Our motivation

Every human being is precious and valuable. So, we are deeply concerned when persons with disabilities lack access to essential facilities and suffer injustice due to their disability.

Our mission

Our mission is to achieve equal access to eye care, health care, education and livelihood for children and adults with a disability in Africa and Asia.

We work in seven countries – Ethiopia, Rwanda, South Sudan, Sudan, Uganda, Cambodia and Indonesia – to prevent blindness, provide qualitatively good eye care, food security and low-threshold education for persons with disabilities, and we aim to realise inclusive communities as well.

We help persons with a (visual) disability to stand up for equal rights and we assist advocacy groups to gain a voice in their dealings with their governments. In the Netherlands, we also lobby for an inclusive development cooperation policy.

Our strategy

3 themes

Inclusive eye care

We work towards preventing eye diseases, diagnosing and treating eye conditions, and realising rehabilitation. We mainly do this in the poorer areas of Ethiopia, Rwanda and Indonesia.

Access to care, education and employment

We want everybody to be fully integrated into society, and for persons with a visual or other disability to have equal access to healthcare, education and employment. We make sure that children with a disability can go to school and, after they finish school, we offer them guidance in finding employment.

Equal rights

We help and empower persons with disabilities and their advocacy organisations to stand up for their rights. And we challenge governments to meet the needs of persons with disabilities.

7 core elements

Read the full version of our strategy meerjarenstrategie. 

Together with you and our local partners, we have achieved the following in 2023:

Access to:

Internal developments 

Last year, we took great steps to organise our teams differently within our organisation. In the past, the support of our partners by the programme team was realised separately from the fundraising and finances for these projects, but now we will work in multidisciplinary teams. We have already been doing this for the We are Able! programme since 2021 and have had positive experiences with that. Colleagues with substantive expertise and the people concerned with fundraising for and financial control of our five core programmes will be brought together in teams. That will enable us to work more efficiently and will strengthen how we support our partners and interact with our donors. 

Our team 

In 2023, our team numbered an average of 12.75 FTE made up of 21 paid employees. We temporarily supplemented our team with five independent professionals because of (long-term) sick leave and the very tight labour market, which hampered our efforts to fill vacancies for the team fundraising and communication. In addition, like every year, we were supported by enthusiastic volunteers and interns.

The absence due to illness rate of 21.23% consisted largely of long-term and extra long-term absence due to illness. Over the year, we had to say farewell to three colleagues with long-term health conditions; therefore, this percentage dropped considerably by the end of the year. Now, it looks like a prolonged period of high absence due to illness – mainly related to COVID – is behind us. 

In 2023, our employee representation met with the director on four occasions. These meetings were concerned, amongst other things, with the design and outcome of the employee satisfaction survey, the year plan and the budget. The annual employee satisfaction survey revealed an upward trend, just as in the previous three years. For nearly all areas, employees gave the score ‘satisfied’ to ‘very satisfied’. The outcome of the survey was managed by the employee representation and discussed with the entire team.

With our team, we visited MuZIEum in Nijmegen. This is a museum where you can experience what it is like to be blind or visually impaired. It was a pleasant but intense and educational experience because we could briefly imagine what life is like for people with a visual disability.

Quality

Thanks to previous investments in improving work processes and management information, we now have a good grip on the progress of both the financial and substantive results. In 2023, we evaluated several multiannual projects such as EmployAble and Every Life Matters.

Survey among donors and partners 

The Dutch research organisation Christelijk Charitatief Peil (CCP) conducted a survey into the giving behaviour of Christians and the name recognition of charities. Although this survey established that our name recognition has decreased, we were nevertheless rated with a score of 8.3, the highest score of all participating organisations. People who know us describe us as ‘connecting’ and ‘effective’. At the end of 2023, we also carried out a survey amongst our supporters, but the results are not yet known.

Collaboration is always one of the subjects discussed during project visits. We paid extra attention to this last year by discussing with our partners the outcomes of a 2022 online questionnaire about collaboration. During these discussions, our partners indicated that they are positive about the supervision provided when realising projects. For example, we advised the partner UPHLS about the development of their multiannual strategy, we applied the Shift of Power in the We are Able! programme, and we strengthened the leadership of our partners in a new MUB project.

Quality management 

A quality management system has been set up according to the ISO 9001 principles and the sector-specific ISO standard Partos 9001. The ISO/Partos certificate was extended for a period of three years in 2021. The external progress audit was positive in 2023. It just provided a few points for attention, which means that everything is shipshape.

Three quality marks

Thanks to quality marks and certifications, our donors can be sure that we contribute to a better world, manage every euro carefully, are accountable and have ourselves audited independently.

• Recognised as a charity by the Dutch Fundraising Regulator (CBF)

As a CBF-recognised charity, we meet the strict quality requirements that the CBF audits. This quality mark was extended for a period of three years in 2022.

• Public Benefit Organisation (Dutch abbreviation ANBI)

SeeYou has been classified as a Public Benefit Organisation by the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration. As a result, donations to the charity are deductible for persons paying Dutch income tax.

• ISO 9001 and Partos 9001

Our charity is ISO 9001 and Partos 9001 certified. This certification concerns internal and external processes, which are regularly assessed and adjusted.

Complaints

We registered three complaints in 2023. One complaint concerned the size of the payment for cataract operations, which we could explain on the basis of our policy. A strategic collaborative partner in the Netherlands informed us that the collaboration yielded insufficient results. We discussed the situation with each other, expressed our mutual expectations and adjusted these to a realistic level. Finally, there was a complaint from local partner organisations who did not feel properly heard within the consortium. As consortium partners, we dealt with this jointly and initiated a complaints procedure, which started with listening to the local partners. This procedure has not yet been completed due to the civil war that broke out shortly after the process started.

Integrity 

Integrity is high on our agenda. We know from experience – and from countless studies – that persons with disabilities face a considerably higher risk of being abused. Safety, an open learning culture and a strong integrity policy are vital for preventing such abuse.

As we collaborate directly with local partner organisations in Africa and Asia, we must also ensure that our partners have a good integrity policy and safeguard the people we support with our work. In our integrity policy, we have laid down the distinction between our direct and indirect responsibility towards stakeholders and our target group, and the ethical conduct that we expect from ourselves and our partner.  

The content of our integrity policy:

• statement of integrity
• code of conduct
• prevention policy
• reporting system
• references to underlying provisions: Transparency & Anti-Corruption Policy, Regulations for Confidential Advisers, Whistleblower Policy, and Complaints Procedure

Learning about ethical behaviour within the SeeYou team and with our partners

As part of our preventative measures, we continuously hold internal discussions concerning the importance of ethical behaviour and concrete moral dilemmas. So, in 2023, we also discussed several cases that we could learn from as a team.

Partner organisations must demonstrate that they pursue an active integrity policy and underwrite the basic principles with respect to integrity in contracts. The subject of integrity is always on the agenda during the various contact moments with partner organisations and during work visits. We ask our partner organisations about their integrity (also called safeguarding policy), how they implement this, and the issues they come up against. In the collaboration with our partners, we discuss how attention is paid to integrity in practice. We ask whether employees have received training and whether the target groups know how to report incidents. During our project visits and discussions, we noted that partners informed us about behaviour that is and is not desirable.

Code of conduct

All of our employees and volunteers have signed a code of conduct. This is based on our core values – every person is valuable, there is room for everyone, Christian charity, and justice – and forms the basis for all of our actions. We also endorse the 2019 Partos Code of Conduct with guidelines on cooperation with civil society organisations in project countries, setting up a professional organisation, and agreements on communication and fundraising. 

We fully realise that we always work with financial resources entrusted to us by others, such as donors, financers and foundations. We therefore follow the guidelines expressed in our Transparency & Anti-Corruption Policy to minimise the risk of these resources being misused. 

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)

Our new CSR policy statement is based on three principles:

• Working fairly and honestly

The previous sections on Quality and Integrity describe how we shape this. 

• Respect for our stakeholders, work and organisation

In addition to regular satisfaction surveys, the various stakeholders are annually consulted on strategic decisions. These include volunteers, ambassadors, family of the founders, committed donors, representatives of equity funds, and strategic partners in our project countries and the Netherlands. 

• Respect for the environment and society

We are committed to protecting the environment and we want to conserve natural resources. That is why we choose to pay CO₂ compensation for our air travel by making a donation to the A Rocha foundation via the ‘Climate Stewards’ programme. Working from home has now become an integral part of our work. Our starting point is that employees work at the office 50% of the time and 50% from home. Also, our office building is closed one day per week, and we heat our office in a climate-aware manner. In this way, we use less energy at our office and we reduce CO₂ emissions due to commuting.

Risk management

Our work often involves risks and uncertainties. Through our risk management, we prevent risks from becoming a reality and limit any potential impact they may have. We work on structured risk management with a quarterly risk analysis by the management team, and a sound policy on project expenditure, reporting, monitoring and integrity.

We see five main potential risks for the next five years. 

Change of governance model

In 2023, we changed our model for governance and supervision. In the last board meeting of 2023 – held on 13 December 2023 – the board made the switch to a supervisory board and transferred its governance task to the executive director. All new roles and responsibilities have been recorded in the statutes and in a new regulation concerning the governance and the supervisory board. With this step, we align ourselves better with the supervisory model, which is standard practice in the charitable sector.

Remuneration executive director

The supervisory board has determined the remuneration policy, the level of the remuneration of the executive director and the size of other remuneration components. This policy is updated regularly. For this, we follow the Dutch regulation for salaries for directors of charitable organisations as drawn up by the sector organisation Goede Doelen Nederland. The supervisory board awarded our executive director Dicky Nieuwenhuis a so-called BSD score of 380 points with a maximum annual income of € 120,741. Her actual annual income, including holiday pay, year-end bonus and pension contribution was € 108,795 in 2023.

As a result, the annual income, the taxed allowances and additions, the employer’s pension contribution and, in the long term, the other remunerations remained well within the maximum norm stated in the above-mentioned regulation. In the annual accounts under ‘Explanation stated income and expenses’, the size and composition of the remuneration are explained in greater detail. 

Our supervisory board 

The supervisory board safeguards the mission and identity of our organisation. It also supervises the executive director and the SeeYou policy and plans. Members of the supervisory board receive no financial remuneration for their work. They can, however, declare costs they have incurred to carry out their work as a supervisory board member.  

After six years of being a board member, Stephan Bol stepped down in December 2023. We are grateful for his work over the past years. The vacancy will not be filled because the new supervisory board considers its current composition appropriate for the organisation’s new structure.

Meetings and decision-making in 2023 

The supervisory board met on five occasions in 2023. This concerned four regular meetings and one strategic session about the impact of our programmes and strategic collaboration with other humanitarian organisations.

The following decisions were taken:  

• approval of the annual report and financial statements 2022;
• approval of the year plan and budget 2024;
• approval of the new statutes and regulations concerning the governance and supervisory board of SeeYou. 

Financial results 2023

Thanks to the contributions from funds, governments and donors, we could also make a difference in thousands of lives in 2023. This chapter provides you with an explanation of the most important results and the main points of our financial policy.

In 2023, we spent 83% of our income on implementing our objective. This means that we spent more than 2.9 million euros on our projects for eye care and inclusion in the project countries. Of the total costs, 3.2 million (82.5%) could be devoted to our objective, whereby part of the expenditure was funded from our reserves.

Income

In 2023, we received a total of € 3,840,148, which was almost the same amount as in 2022. We are very pleased with this result, especially as 2023 was an uncertain year in the area of fundraising. International crises, such as the war in Ukraine, inflation and higher costs influenced the giving behaviour of donors. The abolition of the giro cheque also had a negative impact. Additionally, several equity funds were hesitant to make new commitments due to the new tax legislation. We are therefore grateful that we could maintain the total income at a comparable level to the previous year.

From the total income, we were able to spend 84% on our objective. This is in accordance with the goal of our strategy, which is to spend at least 85% of the available funds on our objective in 2024. The three-year average is 87%.

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You can find more detailed income figures in the financial statements.

Expenditure

In 2023, the total expenditure was € 3,910,193, of which 82.5% was spent on the objective of our organisation versus a budgeted percentage of 77.8%. A total of 74.9% of our expenditure was for project expenditure for our projects in Africa and Asia for inclusive eye care, access to care, education and employment, and equal rights of people with disabilities. And 7.7% was spent on raising awareness and education about the need for inclusive development in development cooperation.

Result allocation

We closed the accounts for 2023 with a net negative income of € 82,335. Although this is comparable to 2022 (-/- € 86,016), the allocation of results shows a different picture. As the non-earmarked funds from fundraising were considerably less, we could not cover all of the organisation’s costs. And although we had anticipated this by reducing costs, we nevertheless had to deal with a higher loss than budgeted in 2023. A combination of events, including a lower income than budgeted, high absence due to illness and higher costs, such as the unforeseen funding of a project in the countries where SeeYou is active, led to a withdrawal from the reserves of € 530,900. Some of these costs were foreseen and charged to the Mission implementation reserve 2021-2024 (€ 219,350 the budgeted amount was € 180,873). An amount of € 311,550 had to be charged to the Continuity reserve.

Due to the relative rise in income earmarked for a project and the legacy at the end of the year, we could add € 448,565 to the Designated reserves. These reserves will be spent within our projects in the short or medium term.

Reserves policy

The reserves have been segmented according to the purpose assigned by the board. SeeYou adheres to a total reserve position with a bandwidth of 80% – 100% of the organisation’s net costs. The net costs of the organisation include the total costs minus the direct project costs and the costs of programme management and administration that can be directly attributed to the projects.

The sector association Goede Doelen Nederland recommends a maximum reserve of one-and-a-half times the organisation’s annual costs. SeeYou remains well under this norm. On the one hand, this means that we have enough capacity to compensate for setbacks in line with the risk analysis. At the same time, applying an upper limit to the reserve ensures that as much as possible, we invest our resources in projects for (eye) care and inclusive development in our project countries.

Earmarked reserves

Besides the Continuity reserve, SeeYou has also formed the following earmarked reserves at the end of 2023:

– Emergency aid reserve: € 75,000

– Mission implementation reserve 2021-2024: € 235,438

The supervisory board monitors progress and results on the basis of concrete indicators. An annual evaluation will be performed to determine whether the investment from the reserve is having the desired effect, or whether it requires adjustment.

For the year 2023, € 180,873 was withdrawn from the reserve and included in the budget. The expenditure charged to this reserve in 2023 was higher than planned due to extra costs for fundraising and communication. The goal behind using this reserve is to build up a balanced exploitation and growth of available funds for our programmes and projects. In 2023, € 219,350 was charged to this reserve. The balance of this reserve remains earmarked for use in improving the realisation of our mission. Each time, the most important consideration is using the available funds as effectively as possible. In 2024, this reserve will have been completely used.

Allocated funds

A total of € 448,565 was added to the Allocated funds. This fund shows which part of the gifts with a specific project destination have not yet been spent. Income was received over the course of the year. Relatively large amounts that we received at the end of the year (among other things, a legacy of € 359,000) could not be completely spent in the year of receipt. On the other hand, during the year, project expenditure has been funded with resources received in previous years. Therefore, on balance, more is spent from the Allocated funds than is added to it.

We are striving to avoid the pre-funding of projects with our own funds as much as possible. For this reason, our policy is aimed at acquiring as much project funding as possible for the following year in the current year. The consequence of this change in policy is that the balance of the Allocated funds has increased. Eventually, a new balance will arise between additions to and withdrawals from the Allocated funds, as a result of which the annual mutation is expected to decrease again.

Standard percentages

We want all the received donations to contribute to an inclusive world and quality eye care. If we are to do our work well and professionally, we must invest in fundraising and quality improvement. We are committed to keeping the cost percentages below the benchmark set by Goede Doelen Nederland. Table 2 shows the percentages achieved compared to the benchmark for small fundraising institutions (< € 5 million). Our long-term goal is that, on average, 85% of the available funds (income) is spent on our objectives. The three-year average across the years 2021-2023 is 87%.

The benchmark percentages stated below in Tables 2 and 3 concern benchmark expenditures compared to the total expenditure and therefore not compared to income. For 2021, the benchmark for expenditure on the objectives was 78%. As SeeYou, we spent 82.5% on the objectives in 2023. Our cost percentage for fundraising remained stable compared to 2022 and was lower than the benchmark. Our cost percentage for management and administration is, on average, lower than the benchmark.

Budget 2024

We have taken several measures in response to the shortfall in 2023. For example, this analysis revealed that fundraising among private individuals, besides costing a lot of money, also required a lot of time and energy from our team even though, on balance, it barely yields extra funds to realise our projects for eye care and inclusion. And although the size of our team and the organisation costs are well managed and in line with what is usual in the sector (see benchmark), we still need to further reduce our costs.

This has resulted in the following measures:

• We will invest less in broad (non-earmarked) fundraising among private individuals.
• We will invest more in earmarked fundraising, especially geared toward companies, equity funds, charities, and institutional funds.
• We will focus on reducing costs by cutting organisational costs in combination with the more efficient and effective organisation of our project portfolio. That last focus will enable us to carry out our work with a smaller team while maintaining the project portfolio’s quality and size.

These measures, organisational changes and the ongoing focus on cost reduction – such as a smaller team – will result in lower costs, although the full effect of this will only become visible in 2025. We expect that from 2025 onwards, we will realise a positive or at least a break-even result. This means that we will still have to accept a loss in 2024, but this can still be covered by the balance in the Mission implementation reserve 2021-2024.

We consider this a realistic scenario, but if the results are worse than expected, further measures must be taken by the end of 2024. However, the initial results of the sketched contours reveal a positive picture. These results safeguard the continuity of our programmes and projects and offer realistic prospects for their growth.

The budget for 2024 assumes an expected income of more than € 3.6 million. The expenditure will be higher, especially due to the funding of programmes with the 2023 Allocated funds. Compared to the three-year average until 2023, the organisation will achieve acceptable and more or less similar indicators in 2024.

The intensification of the efforts for the earmarked fundraising is aligned with the changed structure of the organisation and is conditional for the further growth of our projects. Secondly, partly due to the increasing attention for quality and accountability, we want to further improve our responsibility towards donors, supporters and implementing partners. Consequently, the budgeted amount for management and administration has been increased.

Thanks to the contributions from gifts from private individuals, funds, foundations and institutional funds, we can, to a significant extent, continue our project portfolio. Together with our partners, we are committed to (eye) care, inclusion and rights for people with disabilities in seven countries. Further, we will pay considerable attention to managing costs, and we aim to maintain the present level of fundraising and, if possible, increase it.

The budget for 2024 is included as an annex in the financial statements 2023.

As a part of the projects are financed from the Allocated funds, the total result of the exploitation in 2024 is -/- € 329,471. The result allocation has been (budgeted) as follows:

An amount of € 224,500 will be withdrawn from the Allocated funds for funding projects. These funds were received in 2023. The exploitation loss of the organisation is € 104,971. This loss is covered by the Mission implementation reserve 2021-2024, which will be subsequently dissolved. The balance will be added to the Continuity reserve, which will then be at a sufficient level. That means we will have satisfied our own and general standards for reserves.

Multiannual budget

In 2020, we took the first steps towards evaluating the SeeYou multiannual budget and strategy. A new multiannual budget will be drawn up along the lines of the new strategy to be developed for the post-2025 period. However, the contours of this are not new and have already been briefly described above. After the reorganisation in 2020 and the growth strategy for (non-earmarked) fundraising, we have realised that our objectives need adjusting in the changing world of recent years, which is marked by increasing uncertainty (with the coronavirus pandemic, war in Ukraine, energy crisis and high inflation). Over the past few years, we have already reduced our structural costs and will continue to do so insofar as this is possible. In combination with a growth strategy aimed at expanding resources for our projects – and with that also more possibilities to attribute direct costs to projects – we want to solve the problem of exploitation shortfalls and achieve a healthy exploitation.

The accommodation costs are lower than budgeted. Due to inflation and a considerable increase in energy prices in 2022, the budget allowed for substantially higher costs. In the end, the increase was lower than expected, partly due to a strict office policy with respect to office space and use (fewer rooms heated), which included closing the office one day a week. The IT costs are incidentally higher due to the implementation of new call software. Also, no VAT was paid for the invoices of Salesforce (supplier located in Ireland). The costs were settled in retrospect with the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration.

What we have learned from 2023

We have evaluated our projects EmployAble and Every Life Matters, and the We are Able! programme has undergone an interim evaluation. Several points emerge from these evaluations:

• At present, we still see too often that a local or international development organisation takes the lead in projects, whereas we want advocacy organisations, the representatives of persons with disabilities, to have more ownership. If we can strengthen their position, then advocacy organisations can assume a leadership role towards the government, business and other civil society organisations.

• We have observed that there are differences between projects in terms of how many persons with disabilities our interventions reach and the costs associated with this. Accordingly, we will better monitor the cost-effectiveness, investigate the causes of these differences, and focus on solutions that help more people.

• We are developing our monitoring and evaluation. Now we now have a good idea of who we reach, but less of an idea about which change these people experience thanks to our interventions. We will therefore deploy questionnaires about health, income and participation to measure the impact of projects and the quality of life of persons with disabilities in our projects. Then we will know whether our interventions actually have the intended effect.

Fundraising requires a big investment and we have noticed that we can achieve even greater focus in this area. If we concentrate more on the target groups we already have a connection with, then we can spend our resources more effectively. We will therefore stop several activities, such as door-to-door collections, in 2024.

Together with our donors and strategic partners, we have concluded that expectation management is important. As different organisations, we will benefit from regularly discussing our various approaches in an open manner and evaluating these. Therefore, mutual expectations will receive more attention next year.

Looking ahead

Looking ahead to 2024, we will continue to work on inclusive eye care, inclusive education and employment and advocacy for equal rights of people with disabilities in Africa and Asia. In 2024, we will do this by focusing on the following specific issues: 

Programmes

• With a view to our strategy, we want to bring together the different themes in our project countries. In the coming year, we will therefore seek to realise more coherency between the projects in Indonesia, a country that SeeYou has long been connected with. Together with our partners PRY and CBM Global, we will continue the current projects and start a new eye care project.
• We will focus on improving the quality of our core programmes in Ethiopia, Rwanda and Indonesia. We would like to continue the programme for inclusive employment for girls and women in Rwanda, and the Every Life Matters programme may be expanded to Indonesia.
• We will invest in a strong role for advocacy organisations for persons with disabilities within our projects, together with the We are Able! consortium in Uganda, South Sudan and Sudan. In the other project countries, we will deepen the relationship with advocacy organisations.
  
  

Collaboration

• In 2024, we will conclude the pilot with the Bartiméus Fund for digital accessibility at schools in Ethiopia, with the ambition of continuing this project on a larger scale.
• We are looking for a collaborative partner who can strengthen our programmes, fundraising or operations because we consider strategic collaboration with organisations that strengthen our mission to be vital.
• We want to support partners and programmes even more effectively. Therefore, for each programme we will put together a team of employees from the departments Programmes, Fundraising and Communication, and Operations. Last year, we took the first steps in that direction, and in 2024, we will fully implement this process.

Internal developments

• Up until the end of 2023, we followed the collective labour agreement Social Work for our primary employment conditions. However, the salary increases agreed upon in that agreement do not fit developments in our organisation. We will evaluate this in 2024 and adapt our policy accordingly.
• In 2024, our fundraising will focus more on the channels with which we have a lot of experience and where we achieve good results, such as fundraising among charities, equity funds and companies.
• We will take steps to further reduce our organisation costs, for example by creating a simpler management structure. Our aim in doing this is to achieve a positive budget result in 2025.