Charity Finance Director's Group

(a charitable company limited by guarantee)

Annual Report and Financial Statements

Registered Charity No. 1054914
Company Number 3182826

“Finance Count 2005”, our benchmarking survey of the finance function in charities, was officially launched in June 2005. This work was undertaken in partnership with Agenda Consulting. As a follow-up activity a series of five workshops was run to enable members to identify and share good practice. Topics covered were: outsourcing payroll, modernising the finance function, financial reporting to non-accountants, cash and treasury management and purchasing. The Finance Count Steering Group has agreed an outline plan of similar activities for 2006/07.

Help lines for members were provided by: Deloitte, John Tate, Charles Russell, Control Risks Group and JP Morgan Fleming. We also provide support for special interest groups, particularly the Overseas Special Interest Group (“OSSIG”) and the newly established Entry Level Software Special Interest Group, as well as more general networking between members to help them contact others with direct experience of issues and good practice in any area.

Members took part in a number of CFDG surveys during the year, each one run in partnership with a different corporate Subscriber:

• ‘Managing Risk – Targeting Governance’ (with PKF) – was launched in August 2005. This highlighted the growing maturity of the risk management function in charities;
• ‘Charity VAT Survey’ (with Deloitte) was launched in January 2006. This showed VAT compliance is still a significant cause for concern among small to medium-sized charities and that accounting software does not support VAT reporting adequately;
• ‘Occupier Survey 2006’ (with Donaldsons) was launched in March 2006. This showed that property management is not an area of great concern amongst our members whereas relocation is an area where members would like to see more research;
• Marketing (with RSM Robson Rhodes) – to be completed during 2006/07.

We did not undertake an online survey to review the Charities Resource Network (CRN) as intended. This has been put on hold until the introduction of the re-designed website during 2006/07.

The database software used to maintain the register of members and provide the CRN was upgraded during 2005/06. The upgraded system provides the platform for the introduction of an Events Management module, which will include an online event bookings facility.

Page 5 - Annual Report and Financial Statements 2006