Save the Children UK’s income increased slightly last year but remained under £300m, according to its annual report.

The report, published today (June 21), shows income rose from £294 million to £296m in a second successive year of extraordinarily high support for emergency appeals, including those for war-torn Ukraine and the Turkiya-Syria earthquake.

The charity saw growth of £11m from institutional donors such as the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and the World Bank. However, this was offset by falls totalling £11m in money from major donors, corporates and trusts. Income from shops held up strongly at £9m despite some closures.

Francis D’Souza, chief financial officer of Save the Children UK, said: ‘We worked extremely hard last year to keep income broadly flat in the face of significant financial headwinds, with costs driven up by double-digit inflation. We’re now investing more in fundraising and marketing to ensure that we have what we need to make lasting change for children.’

The charity spent £295m, mainly on emergencies (£79m), education (£67m) and health (£38m), with tens of millions more on family livelihoods, nutrition and child protection.

The report says emergencies increased in scale and intensity in 2023, with urban warfare in Sudan and the horrific conflict in Gaza and Israel added to crises in Ukraine, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Yemen and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and rising levels of hunger in many places, notably the Horn of Africa. Save the Children reached 28 million people, including 15m children, in emergencies in 55 countries.

Its campaign against pneumonia, the biggest infectious killer of children under five, included work with GSK and research partners in Nigeria, with life-saving equipment installed in health facilities and hundreds of health workers trained.

Innovations in education included the use of radio to improve teaching skills in Malawi. School meals provided in partnership with the government of Ethiopia in five regions affected by food insecurity prompted a quarter of a million children to say they now rarely miss a day of lessons.

Gwen Hines, who resigned as CEO and left in February this year, was the highest-paid executive on a salary of £143,00 that was unchanged from 2022.

The gender pay gap at Save the Children UK widened slightly to 5.4%, compared with a national figure of 14.3%. The ‘ethnicity pay gap’, defined as the difference between the average hourly pay of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic staff and their white colleagues, fell to 1.6%.

Complaints declined from 465 to 348, mostly concerning fundraising, and there were no safeguarding issues that reached the thresholds requiring a report to the Charity Commission or the police.

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