Financials and Reports

Who We Are

We're putting in place the building blocks to build our small charity, focusing on efficiency and value for money.

Our funding today

We were set up by the Wellcome Trust and the Institute of Social Psychiatry with seed funding in 2013. This allowed us to start work on a sound financial footing and begin our research right away, whilst laying down a strategic plan to take us to 2020 and beyond.

Our efforts are now focused on raising more funds so that we're ready to invest in the future of mental health, prudently and wisely.

Building a sustainable future

To continue funding world-class mental health research, we must have a strong core of fundraising supporters. We also need benefactors like individual philanthropists, corporate donors and people who choose to leave us legacies.

The most important long-term goal is building up our mainstream supporter community – the people who fundraise, take up awesome challenges or simply donate regularly to us. Recruiting this group of committed volunteers takes time. But our efforts are heading in the right direction, with our supporter base more than doubling in 2015.

If you want to find out more about our funding, or if you'd like to help invest in our future as a charity, then please get in touch today.

2024 highlights

2024 was a challenging year for MQ following the sudden passing of our CEO Lea Milligan. Lea's legacy is one of income growth, facilitating ground breaking research and a dedicated staff team who will continue the momentum he started.

MQ invested £2.67million in mental health research and supported 39 projects across nine countries in 2024. This included our brand new Scholarships programme aimed at supporting researchers who have recently gained their PhD's or other Doctorates. You can read more about the MQ Scholars here.

We were proud to be named one of the Sunday Times Best places to work in 2024, and to continue our important partnership with the Lord Mayors Appeal. We were also featured in a new documentary, distributed by Reuters, which focused on global health inequalities.

The 2024 Annual Report highlights MQ's important research into Eating Disorders, which despite being some of the mental illnesses with the highest rates of mortality have historically seen little research.

You can read more about the highlights from 2024 and all of our financial information in our 2024 Annual report.

2025 highlights

Throughout 2025 MQ has remained firmly future-focused. With horizon scanning projects with the Boston Consulting Group and Rethink Mental Illness and many new research partnerships established.

Our colleagues at the MQ Foundation in the USA partnered with the Cleveland Clinic to establish the Mental Health Research Centre of Excellence, a five-year initiative dedicated to prevention and early intervention for young people at risk of serious mental illnesses.

We also celebrated our long-term relationship with Wellcome, who helped to found MQ over 13 years ago with seed funding of £20,000,000. Wellcome are turning 90 years old in 2026, so in this report we have celebrated our shared successes through the many projects we have collaborated on.

One of MQ's core principals is that research should be shaped by the people who stand to benefit from it the most. That's why 100% of our research projects now incorporate an element of Patient and Public involvement and Engagement (PPIE). This is explained more in the report by Jan Speechly, an expert by lived experience who shares her expertise to further mental health research.

As 2025 we now look ahead to an exciting year ahead with CEO Chris Jarrett at the helm.

You can read more about the highlights from 2025 and all of our financial information in our 2025 Annual Report