Cost-of-Living
The current cost-of-living is having an impact on everyone in Essex and charities are feeling the brunt, with many telling us that they are facing rising bills, alongside increased demand.
We are carrying out a Community Listening Project to give us insight into what local community groups and organisations are experiencing. These ongoing conversations and surveys are helping to give us a clear picture of the challenges they face and how best we can respond. We want our grants to be easily accessible and for us to be a flexible, open, and trusted place-based funder, working to the Institute of Voluntary Action Research funder principles.
We know groups value our support, not only providing grants, but in building relationships with them, and we have a focus on funding smaller, grassroots groups, particularly those who have been traditionally marginalised from society and been historically under-represented.
At this difficult time, we are committed to giving grants towards core activity and running costs, including services that are critical, such as rent, staff costs and utility bills.
We know from our conversations and the below case studies we have collected, the uncertainty that groups and individuals are living with as a result of the cost-of-living and how quickly things can change. We want to reinforce the message that we are here to help and please feel able to contact us.
Case study 1: Anonymous
The financial model for this charity relied on income based on the number of clients receiving its services, but recently a number of their clients had been admitted to hospital which quickly resulted in crisis for the charity. The CEO explained: ‘We were doing really well, but it suddenly stopped. (Clients) kept going to hospital, and so we hit a huge down in the last month or so.’ The loss of income amounted to thousands of pounds a month.’ ‘That really is as quick as it happens. That’s how close we’re sailing.’
The organisation’s loss of income, combined with the rising organisational costs, due to the cost of living, meant that the CEO was in a position where, ‘I’ve got less income but my expenditure is not coming down.’ As a result, at the time of our discussion the charity was facing a financial shortfall that threatened its ability to pay staff at the end of the month, and was attempting to sell some of its equipment in order to make ends meet.
While she spoke well of her relationship with ECF, the CEO felt, ‘my pride got in the way. It feels like I’ve failed.’ She was still hopeful that selling some equipment would allow the charity to catch-up with its finances without telling anyone.
This discussion highlighted the impact the cost-of-living crisis can have on the emotional wellbeing and morale of staff working in the voluntary sector.
This anonymous case study demonstrates the precarious situation many organisations are facing at the moment. They describe feeling ashamed that they were struggling and didn’t know who to talk to. They didn’t know if they should talk to us, but we are so grateful that they did and we have been able to support them.
Case study 2: Andrea Walter, CEO, Supporting Asperger Families in Essex
SAFE relies on paid memberships to sustain its work, though the cost-of-living crisis impacted clients’ ability to pay for membership, and as a result Andrea, the CEO, had seen the number of memberships decline ‘significantly’ in recent times. Like other organisations, Andrea told us, income was down but demand remained high: Andrea explained that people were still attending groups and often needed a high level of one-to-one support.
In the face of decreased income, there was little room to make financial savings as SAFE already operates on a small budget: Andrea is the only employee and works from home, meaning there are no overheads for rent and utilities. Furthermore, as was the case for other organisations in this study, volunteer contributions had decreased through a higher need for paid work.
The cost-of-living crisis has exacerbated existing societal inequalities and the speed in which a family could reach financial crisis. For example, Andrea explained that a payroll error on the number of paid employment hours that one of her clients had undertaken at her place of work, had resulted in an immediate stop to the client’s benefits. As a mother of four children, this had devastating consequences for the family, and the client was fearful of remaining in employment in case something similar happened again. As Andrea said: ‘Everything is so fragile. Little things can throw people into crisis’.
Also, a common theme among professionals engaged in this project was the concern of losing skilled staff and volunteers who needed more profitable work.
A full report on our Project findings and the longer length case studies will be published in due course.