Recessionary Relief in your Community

In these times of unprecedented economic crisis, Comic Relief’s success in raising a staggering £65 million from this year’s Red Nose Day will offer a ray of hope about the nature of human generosity amidst ever more depressing headlines about repossessions, redundancies and business closures. So does Comic Relief’s achievement mean that all is well in the third sector? And what lessons can small charities, community groups and donors draw from Comic Relief’s success?

The vast majority of registered charities in the UK are small, with incomes under £100,000. In addition there are an estimated 600-800,000 community groups that fall well beneath the radar of well-publicised and branded charities. These are smaller organisations like The Northern Initiative on Women and Eating, which is a therapy and counselling service for women experiencing eating distress in the North of England. Or JUMP in Lewisham, a charity which offers training and development alternatives to gang culture, gun crime and educational underachievement, to 200 young people a week.

Whatever the size, local charities “on the front line”, those working in the areas of mental health, family breakdown, domestic violence, housing and homelessness, drug/alcohol abuse and with the unemployed, face the prospect of increasing expectations of the services they provide at a time of falling income. Agonisingly for some, this double whammy is coming just as public funds have been restructured and many groups are now no longer eligible for support.
For the past six to eight months, community foundations have been working with local and regional agencies, businesses and key public sector bodies to assess the impact of the recession and to respond to the needs of front-line charities and community groups. A recent report on the effect of the economic downturn in Milton Keynes involving the Community Foundation cites the Citizens Advice Bureau there as “sinking” under the weight of requests as people turn to it for help on debt, employment and housing issues.

Other charities such as the Food Bank, Shelter and the Milton Keynes Women & Work Group are all reporting increases in requests for help. People are turning to their local voluntary organisations which now face a rising tide of people in crisis. The picture is repeated across the country, with real concerns that the effect on the recession on poorer communities will only be felt slowly, but will be long lasting.
The community foundation experience is that while some donors are reviewing their charitable investments and cutting out the non-essentials, they do respond when they understand new and urgent needs, and the exemplary results achieved by some local charities.

An example is a Milton Keynes Community Foundation donor, thecentre:mk Shopping Management, which supported “Climb Your Mountain”. This charity organises a range of physical activities for people with mental health issues, or going through difficult times in their lives, to help gain a sense of achievement and well being. The organisation has seen a significant increase in the number of people approaching them for help following redundancy or financial problems and is working hard to meet this demand with limited resources. The donor was delighted to be able to support such an initiative as it is responding to the human fall out of the recession.
Offering a strong beacon of hope, Comic Relief prefers to believe that there is no such thing as compassion fatigue. Rather they put their recent fundraising success down to the British public responding to clear and impactful messaging that struck the right tone and balance in acknowledging that while times are tough, they are even tougher for the most vulnerable in the UK and Africa.

To incentivise giving, the Government’s Office of Third Sector is providing a pound for pound match incentive for donors to community foundations on top of Gift Aid. It is a groundbreaking initiative to encourage private donors to set up endowment funds for grassroots projects in England. Most community foundations in England are involved, and many of their clients are taking advantage of the challenge as it can more than treble the size of their donation. It’s a welcome incentive, because as the recession goes on and develops, the needs of individuals in crisis may endure for some time to come – and we have to think about the long-term as well.
The effect of the recession on the most vulnerable in our communities will be hard. Perhaps the lesson of Comic Relief’s success is that charities can indeed survive the recession and emerge stronger if they engage and enthuse current and potential supporters in their work. In this way people can feel they are able to make positive, social change through giving their time and money.

For donors, the challenge is to be more open and attuned to the less visible deliverers of key support services on the ground, who are making a difference, now, to the quality of life in our communities. These organisations are sitting there, right under our noses and offer donors direct and tangible opportunities to do something life-affirming. UK community foundations funded 20,000 such groups last year alone. Indeed, 40 percent of the total raised on Red Nose Day will be donated to projects in the UK, some of this through the Community Foundation Network, which in the last two years has directed over 1,600 Comic Relief grants ensuring that they reach some of the smallest, grass roots organisations in communities across the country.

Finally, when need is being so highlighted, could this be the time to look afresh not just at what issues are funded, but the kind of support that is offered? General funding support is so hard to come by for many charities – but it’s the kind of “relief” that they really could do most with at the current time.

About the Community Foundation Network

Community Foundation Network, which comprises 57 local charitable foundations covering 96% of the UK population, is the UK’s leading expert in revitalising local communities through effective charitable giving. Its member organisations exist to connect those with money, with dynamic local organisations whose capacity to change lives for the better is only inhibited by a lack of money.

Together, community foundations make around £70 million in grants annually to an estimated 20,000 local charities and community groups across the UK. They are results-oriented, using their local expertise to ensure that the money invested by over 12,500 corporate, individual and public donors, as well as more than £200 million in endowments, makes the lasting difference donors want and expect.

To find out more about community foundations and the charities and projects they support, as well as the Grassroots Grants Endowment challenge for England, go to:  www.communityfoundations.org.uk