Development Ratings

Founder/CEO Chris Underhill, MBE, has founded and directed three charities – Thrive (horticulture therapy for disabled people), Action on Disability and Development (ADD), and BasicNeeds. He was the CEO of Intermediate Technology Development Group (now Practical Action) for four years. Chris has been a trustee of several other charities including Oxfam. He is a founder member of the WHO-sponsored Global Forum on Community Mental Health. The Director of Corporate Services has worked with Chris for many years and has a broad range of responsibilities, qualifications and experience. The UK staff is small and there are staffed offices in all the programme countries. Trustees include experienced professionals from banking, finance, medicine and marketing. Several are also carers of physically or mentally ill or disabled dependants.

BasicNeeds receives high levels of restricted funding due to its heavy reliance on institutional income. This results in low fundraising costs. Reserves coverage has become very tight, partly due to the valuation of year end balances. In addition, the 2007 reserves reduction was due to a gap in funding between grants in Uganda and to one-off unauthorised legal costs in Ghana. Controls have been put in place to closely restrict the use of reserves to rebuild them. The debt ratio has increased to 27% (total liabilities to total assets) but is not yet at levels that might affect financial viability. Clearly, increased unrestricted funding would increase flexibility and improve the financial position.

In 2007, 71% of funding was from institutions (such as DfiD, the EU, Big Lottery Fund and Comic Relief), 23% from trusts, foundations and other NGOs, and 6% from individual grants and donations.

BasicNeeds does not present the breakdown of expenditure by country. However, it does present the number of mentally ill participants treated and cared for by country. In 2007, 31% of participants were from Ghana, 23% from both India and Tanzania, 11% from Uganda, 8% from Sri Lanka and 3% from Kenya. Only small numbers of people are being treated in Lao PDR and Colombia to date.

All but 7 staff members are based overseas, so employee costs are kept low at £7,176 in 2007.