Overall GiG Score: 21 based on 20 data points
Finance: 3
Governance: 9
Support: 9
Low unrestricted reserves: -2, Strong growth: +2, Fundraising costs low: +3,
Good trustee age range: +3, Dynamic board: +3, Gender balanced board: +3,
Award winner, Supporters: +9

UPREACH CHARITABLE COMPANY 

Overview

Upreach programmes are delivered through a range of tuition activities both in person and online that help disadvantaged young people at University gain employment. Though the COVID-19 pandemic has meant in-person tuition has been impacted this year, the charity was successfully able to transition programmes online. This included expert technical training and networking opportunities as well as other content in their a Assessed Virtual Internship Programme.

The charity is consistently hitting post graduation employment targets at higher than national average starting salaries. Over 90% of income excluding donated services is generated from employers and universities, which provides confidence in the sustainability of the model.

Source: Giving is Great

Mission:

Improving access to professional employment for young people from disadvantaged backgrounds
Analysis by Giving is Great

Positives:

  • This charity is a recent Award Winner
  • There has been strong growth in spending over the last 5 years
  • There have been no material income shortfalls in recent years
  • Fundraising costs are unusually low relative to funds raised
  • A significant proportion of recent income was derived from major grant makers including the Government
  • The Board appears to be well diversified in terms of age and gender and dynamic in terms of composition

Financial issues to consider:

  • Unrestricted reserves appear to be dangerously low at the latest year end
Established: 9 years

www.upReach.org.uk

admin@upReach.org.uk

020 3096 7711

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Financial Data ?

Income & Spending ?
Sources of Income ?
Y/E Income
£k		 Spending
£k		 Surplus/
Deficit		 Fundraising
Cost £k		 Total
Funds £k		 Unrestricted
Funds £k		 Mths
Rsrvs		 Staff Volun-
teers
31/07/22£3,077£2,909£168£24£724£724368300
31/07/21£1,905£1,628£277£12£555£5554.142990
31/07/20£1,279£1,137£142£6£278£2782.928600
31/07/19£928£850£78£0£136£1361.919600
31/07/18£679£709£-31£0£58£58115207
31/07/17£448£391£57n/an/an/an/an/a0
31/07/16£266£248£18n/an/an/an/an/a0
31/07/15£240£255£-15n/an/an/an/an/a0
Show more rows -->

Download accounts
Financial Ratios
Fundraising Costs/Relevant Income: 0.8%
Fundraising Costs/Total Spending: 0.8%
Senior Staff Costs/Total Spending: 7%
Highest pay band: £90,000-£100,000
Liabilities/Assets: 60%
Liabilities/Income: 35%
Unrestricted Funds/Total Funds: 100%
Reserves/Spending: 3 months
Net Current Assets/Spending: 3 months
Quick Ratio: 1.2
Asset Split ?
Comment: Over 90% of income is received from partner employers and universities, whose funding has grown due to their continued delivery of positive programme results

Source: Giving is Great

What it does
  • Education/Training
  • The Prevention Or Relief Of Poverty
upReach supports undergraduates from less-privileged backgrounds to secure graduate jobs and internships by running a needs-focused professional development programmes in partnership with foundations, universities and employers. Students are guided by Programme Co-ordinators who support them through practice online tests, mock interviews and CV reviews to prepare them for job applications. Video forums and skills workshops also develop essential soft skills, and professional mentoring and insight days give them the tools to face the professional world.
Who works here?
  • 68 employees
  • 300 volunteers
Who it helps
  • Children/Young People
  • The General Public/Mankind
How it operates
  • Provides advocacy/advice/information
  • Provides services
Where it operates
  • Northern Ireland, Scotland, Throughout England And Wales,

Who's supporting them? ?

Awards received
  • Charity Times 2019 Awards Charity of the Year, Income < £1m
  • Third Sector Awards 2022 Charity of the Year - Medium
    •
Donations from Grant Makers ?

We have details on the following significant donations. Multi-year donations are allocated to the years for which they are earmarked.

Major supporters in last 5 years
John Lyon's Charity£90,000
City Bridge Trust£47,565
The EQ Foundation£45,000
The Dulverton Trust£35,000
Specific Donations
Amount When
Months		 To be used for
The EQ Foundation
£15,000 15/03/2022
Unrestricted
The Dulverton Trust
£35,000 28/10/2021
Employability programme in Nottingham
Garfield Weston Foundation
£20,000 08/10/2021
upReach Regional Expansion to Nottingham
The EQ Foundation
£15,000 10/03/2021
Unrestricted
John Lyon's Charity
£90,000 18/06/2020
36
upReach - Supporting students from less-advantaged backgrounds to reach their full career potential
City Bridge Trust
£47,565 22/05/2020
A grant of £47,565 to fund the essential and urgent costs outlined in the appliciation, so that the organisation can carry on providing support to Londoners.
The National Lottery Community Fund
£10,000 07/05/2020
2
The funding will be used to run an online employability programme for disadvantaged young people. The project aims to increase the participants skills and job prospects to ensure they are not left ....more
The EQ Foundation
£15,000 26/03/2020
Unrestricted
Show more rows

Data sourced from Donors via 360 Giving

How do they operate?

Rise Programme

Objectives: To create the conditions for undergraduates from less-advantaged backgrounds to access and sustain top graduate jobs

Intervention period: 3 years

Beneficiaries: upReach Associates are current UK undergraduate students from less-advantaged backgrounds. To be eligible, students must have attended UK state schools, have household income below the threshold that qualifies them for additional financial support (such as a university bursary or a student maintenance grant from the government), and achieved minimum qualifications such as BBB at A Level (or contextualised equivalent).

Description: The Rise programme help students explore their career options and develop their employability skills through delivery of a comprehensive range of activities both in person and online. Each student is guided individually by their personal upReach Programme Co-ordinator throughout their time on the programme by practice online tests, mock interviews and CV reviews that prepare them for job applications. They also have access to video forums and skills workshops developing essential soft skills, and professional mentoring and exclusive Insight Days give a taste of the professional world. Through this intensive and personalised employability support, students raise their aspirations and develop key knowledge and skills needed to have the best possible chance to succeed in realising their career potential and accessing professional employment.

Sector Springboard Programme

Objectives: To develop a students sector specific employability skills and applications

Intervention period: The programme differs in length and structure depending on the support offered

Beneficiaries: Undergraduates from less-advantaged backgrounds

Description: Sector programmes are sponsored by Slaughter and May, Bank of America, the Diversity Project and FactSet. These targeted sector programmes support students to develop their employability skills and applications specific to the sector.

Aim Programme

Objectives: To help develop skills for a targeted profession

Intervention period: 1 year

Beneficiaries: Undergraduates from less-advantaged backgrounds

Description: Aim is a targeted professional development and application support programme, available to undergraduates from all universities looking to make applications to Upreachs partner employers.

Comment: Recent technological investments have provided upReach with new platforms to improve intervention delivery: “REAL”, a contextualised recruitment system and “getEmployable”, a graduate employability assessment tool. This investment was complimented by increased staff and premises that enabled continued support of students whilst maintaining their Associate to Programme Coordinator ratio.

The period of transition Associates have dealt with this year a change in study conditions and missed work experience placements or internships has been challenging. upReach have however been able to adapt to a virtual graduate job application processes and leverage their technology platforms to replace in-person events with online offerings. They have also scaled up their one-to-one support, which was particularly appreciated by Associates who may have been feeling isolated. In order to provide additional support to Associates who had seen their work experience or internships cancelled due to Covid, they created an Assessed Virtual Internship Programme, which ran in July 2020. This extensive 4 week programme involved 170 Associates, the entire upReach team and 186 volunteers from corporate partners. Content included expert technical training and networking opportunities across 6 sector strands, such as Law, Consulting and Investment Banking. Interns were regularly assessed, with feedback provided on weekly projects and final assessment centres.

Source: Giving is Great

How effective are they?
Outputs
Outcomes
Y/EStudents supported% of Students securing professional graduate outcomes
31/07/20212,21875%
31/07/20201,60086.5%
Notes: upReach collect data in line with HESA (the Higher Education Statistics Agency, who are experts in UK higher education data and the designated data body for England) each year and recently, HESA has collected data at 15 months instead of 6 months. In order for upReach to be able to compare their students with students nationally, they then switched data collection points from 6 months to 15 months after graduation from 2019 onwards. A majority of students that work with upReach have been on programmes that last the length of a traditional 3 year University course. However, some students will have been with upReach for 1 or 2 years through different programmes, and some may have been on a 4 year programme if their University course was to last that long.

Commentary: Associates part of the upReach programme during their first year of University have an employability rate of around 3.2 times higher than the expected average rate of a first year student. Outcomes show they also have a consistently higher starting wage than the national average, which is supported by a high number of Associates gaining employment outcomes soon after graduation.

More recently Upreach has aimed for a more modest increase in Associates supported as it will allow them to consolidate the rapid expansion of past years, made all the more prudent with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
See what you could achieve with a donation of: £
How do we calculate this?

Who works here?

  • NICK BENT
    CEO
    Appointed: January 2023
Nick has nearly 30 years of professional experience in the private, government and third sectors focused on creating better chances and choices in life for young people from less advantaged backgrounds. He came to upReach after over a decade as the CEO and Co-Founder of The Tutor Trust, which is an Impetus portfolio charity and a key delivery partner of the National Tutoring Programme.
  • STEPHANIE LIEBER
    Director of Programmes and Impact
    Appointed: October 2016
Stephanie joined upReach after working in the corporate world as a tax director for 25 years. She wanted to join upReach so she could share insights she gained while developing her own career with Associates as they are launching their careers. After joining upReach in the first Future Charity Leaders Programme cohort in 2016, she now leads the delivery team to ensure the charity meets commitments to Associates and Partners as the Director of ....more
  • SARA FURNESS
    Chief of Staff/Strategic Project Manager
    Appointed: October 2020
Sara joined upReach after previously working for a mix of charitable and educational organisations and works on governance, team co-ordination and internal project management. She is passionate about ensuring all students have access to the opportunities they need in life to reach their full potential.

How is it governed?

Trustees (11)
Current Trustees appointed
Gender Split

Age Range of Trustees: 26-69
Commentary:Board members include upReach Associates who have successfully completed programmes, providing opportunities for alumni to give back to the charity
  • KATY INGLE Appointed: 2019, Occupation: Head Of Diversity And Inclusion
Legal constitution
  • Charitable company registered in England & Wales on 17/10/2014, number: 1158896
  • Registered at Companies House on 20/11/2012, number: 08300398
  • Registered with HMRC for Gift Aid
Policies in force
  • Complaints handling
  • Conflicting interests
  • Investment
  • Paying staff
  • Risk management
  • Safeguarding vulnerable beneficiaries
  • Volunteer management
Recent reorganisation events:
  • Asset transfer in from GROWING POINTS on 06/07/2023
Main office

Second Home
68-80 Hanbury Street
London
E1 5JL

Objectives

THE OBJECTS OF THE CHARITY ARE FOR THE PUBLIC BENEFIT:1) TO RELIEVE CHARITABLE NEED; AND2) TO ADVANCE EDUCATION;PARTICULARLY, BUT NOT EXCLUSIVELY, BY PROVIDING ADVICE, TRAINING, GUIDANCE, MENTORING AND SUPPORT TO UNDERGRADUATES AND GRADUATES WHO ARE IN NEED AND/OR DISADVANTAGED BY REASON OF THEIR SOCIAL BACKGROUND AND CONSEQUENTLY IN RELATIVE DISADVANTAGE IN RELATION TO PROFESSIONAL OPPORTUNITIES TO IMPROVE THEIR POTENTIAL ACCESS TO AND SUCCESS IN PROFESSIONS IN THE FIELDS OF ACCOUNTING, ADVERTISING, BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE, CIVIL SERVICE, EDUCATION, ENGINEERING, FAST MOVING CONSUMER GOODS, FINANCIAL SERVICES, HR, INSURANCE, IT, JOURNALISM, LAW, MANAGEMENT CONSULTANCY, MARKETING, MEDIA, PHARMACEUTICAL, PROPERTY, PUBLIC RELATIONS, PUBLISHING, RECRUITMENT, RESEARCH, THIRD SECTOR, UTILITIES AND SUCH OTHER FIELDS AS THE TRUSTEES MAY DETERMINE.

Data Sources

Charity Commission for England and Wales
360 Giving
CharityBase

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