FALLING THROUGH THE FUNDING CRACKS - 28/09/21
As Furlough ends and the country tries to pick up the pieces of the last 18 months, small, “niche” charities like ours are scrabbling to try and keep supporting the people who need us.
Our work is crucial and yet, we have missed out on eligibility for so much of the financial help that has been available to other organisations and sectors.
Over the last few months, our team, which due to furlough and home working, has been stretched to the absolute limit, has spent the few spare moments it hasn’t been providing direct support to families, trying to find new streams of funding to help us survive the next few, uncertain months.
During the pandemic, public fundraising, which provides the majority of our annual income, has been reduced by 70%. And grant fundraising, which given the nature of our work is difficult at the best of times (we don’t fit the usual “pigeon-holes” of many funders), has become even more difficult as Trusts and Foundations close doors, reduce support and narrow the field even further.
Even those organisations giving out emergency Covid grants have a criteria which excludes our work. We aren’t considered grass-roots, local community or “frontline”.
In 2020, at the start of the Pandemic, we repatriated in the region of 15,000 Brits who were stranded overseas. We’ve helped families bereaved by Covid to bring their loved ones home, through lockdowns, barriers, flight cancellations and more, to be buried, to have that last goodbye.
This was in addition to our usual work, supporting thousands of families with a loved one who is missing, or has been a victim of murder, violent crime and more. And yet there has been no extra support – just reductions wherever we look.
We know this is a difficult time for everyone. Cuts and support ending will make it a long winter for so many.
But without us here, the families of the next Nora Quoirin, the next Grace Millane, the next Esther Dingley, will have nothing to help them through, no support. And those hundreds of families in the same situations, who don’t make the news, who the media doesn’t consider “newsworthy”, will have even less help.
We are survivors, we fight on through it all. But we really need somebody to recognize where the gaps are, recognize where support is needed but not given. Right now, we fight harder than ever.
New Registered Office
In late 2019 we were delighted to move our offices to a new space. The following months were also exceptionally busy for the team with hundreds of families needing our assistance and several high profile cases needing round the clock attention. This meant that refurbishing the space went somewhat onto the backburner.
However in the last few months we've been working hard to give our team (who have been diligently working from home since the start of the pandemic) a comfortable and welcoming space to return to. We could not have done this without the help of the following companies and individuals for their donations of office furniture, carpet, wall stickers and freight delivery to the Isle of Wight. We would like to use this page to thank them.