The nominations for the 2012 Awards have now closed. The shortlist will be announced week commencing 28 May so watch this space!
The Annual ICAEW Charities Online Financial Reporting and Accounts Awards (COFRA) are open to charities registered in the UK which prepare their accounts in line with the charities' SORP or other Charity Commission or OCSR guidance for small charities.
The Awards aim to:
- increase transparency by rewarding best practice in financial reporting
- raise the standard of web-based financial reporting for greater impact and accessibility
- encourage more charities to do their financial reporting online
- About the Awards
-
The Awards are designed to encourage charities to make the presentation of financial reporting attractive and accessible to beneficiaries, donors and other stakeholders in the charity. These awards are aimed at recognising best practice in statutory accounts and other types of financial reports, including annual reviews and impact reporting, if available. Winning this Award can also help charities to stand out from the crowd.
Bob Humphreys Finance and IS Director at Oxfam and winner of the Top 100 Fundraising Charities category echoes these words:
"For any charity, the annual report and accounts are the primary medium for telling the charity's story, both in words and figures. Increasingly our stakeholders are looking on-line to see how we measure up. At Oxfam, our communications and finance people work hard to capture and distil in an accessible way, the impact of our many programmes on the communities we work with. I am proud that the panel have selected our accounts as having made such a positive impact on them."
President Graeme Henderson, from Aberdeen Strathspey & Reel Society, winner of the Charities with income less than £250K category said "Winning this award is fantastic. Research by the Scottish Charity Regulator shows people are concerned about how charities are run and spend their funds. The award gives the trustees, Society members and other stakeholders confidence that we are producing high quality, accessible information about how we run our traditional Scottish music orchestras and our achievements."
There are five categories of Awards, based on total income:
- Income above £30m
- Income between £5m and £30m
- Income between £1m and £5m
- Income between £250k and £1m
- Income below £250K
View the winners of the 2011 awards in the 'Winners and prizes' tab below.
- How to enter
-
*** The nominations for the 2012 Awards have now closed ***
To nominate a charity, please email the following details to onlinereporting@icaew.com:
About you:
- Name
- Job title
- Where you work
About the charity:
- Contact details: address, telephone number and email
- Registered Charity number with the Charity Commission or HMRC
- Income category
- Website addresses for accessing the statutory accounts, impact reports, annual reviews and other financial reporting information, if available
- Year-end for the statutory accounts and other financial reports being judged
- Judging process
-
Technical screeners will check and mark the statutory accounts for compliance with the current Charities’ SORP (Statement of Recommended Practice) for best practice. Any non-compliant statutory accounts will be disqualified. The highest scoring charities, those which best comply with the methods and principles of the current Charities' SORP (Statement of Recommended Practice), will go through to the second stage.
Our judges will then examine the shortlisted statutory accounts and other financial reports such as impact reports and annual reviews against a range of online reporting criteria:
-
Availability
Are the statutory accounts and other financial reports easy to find? Can they be found within three clicks from the homepage, even if through a search facility or a site-map?
-
Clarity
Are your charity's public benefit aims clearly stated? Do your statutory accounts and financial reports tell an interesting story, to draw your supporters into your work? Are the objectives of your charity clear?
-
Web-friendliness
Is there a good balance of design, content and functionality? Do your accounts and reports link to other relevant areas of the website for further insights to deepen the visitor's understanding of your charity?
-
Accessibility
Is it easy to read and protected from unauthorised amendment? Is the financial information made more accessible by using an appropriate mixture of HTMLs and PDFs to improve navigation? Have graphs and pictures, video-clips and other visual/aural accessories been used to improve accessibility?
-
Impact
Is it easy to find and appreciate your charity's achievements and the impact they are making in relation to the year's objectives and use of resources? Does your financial reporting focus on activities and outcomes rather than just how much work has been done?
Shortlisted charities will be notified by post or email. The winners will be announced at the Awards Evening on 25 June 2012.
Key dates
Entry deadline:12 October 2011 to 31 January 2012
Technical Screener reviews:February to April 2012
Judging:May 2012
Shortlist announcement:Week commencing 28 May 2012
Awards evening:25 June 2012
- Tips for success
-
Here are a few hints and tips to make your annual accounts and other financial reports stand out from the crowd!
- Quick access online is essential - in no more than three clicks from the home page.
- Check for basic omissions. However good your statutory reporting is, these will cause it to fail at the first hurdle. Failure to sign off and date the balance sheet and trustee report on the same day is one of the most common causes of disqualification for these Awards. Manuscript signature or typed name is acceptable (i.e, by a current trustee claiming authority to sign on behalf of all the trustees).
- Help get your message across with 'at a glance' summaries. Give readers a snapshot of key achievements, comparatives and illustrations of how the finances relate to all this. Show how you achieve value for money.
- Adopt a simple and direct approach to narrative reporting: 'This is what we said we'd do, this is what we've done and the impact we’ve had and this is what we'll do next.
- Try to ensure that your narrative is integrated with your financial reporting so that your key messages and achievements are consistent and clear for the reader.ecurity is vital.
- Reconfigure your online reporting to html rather than relying on extensive use of pdfs or cutting and pasting. If you must use pdfs, break them up and provide the information page by page or in sections. No reader will visit your site if they can't choose the bits they want to read, there are too many pages on screen or the pdf is so huge that their system crashes.
- Security is vital. Protect your data.
- Winner and prizes
-
Winners and Runners up will received prize money for their charity, a winners or runners up seal for their website and free annual subscription to ICAEW's Charity and Voluntary Sector Group.
The Awards were presented at the Charity Awards Evening on 25 June 2012 in Chartered Accountants' Hall, Moorgate, London. All charities shortlisted for the Awards were given free places to attend the evening with their key stakeholders.
- Rules
-
- Automatic re-entry for the Awards will be limited to the charities that won or were runners up in the previous year.
- Only online accounts and reports will be accepted and judged (no paper copies).
- For these Awards, statutory accounts and other financial reports before 1 July 2010 will not be accepted.
- Entrants should ensure that the statutory accounts and other financial reports being entered for the Awards remain online and are not altered in any way over the judging period. The online statutory accounts to be judged should display a typed name and date in the trustees' report, balance sheet (for accruals accounts) and auditor's/examiner's report if appropriate. Failure to comply with the audit and external examination requirements will result in automatic disqualification.
- Entrants for the Awards will be expected to have complied with best practice as at the time of preparing their annual accounts and other financial reports.
- Once the Winners and Runners up for the Awards have been announced at the Awards Evening on 25 June 2012, entrants will be provided with feedback if requested.
Contact us
If you would like further information on these awards, please contact anne.davis@icaew.com.
Sponsorship
If your organisation is interested in sponsoring one of the awards next year, please contact Petra Young in the Commercial Initiatives Team on +44(0) 20 7920 8690 or petra.young@icaew.com.