Stonewall is in financial difficulty

[RoyalCorgi]

Interesting post from Rob Jessel:

https://x.com/robjessel16/status/2008194383301185966

If you can't read it, their return to Companies House shows that last year (ending 31 March 2025) they had a deficit of £906k.

A deficit is for a single year, rather than the overall amount of debt an organisation has (eg you could have a deficit for a single year but still not be in debt).

One startling element is the reduction in reserves. At the end of the previous financial year they had reserves of £998k. At the end of March 2025, that was down to £92k.

That's such a dramatic fall I wonder if I've understood it correctly, so if you have more financial expertise than I do, feel free to correct me.

You can see the Companies House return at: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/02412299/filing-history

I hope it goes under completely. That organisation, in its present form, has done untold damage.

Sad times.

sad times

Obligatory gif:

They used to get foreign aid from the US and then Doge stopped that - am I right?

They still have a lot of money though and the charity commission won’t allow them to hold on to larger reserves because they are obliged to spend it on their intended beneficiaries.

a drop in reserves alone does not mean that they are in trouble,

They have 114 employees. £92k is about 2 weeks salary max.

So their annual income went down by two million quid, but their spending only went down by one million quid.

Even they can do those maths, surely?

Huh? Their reserves have gone down from just under a million quid, to just under one hundred thousand quid.

But you need more reserves than that if you are an organisation with that many employees.

My charity employer has many times that number of reserves and less than 20% that number of staff.

That was going to be my question re number of employees and with those numbers, the reserves really wont go very far.

Correct. According to the BBC:
"The charity's largest funder in recent years has been the Global Equality Fund (GEF), which is overseen by the US state department. It has given Stonewall more than £500,000 between 2021 and 2025.

Stonewall's accounts show the GEF granted it £137,254 in 2021-22, £204,442 in 2022-23 and £233,583 in 2023-24."

Terfs were accused for years of receiving US money to fund evil terfing activities but we could never find anyone who had received any. Alas, it turned out the US had accidentally been sending all our hard earned terfing money to Stonewall.

114 is a lot of employees, though given that it’s Stonewall it could well be 12 employees and a lot of support humans…

Never thought I’d say this about the charity that did so much for gay rights back in the day, but I hope it doesn’t survive this.

Yep. They don’t look to have found a solution to that donation nor to the loss of confidence in their diversity scheme after Allison Bailey’s trial brought to light just how they operated and expected organisations to follow their policy recommendations that required independent legal advice that was likely to be saying ‘these recommendations are problematic!’

They are now having to sleep in the bed they made. It’s not like they were never warned.

Gutted 😢

Im assuming the income from the stonewall champions scheme has dropped by a lot!

The 91k reserves is the combined unrestricted and restricted reserves.

There's actually a deficit of £112k on their unrestricted reserves and a surplus of £204k for restricted reserves.

What the restricted reserves can be spent on depends on the conditions imposed by the donor so it may not be possible to use them for general running costs.

Hurrah ! I’m delighted they won’t be able to destroy any more lives

Stonewall Faces Staff Cuts Amid US Foreign Aid Freeze - London Daily

What? Good grief. How on earth do they justify having that many employees?!

I've just had a look at the unrestricted net assets. Cash and deposits of £142k and debtors of £503k so current assets of £645k vs liabilities of £872k

I've ignored the fixed assets of £113k as that is their website and I would imagine has very little actual value to anyone other than Stonewall

So that's still a tiny amount of money, for a charidee of that size. Also, those are the accounts from the year before DOGE stopped their money...

It's the unrestricted deficit which is the problem. The restricted reserves can only be used as specified by donors and not on general running costs.

My qualified opinion of the accounts as a retired charity manager and various trustee roles is bla bla bla bla

they are in the shit as this report relates to March last year.