The accounts of any charity, however small, are an act of accountability. This one is a thirty-line spreadsheet that I printed out and read aloud at the January board meeting on the fifth, in the side room of the Memorial Hall, with Brian, Glyn and Marina around the same oak table we have used since 2003. The closing balance, after nine grants, is one pound and four pence short of the opening balance, which I have left in the column for “to be carried forward into 2026”.
The figures.
Total income for the year ending 31 December 2025: £3,104.04. Total expenditure: £3,104.04. Reserves at year end: £412.18 (unchanged from the prior year, this is our small operating buffer for postage, photocopying, and an emergency reserve grant if one is needed between meetings). Number of grants made: 9. Average grant size: £344.89. Largest grant: £450 (Clwb Pêl-droed Deiniolen defibrillator service and corner-flags, with the corner-flags an addition we agreed at the July meeting). Smallest grant: £40 (chapel flowers, Galar a Gwellhad, March).
Where it went, by programme.
The split across the four programmes was as follows:
- Grantiau Cymunedol — £790, four grants. Clwb Pêl-droed Deiniolen (£250, then a top-up to £450 — see below); Cymdeithas Hanes Deiniolen pamphlet (£180); Memorial Hall door (£160); cylch meithrin annual books (£120); Carol Service refreshments (£80). The careful reader will notice these sum to £1,240, not £790. The £450 to the football club was made up of an initial £250 in April and a £200 top-up in July when the corner-flags issue became apparent, and £200 of the additional sum came in fact from the Lle i Ddysgu underspend in the May meeting; we record it accordingly in the books. The honest figure for “new money to Grantiau Cymunedol” in 2025 was £790; the total amount paid out under the Grantiau Cymunedol heading, including reallocations, was £1,040.
- Llaw i’r Aelwyd — £1,184, three grants (and one ongoing twelve-week weekly shop). The largest single component was the weekly shop, at twelve weeks of £80, totalling £960. The fuel-card top-up (£120) and the school-uniform grant (£104, slightly over the £80 we had originally agreed; the actual cost of the uniform set was £104, and we agreed by phone to top up) make up the rest.
- Galar a Gwellhad — £180, three grants. Chapel flowers (£40, March; £60, August — two separate grants for two separate funerals); £80 toward taxis to Ysbyty Gwynedd over the autumn.
- Lle i Ddysgu — £950 originally allocated, £750 paid out, £200 reallocated to Grantiau Cymunedol mid-year. Six bursaries between £35 and £150 each.
The closing balance is a pound and four pence short of opening, which I have left in the column for ‘to be carried forward’. From the January 2026 minutes
The reallocation, and why it is in this report.
Reallocating £200 mid-year from Lle i Ddysgu to Grantiau Cymunedol was not an everyday decision and we want to be open about it. The Lle i Ddysgu programme had no qualifying applications in the May reserve meeting; the football club’s corner-flags request was the only urgent item in our post. We reallocated by simple vote (four-zero) and noted it in the minutes. Had the Lle i Ddysgu programme received late applications in the autumn we would have funded them from reserves rather than turn them away; in the event, the autumn brought four small bursaries which we funded in full from the remaining Lle i Ddysgu allocation.
What we did not fund.
We received eleven applications during the year and made nine grants. The two declines were a request for a substantial contribution to a school transport route to a Welsh-medium college in Bangor (we offered to part-fund a single coach fare under Lle i Ddysgu, which the family accepted) and a request from a Caernarfon-based organisation that does not, on our reading of the Scheme, fall within our area of benefit. We replied to both by post with a short reasoned letter.
The full grant register is on the annual reports page and will be filed with the Charity Commission ahead of the statutory deadline. Our 2025 return is filed; the Commission lists us as up to date and on time.
Gwyn Oliver Jones is the Treasurer of DEINIOLEN TRUST FUND.
