THE SERPENTINE TRUST

Registered charity 298809 · accounts filings on the Charity Commission register · also known as SERPENTINE GALLERY

The Serpentine Trust's vision is to open up art, for everyone, for free. It is responsible for running the Serpentine South and North galleries, and its mission is to exhibit, commission and promote the understanding of art, architecture and design through varied Exhibition, Education and Public Programmes.

Objects

TO PROMOTE, IMPROVE, DEVELOP AND MAINTAIN PUBLIC EDUCATION IN ALL FORMS OF ART AND MUSIC.

Area of benefit: NOT DEFINED

The charity’s charitable objects and area of benefit, quoted from its governing document as held on the Charity Commission register.

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

Registered contact address: Westminster, London, England (from the postcode on the register)

Financial health, per its FY2025 accounts

The accounts state that total income increased by 9% to £14.8m, while total expenditure rose by 7% to £15.6m, resulting in an overall net expenditure of £0.8m. Despite this deficit, the charity reported an increase in unrestricted reserves to £3.9m, which the trustees confirmed are in line with their revised policy target of two to three months of forecast annual expenditure.

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

What the accounts disclose

Accounts audited by Crowe U.K. LLP. Discloses 3 of 6 completeness components.

Year-over-year changes

• Reserves position vs the charity's own policy moved from "above" (FY2024) to "within" (FY2025).

Comparing this charity’s FY2024 and FY2025 accounts as analysed by this site.

Policies the charity declares

In its annual return the charity told the Commission that it has the policies listed below. This is self-declared: it is not verified by the Commission or by this site, and it is not evidence of how a policy works in practice.

• Bullying and harassment policy and procedures
• Campaigns and political activity policy and procedures
• Complaints handling
• Complaints policy and procedures
• Conflicting interests
• Financial reserves policy and procedures
• Internal charity financial controls policy and procedures
• Internal risk management policy and procedures
• Investing charity funds policy and procedures
• Paying staff
• Risk management
• Safeguarding policy and procedures
• Safeguarding vulnerable beneficiaries
• Serious incident reporting policy and procedures
• Social media policy and procedures
• Trustee conflicts of interest policy and procedures
• Trustee expenses policy and procedures

From the charity’s annual return (Part A, self-declared)

Answers and figures the charity gave in Part A of its annual return to the Charity Commission. They are self-declared: not verified by the Commission or by this site. Only positive answers and figures are listed; items not listed are simply not shown.

Source: this charity’s annual returns on the Charity Commission register.

In the news

Recent coverage mentioning this charity by name (automated match; headlines belong to their publishers).

• The Serpentine Trust v HMRC taxjournal.com · 03/10/2018
• Serpentine Gallery lost £430k on 2014 pavilion building.co.uk · 06/04/2016

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

Reported reserves equal ~2.0 months of spending — below the median for charities its size (median 4.6 months; benchmarks).

Per its annual return, largest income source: Donations and legacies (45% 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: 23.2% of total income — in the top quarter for charities its size (median 3.7%) (benchmarks).

Trustees · trustee networks

• THE HON MICHAEL R BLOOMBERGchair
• BARRY TOWNSLEY CBE
• Eugenio Gerardo Lopez Alonso
• JONATHAN PAUL WOOD
• Lady Elena Foster of Thames Bank
• Lynette Yiadom-Boakye
• MARCUS JARLATH BOYLE
• Maja Hoffman
• Megha Mittal
• Nicoletta Fiorucci
• Robert Rosenkranz
• Sosuke Fujimoto
• Suneil Setiya
• THE HONORABLE MRS FELICITY WALEY-COHEN

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

Operates in: Throughout England

Income and spending

Common questions

Known funders

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

Grants marked “Unverified read” were flagged by automated checks as possibly misread from the funder’s filed accounts. They are listed, but left out of the totals, counts and funder relationships this site computes.

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 SERENDIPITY ARTISTS MOVEMENT LIMITED.

• SERENDIPITY ARTISTS MOVEMENT LIMITED income £958k
• SYDENHAM ARTS LTD income £34k
• UNITED KINGDOM SEPSIS TRUST LIMITED income £1.9m
• SITE GALLERY LTD. income £565k
• THE OPEN THEATRE COMPANY LIMITED income £903k
• PETHERTON ARTS TRUST LIMITED income £153k

Side by side with its peers

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