth so our hosting costs were minimal

 

- As our traffic has been steadily growing we outgrew the original site and have since had to get a dedicated server this has added to our costs and so reduced the likely-hood of us having money remaining at the end of any year for donations.

 

- As both Peter and Richard have got busier, our time to organise fund raising drives (such as T-shirt sales etc) has reduced, and as people have got more used to the site being here our donations have reduced. This has made us more reliant on funds from classifieds etc to cover the costs of the site.

 

Currently, looking at the income and expenditure for the current year we are in a less healthy state than usual, hence the addition of the Google ads on non members pages. Therefore we are also having to look carefully at our support of charities and the publishing thereof. For this reason we have decided that we need to start to retain some money year on year to hold in reserve in case of problems. With this in mind we are intending shortly to update the references on the site referring to our dedicated support of specific charities and our proposal to donate all profits to a specific charity. We would still hope that if we have any specific surplus in any one year or period that a donation would be made. We will also be happy to host specific fund raising drives if charities or members request it. However we do not feel that we are currently in any fit state to be committing ourselves to any definite financial support.

 

Our primary aim is to operate the forum effectively and we would like to build up sufficient income and reserves to allow us to do this safely. If our income builds to a significant amount above our expenses then we do hope to be able to make charitable donations in the future, however this will only be as and when sufficient funds are available

 

Please understand that we are not planning to transform the company into a profit-making enterprise, and are also not planning to start making any money out of the site personally (currently the directors have personally bank-rolled various aspects of the site and are happy to delay re-payment until the company can afford it).

 

As people are aware the site is run entirely by volunteers. None of the Directors or "Staff" of Blue-Room.org.uk have received any compensation for their time or dividend from any profits, and it is not planned that they will. The directors also hold certain financial risks for the site and so need to ensure that we are covered.

 

Any comments on this would be appreciated.

 

Thanks

 

Richard & Peter

Blue_Room_Tech_Forums_Accounts_2006.pdf

[richard]

Apologies, but I forgot to mention that we are planning to donate the sum of £200 shortly to the charity.