SEVEN STORIES, THE NATIONAL CENTRE FOR CHILDREN'S BOOKS

Registered charity 1056812 · accounts filings on the Charity Commission register · also known as SEVEN STORIES, THE CENTRE FOR CHILDREN'S BOOKS, THE CENTRE FOR THE CHILDREN'S BOOK

Seven Stories' mission is to champion children's books as an intergral part of childhood and Britian's heritage and culture, with the aim of: Preserving and celebrating Britain's rich heritage of children's literature from 1930's to the present day. Encouraging a lively dialogue that brings books and their creators to life and inspires a love of reading across generations.

Causes: Education/training · Arts/culture/heritage/science · website · Get email alerts

Financial health, per its FY2025 accounts

The accounts state that the charity reported an overall loss of £16,068 for the year, a significant improvement from the prior year's loss of £213,949, driven by a surplus on unrestricted funds. However, free reserves stood at £63,276, which is substantially below the trustees' stated policy target of between £350,000 and £425,000. The trustees confirmed there is no material uncertainty regarding the charity's ability to continue as a going concern.

Automated summary of the FY2025 accounts; the evidenced findings below carry the verbatim passages.

What the accounts disclose

Accounts audited by UNW LLP. Discloses 5 of 6 completeness components.

Public fundraising profile: JustGiving — Seven Stories, The National Centre for Centre (matched by registered charity number).

Leadership, per the charity’s website

• Wendy Elliott — Chief Executive Officer (source)
• Claire Riley — Chair of Trustees (source)

Listed on the charity’s own website when we last crawled it; roles may have changed. Pay-band disclosures above are anonymous statutory disclosures and are not attributed to any named individual.

Public profiles (found on the charity’s own website): facebook · instagram

Structured financials (annual return, FY ending 31/03/2025)

Reported reserves equal ~0.5 months of spending — in the bottom quarter for charities its size (median 4.8 months; benchmarks).

Per its annual return, largest income source: Charitable activities (57% of income) — components as reported reconcile to the return’s total income; not from the accounts narrative.

Per its annual return, cost of raising funds: 17.5% of total income — in the top quarter for charities its size (median 5.2%) (benchmarks).

Trustees · trustee networks

• Claire Rileychair · trustee of 1 other charity
• Annalei Bartlett
• Ben Butler
• Emma Layfield
• Louise Forster
• Matthew McWhinnie
• NICK KEMP · trustee of 1 other charity
• Rachel Mary Lippe

Trustee list from the Charity Commission register (current, not historical).

Operates in: Northern Ireland · Scotland · Throughout England And Wales

Income and spending

Common questions

Known funders

Grants to this charity found in funders’ own accounts filings.

Government & lottery funding

Grants to this charity published as open data by government and lottery funders (360Giving).

Funders of similar charities

Funders whose accounts show grants to charities similar to this one (and no recorded grant to this charity) — a starting list for fundraisers.

Charities like this

Semantically similar by activities and financial character, from our analysed corpus. Compare with SEVEN STORIES, THE NATIONAL CENTRE FOR CHILDREN'S BOOKS COLLECTION TRUST.

• SEVEN STORIES, THE NATIONAL CENTRE FOR CHILDREN'S BOOKS COLLECTION TRUST income £140k
• THE STORY MUSEUM income £2.3m
• WORLD BOOK DAY LIMITED income £1.3m
• THE CENTRE FOR LITERACY IN PRIMARY EDUCATION income £1.0m
• THE CHILDREN'S BOOKSHOW income £214k
• THE ROALD DAHL MUSEUM AND STORY CENTRE income £1.0m

Side by side with its peers

Each row is that charity’s latest analysed filing; every value is quote-backed on its own page.